Art News

The latest art news from around the city.

Still: Contemporary Works from a New Generation of Chinese Artists @ Art+ Shanghai

The gallery brings together four young Chinese artists in a group exhibition that celebrates the richness and complexity of the contemporary’s flittering moment. The four artists, Huang Yulong, Wei Xiaoguang, Zhang Wei and Zhou Jie, are all mainland Chinese artists, born in the 1980s, whose works are representative of a new trend in Chinese art that combines the appreciation of stillness and reflection of the moment with a continuation of traditional thought, immersive depth and a quiet aesthetic.

Their works of painting and sculpture play with visual perception and expectations of reality to explore a sense
of underlying tension and creation. Life is experienced as a continual series of moments, with each vibrating between the past and future. Still: Contemporary Works from a New Generation of Chinese Artists is thus the pensive celebration of that tense, unsure moment of present potential.

Still: Contemporary Works from a New Generation of Chinese Artists runs from 11 March until 3 May @ Art+ Shanghai. 191 Suzhou Bei Lu, near Sichuan Zhong Lu. Tel: 6333 7223. Web: www.artplusshanghai.com

“Social Factory: The 10th Shanghai Biennale” @ Power Station Of Art

Entitled, “Social Factory”, the 10th Biennale asks what characterises the production of the social, and how “social facts” are constituted. A recurring point of reference is the year 1978, acknowledged as a turning point in the recent history of modernity. 1978 was also the year in which Deng Xiaoping, who was to become China’s most influential leader in the following decades, initiated his landmark socio-economic Reform and Opening, re-invoking Mao Zedong’s 1938 exhortation to “seek truth from facts”– a practice that sought to separate accounts of objective reality from subjective imagination. “Social Factory” contrasts this principle with the call to use fiction as a means of social reform made by earlier seminal Chinese modernisers, such as scholar and journalist Liang Qichao, and China’s seminal social critic and writer Lu Xun, who wrote The Story of Ah Q, Diary of a Madman, among others.

In this vein, the Biennale explores an interlocking set of questions: What is the relationship between the social and the fictive in the construction and re-construction of society? How has the production of the social changed throughout 20th century modernity? Has the production of the social entered a new phase with the massive influx of “sociometric” technologies, the extraction of data and digital profiling and the increasing automisation of social processes in algorithms? And does China's premodern history of social systematisation through unparalleled bureaucratic machinery and archiving capabilities echo in the country’s current processes of social fabrication? How can we grasp the simultaneous impact of history and that of technology on subjectification today? And how does the general process of acceleration and diversification of subjectification play out in the case of China and its current era of social reconstruction?

“Social Factory: The 10th Shanghai Biennale” runs until 31 March @ Power Station Of Art. 200 Huayuangang Lu, near Miaojiang Lu. Tel: 3127 8535. Web: www.powerstationofart.org

Fly Me To The Moon @ Gallery Magda Danysz

Fly Me To The Moon is an original project by Ludo, a rising star on the street-art scene, at the end of his first trip to the city. The exhibition groups a series of works on canvas around a specific pattern as well as sculptures and a video about his adventure in Shanghai during his working process.

Since 2007, Ludo has tagged his gigantic vegetable-robotics creatures around many of the word’s streets. He reawakens urban spaces by bringing an element of nature into the city. He quickly became noted as an artist of his generation and, in 2013, he exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou. His work is marked by the recurrent utilisation of his emblematic fluorescent green. Ludo references our environment and tries to highlight some humility by appealing to our human side.

For Ludo, his first experience of Shanghai was a big visual shock, yet at the same time, a huge source of inspiration. The city magnetised him and pushed him to capture the movement of the city. He created a series of canvases in which the central figure is a bee equipped with a gas mask. He then worked with matter such as dust, fragments and other materials taken from the streets. In this exhibition, Ludo displays two large canvases and eight bold sculptures, emblematic of his work.

Fly Me To The Moon runs from 21 March to 16 May @ Gallery Magda Danysz. 188 Linqing Lu, near Yangshupu Lu. Tel: 5513 9599. Web: www.magda-gallery.com

“ i ” @ MOCA

Gu Changwei is one of China’s most popular film directors and his Contemporary Art Exhibition explores more of the creative genius behind the man. Gu began studying art in his pre-college days. In 1978, he enrolled into the Cinematography Department of Beijing Film Academy, which aided his entry into the movie industry. His practice and exploration of contemporary art, however, has so far remained largely unknown to the public.

In this exhibition, the artist used different media including video, twodimensional pieces and installation. All the works are closely linked to our daily lives and yet they have represented an unexpected and extraordinary splendour. In front of these works, we question ourselves and derive all kinds of solutions, which also hide behind the artist's interpretation of the contemporary social values and thinking of the current physical existence. To explain his motivation in creating these works, Gu quotes from Marcel Duchamp: “Art is not about itself but about the attention we bring to it.

“i” runs until 31 March @ Museum of Contemporary Art. People’s Park, 231 Nanjing Xi Lu, near Huangpi Bei Lu. Web: www.mocashanghai.org