This month Art Labor hosts a group show called '2nd Impressions', which aims to both introduce the gallery’s big new space and reintroduce its stable of artists through brand new works. There are some intriguing pieces, including work from artists flung as far as Russia, L.A. and Korea. Most exciting, however, are the supergiant talents of two startling young Chinese artists: Ying Yefu and Lu Yang.

Lu Yang’s work for the show is an instructional diagram for an installation called 'Kraftmäuse'. The elegant, macabre illustrations show how live mice might be manipulated to create live music by sending “addictive” doses of electricity directly to their hypothalamus ganglia.

The introduction to this “Mouse Desire Orchestra” experiment explains a grave potential tradeoff: “the whole process may finally make the mice run out of energy, faint, or even lead them to death. But the music they play will become a music of life and death controlled by the desire of animal instincts!”

The piece is unflinching in its description of the incisions, drilling and electrical impulses involved, but Lu says her intention is not to shock audiences. “A lot of my works use a kind of rational narrative form that conceals the so-called ‘provocative’. I really like to push the boundaries but my intention is really to encourage more people to reflect.”

Lu has created work using frogs too, but one lab animal she has yet to incorporate in her art is pigeons. Not that she’s against the idea. “Pigeons are great! Psychologist B.F. Skinner often used pigeons in his psychology experiments,” she says. “But I haven’t yet thought how to use pigeons in an artwork. Lately my relationships have been closer with people!”

While there’s a touch of mad science to Lu’s art, there’s also method in it. She has created several works that use a similar scientific visual language, including one that teaches people “How to DIY your own sanitary towel respirator”. Others redesign the anatomy of reptiles and insects so they can reproduce like mammals and nurse their young.

Ying Yefu, also redesigns living forms in his artwork, sometimes accelerating their evolution (a pair of duck feet sure could come in handy), and sometimes arresting their development. Many of his meticulous gongbi (or brushwork) ink paintings feature grownups with babyish faces, or unnatural looking children.

Just as an individual’s development can take a strange direction, Ying adapts a traditional Chinese art form to fit his own novel ideas. In particular, he has distinct conceptions of time and maturation. “All past things are ‘old’ to me and I think we are all big children,” he says.

Ying Yefu joined the other “big children” at Art Labor after looking in the large windows of the original gallery on Yongjia Lu, near Maoming Lu. “Once I walked past Art Labor Gallery,” he says. “I liked it and after talking to [director Martin Kemble], I liked the theme of the gallery and his attitude.”

While that gallery space will close at the end of this year, the new Art Labor is open for business. Art Labor 2.0 is still on Yongjia Lu, but now up the road near Yueyang Lu. It’s on the ground floor of a newly refurbished restaurant and shopping complex (formerly an aerospace technology centre) set back from the street. That might mean fewer artists ambling in off the street to join the gallery, but Kemble is excited about the change.

“The new space is about four times the size of [the old] gallery,” he says. “I’ve got 20 walls and they all move, so the space starts fresh every time.”

The ‘2nd Impressions’ show is a celebration of the new space. “The theme overall is: it’s a new look; it’s a total expansion and a completely different level for the gallery,” Kemble says. “The gallery is now operating with a presence that equals the top galleries in the city. We’re intending to be at the front line of art in Shanghai.”

Until 25 August. Art Labor 2.0, 570 Yongjia Lu, near Yueyang Lu. Tel: 6431 7782