Art News

In the gallery’s first exhibition of 2016, three young Chinese artists present works that stake a perspective, questioning our understanding of Shanghai and expose its inherently fluid nature. With bold combinations of colour highlighting the nervousness, contradictions and absurdity of the mental pressures of the contemporary city in paintings of oil on canvas, Chongqingbased artist Hu Weiqi draws attention to the oxymoronic situation of the saturated vacuum – places chock full of images and eye-catching headlines that are devoid of actual stories – what French theorist Debord defines as a “society of spectacle.” Similarly, Beijing artist Zhang Wenchao’s perception of the city’s rapidly changing content results in a forging of the artist’s memory of urban life, creating a fictionalised version of the city that is real only in virtual reality. His works of painting and projection transform the idea of the city into the besieged fortresses of adventure games, with newly constructed complexes dotting the urban landscape appearing as Tetris-like patterns in oil on canvas, while digital video projection adds ceaseless movement to the vacant painted sceneries. In a close reading of Shanghai’s Da Shijie (ç, Great World) amusement arcade and entertainment complex, Beijing-based artist Sun Yu analyzes the architectural modifications undergone by the 1917 structure over the past century. By visually tracking the large-scale transformations in his works of print and painting, Sun Yu conceptually explores the accompanying shifts in the mentality of China’s consumerist society, which is always in need of ever-more spectacular sceneries.