Ying Yefu revives the ancient gongbi genre at "Anesthetic," the latest of multiple solo shows of his at Art Labor. Gongbi traces its origins to the Han dynasty, two millennia ago. A flourishing of the arts during the Tang and Song dynasties saw the art form develop and become popular ... Read More
The Brothers Grimm left the world more than 200 fairy tales. Dark, engaging, romantic and brooding, the stories of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, the Frog Prince and many other vivid characters accompanied many of us through childhood. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the characters after ... Read More
The Vanguard Gallery greets the winter season with a show of young Chinese talent. Both born in the ’80s, Wang Xin and Ye Linghan epitomize an emerging dynamism at play in the contemporary Chinese art world.
Ye uses a masterful yet distinct technique of color washing and staining. His most ... Read More
Art Labor’s “2nd Impressions” encourages viewers to take the tricky term “contemporary Chinese art,”–referenced by many but defined by few–and rethink its meaning.
Canadian gallerist Martin Kemble dismisses the label as marginalizing. “We seek artists who are not so easily defined by any particular group, just as ... Read More
The iron door opens onto a small garden, and in the garden is an attempt to understand all the mysteries of the world. Wuwei: Being and Nothing poses the question: is nothingness the opposite of being?
Wuwei is the Taoist doctrine of non-action, or acting in a spontaneous way without ... Read More
This massively ambitious project tries to portray the different movements and transitions within the Shanghai art scene from the late ’70s up to the present. Held in a hard to find, half-finished space, the work fills five galleries over four floors. However, the cavernous, plaster-shedding rooms seem strangely appropriate for ... Read More
Liu Yiqing’s first solo exhibition in China at Don Gallery documents the lives of her and her closely knit group of 10 friends at the Shanghai University Fine Arts School. Liu says the exhibit has no “greater meaning,” yet it is not devoid of theme; it reads like a ... Read More
The newest museum to step on to Shanghai’s art scene is a large space that’s packed with intriguing installations.
The Minsheng Museum anchors the creative complex known as Red Town, a trendy cluster of small galleries, cafés and the Shanghai Sculpture Space. Its soft opening, a group show ... Read More
Chinese artist Dong Zi’s porcelain works tackle topics that range from the cultural to the personal, with a lot of playful pieces in between.
The Beijing-born artist, who now calls China’s porcelain capital Jingdezhen home, says she was attracted to Leo Gallery, with its exposed bricks and hardwood ... Read More
A Buffet For The Senses
A45-ton train perched on real tracks, rice paddies, wine sloshing on window panes providing a burgundy-hued view of People’s Square, luggage strewn on the floor, disco balls in VIP rooms, multimedia presentations on typographical errors in DVDs, massive ants marching on walls and a ... Read More
Asking Some Questions
Like everything else, art is becoming increasingly globalized, but does that mean leaving regional and national considerations behind? This exhibition aims to champion the view that contemporary art made in Asia should be seen as “contemporary art” rather than “contemporary Asian art.” The theme is a strange ... Read More
Google This
On first hearing of this exhibition, we were a little unimpressed. Honestly, photo-mosaic is a bit passé–the first software was invented in 1996. Even Yao Ming's famous mug has been made up of hundreds of tiny pictures for an ad.
However, the power of photography cannot ... Read More
Capturing the Elusive Present
Closed shutters. An empty glass. A watermelon broken open. The 25 photographs assembled in this exhibition are images of the everyday, but not quite. In his work, Fabien Seguin, a French photographer now living in China, foregrounds the ordinary to draw attention to the unnoticed, allowing ... Read More
Celebrating Cross-Cultures
Olympic fever has spread from the sports world across to the art world at MoCA. As part of the “Cultural Year of Greece in China,” this exhibition brings together artists from both nations in order to trace the affinities between these two cultures.
At first, the display appears ... Read More
A Lesson in History
Li Shi Guang's Imaginary Museum comes across as some type of art history quiz. Familiar works of art are wittily incorporated in a blend of Chinese and Western, modernity and antique art.
Influenced by the great masters of Western art, such as Manet and Rembrandt ... Read More
Moments Lost in Obscurity
Presented in a darkened room, the mood of this group exhibition featuring new media by Chinese artists is somewhat dispiriting. In Jin Jiangbo's Commemoration Series-Cloud of Angels, stuffed birds hang in the semi-gloom like extras in a Hitchcock film, making the viewer feel an uneasiness ... Read More
Pop Goes China
Timezone 8 is a mélange of café, bookstore and artspace. Crammed into this space is a small, but amazing exhibition of photographs taken by Chris Makos, Warhol's personal photographer in 1982.
Makos travelled to China with Warhol and a ragtag group of others at the behest ... Read More
A Very Loud Quiet
Following on the heels of first generation 20th century Chinese colorists, Chen Ruo Bing is seen as a pioneer of color in the Chinese field. The artist sees color as a subliminal form of communication, a form that is stronger than spoken language. As the artist ... Read More
Explicit, Humorous and Fresh
Andrew James Art is showing some oil paintings by the young artist Zhou Yilun under the title "Just Joking." The paintings range widely in their content from tigers to fighting soccer players to girls in bikinis splashing around. However, the paintings are unified stylistically with an ... Read More
Blurred Lines
It seems unfair to think that a talented painter might also produce an impressive body of photographic work, but upon seeing Shanghai artist Liang Weizhou's latest show, it seems some people have all the luck.
A local Shanghai artist, Liang Weizhou, currently a professor at East China ... Read More
Being and Nothingness
Step into Sichuan artist Qiu Anxiong's exhibition at the Bund 18 Creative Center and you will be struck by the minimalism of the show. Not just in the small number of works on display, but the room, the colors and the silence.
At first glance, it ... Read More
An Immersion in Portraits
On a sunny and cool spring afternoon, the walk through the former French Concession to this furtively located gallery was one for the books. The weather was good and the chatter of a relaxed weekend filled the air. Located in an intricately designed edifice, built in ... Read More
Art+Shanghai | VS Zhang Wei Solo Exhibition
Hidden in the back of a longtang in the former French Concession, but separated from the rest of the alley by a large wood paneled door, this gallery's exhibition spaces have been immaculately refurbished. A quaint courtyard out front distinguishes the gallery ... Read More
Top class comedic imports act on Shanghai's laughter deficit
For so many of us in Shanghai with a limited grasp of the local dialects, it can often seem like we live our lives as observers–frequently mystified by what is going on around us. Okay, you probably won’t ... Read More
Capturing Photographic Art
Curator Joyce Ho and guest curators Yangjun Peng and Jiaojiao Chen have assembled a selection of photography from 10 foreign artists. With one exception, each individual photographer has contributed work from a single series, containing a single artistic concept, from Charles Freger's vulnerable portraits of people ... Read More