From 27 December 2019 to 16 February 2020, ShanghART is pleased to present a Winter Exhibition at the gallery's Beijing location, including works by eleven artists CHEN Wei, JIANG Pengyi, LU Lei, LI Shan, LIU Xiaohui, LIU Yue, OUYANG Chun, YAN Bing, YANG Fudong, Robert ZHAO Renhui, and ZHAO Yang. This show not only brings together the artists' recent experimentations with mediums such as painting, photograph and installation, but also features a selection of new works that will be on view for the first time.
About the Artists
Li Shan (b.1964, Lanxi, Heilongjiang) is a Chinese contemporary artist and a pioneer of BioArt. Li studied at Heilongjiang in 1963 and attended the Shanghai Theater Academy in 1964. He taught at college of Shanghai Theater Academy after graduation. Retired at 2002. Now living in Shanghai and New York.In the 1960s, Li Shan started to engage in contemporary art practices. The Propagation series and the Rouge series are important works from that period, both of which were selected for the "China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition," the 45th Venice Biennale, and the 22nd Sao Paulo Biennale.
Li Shan was also one of the main participants in New Wave Chinese art movement in 1980s.In 1993, Li Shan began investigating issue surrounding the life science through his art practice. With molecular biology as the scientific foundation, Li completed the first BioArt project Reading at the genetic level in 1998.Li published the BioArt article The story of Fish and Butterfly in 2002 The Pumpkin Project was completed, and it was exhibited at ShanghART Gallery in 2007.
Jiang Pengyi (b.1977, Yuanjiang, Hunan) currently lives and works in Beijing. He creates a kind of surreal spectacle and delicate narration of the scene, mostly, by photo and video, to reveal the barriers and confusions of the individuals. He was awarded the Aletti ArtVerona Prize for Photography in 2011, the Jury Grand Prize from the Société Générale Chinese Art Awards in 2010 and the Tierney Fellowship Award from the First Annual Three Shadows Photography Award in 2009. Jiang was invited to participate in the Helsinki Photography Biennial 2012 and was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2012. Jiang's work has been collected by a variety of private and public institutions worldwide, including Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection in Switzerland, the French Regional Contemporary Art Fund of the Loire Region (Frac des Pays de la Loire) in France, the Tierney Family Foundation and ArtNow Contemporary Art Collections in USA, the UniCredit Art Collections in Italy and Germany, the Bank Aletti Foundation (Fondazione Banca Aletti) in Italy, and CAFA Art Museum.
Singaporean visual artist Robert Zhao Renhui (b.1983) works chiefly with photography but often adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, presenting images together with documents and objects in the form of textual and media analysis, video and photography projects. His artistic practice investigates man's relationship with nature, utilizing convincing narratives to invoke doubts in its audience towards the concept of truth and its portrayal. His works has been exhibited globally, having held solo exhibitions in Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, and Italy, as well as participating in various biennales and photo festivals.
Chen Wei (b.1980, Zhejiang), lives and works in Beijing. Initially a sound and performance artist, Chen Wei's interest developed into photo, video and installation art. The artist has exhibited extensively at institutions and biennales in China and all over the world. "New City" is Chen Wei's ongoing project since 2013; continuing this project, "Goodbye" depicts and represents some moments about leaving and separation in "new city" by the means of photography and installations. As two chapters of this project, these two exhibitions interpret reality and imagination about transiting city based on personal experiences of the creator. Chen Wei's works start from building life-sized stage sets; he juxtaposes double spaces to extend the on-site feeling: one unit is dim, while the other is luminous. With the absence of inhabitants, the theatrical stage infuses the "white cube" space with an unstable temporality, then constructs a scenery from the blurry boundaries between the illusory and actuality.
Ouyang Chun (b.1974) grew up in Xi'an. Having drifted away from the academic art education system, his experience of self-education determined his independent and versatile creative powers. Since becoming a professional artist in Beijing at 28, he has created works of painting, installation and sculpture, and draws inspirations from the contradiction and uneasiness brought on by the social upheavals of contemporary China.
The untamed and extinct hairy mammoth symbolises the lost innocence and fate of a generation.
Lu Lei (b.1972) works and lives in Beijing, graduated from Sculpture Department of China Fine Arts College in 1998. This work is inspired by the Man Ray's photography "Ingre's Violin" created in 1924，paying tribute the classical in a way of Man Ray. The background board is cut into form according to golden section circle. There is a compressor to make the graphic of digestive system frosted. It works in a periodical way. The artist hopes to render a mechanical aesthetic which represents early modernism spirit.
Yang Fudong (b.1971, Beijing) graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department in Hangzhou. He is among the most successful and influential Chinese artists today. He was one of finalists shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004 and received this honor as the third Chinese artist after Cai Guoqiang and Huang Yongping. Now he works and lives in Shanghai. Every piece of art by YANG Fudong is a drama of living experience as well the challenge one has to endure. Ms. Huang at M Last Night continues to emit the aroma of artist's photography work. The entire series is composed of ten photos whose incomplete narration and close-up view provide a unique interpretation. Young people in his art render the classical beauty and eternal sophisticated technique implanted by the artist, who borrows poetic and diverse literature that conceals the anxiety and hesitation share by modern people.
Zhao Yang (b.1970, Jilin) graduated from the China Academy of Art in 1995 and currently lives and works in Beijing. In the graphic world of Zhao Yang, it is common to find virtual figures and absurd images in the same painting, while each of them respectively represents different ideas, which strengthen the visual appealing by highlighting contradictions. Implicit and dramatic elements always get united in the flat space-time created by him. His paintings wander among reality, Eastern and Western fairy tales, as well as fables, transform them into metaphors and symbols, and finally present the hybrid images to the audience. Figures in Zhao Yang's paintings are always strange, even hilarious. They stand like monuments on the paintings, transmitting nihilism and romanticism. The diversity and identity of painting are controlled within a region of conflict and anxiety by the artist.
Liu Yue (b.1981), currently resides in Shanghai. Liu Yue's works intend to dispel all the specific concepts and meanings attached to the objective world. He is interested in the innermost part of everything and studies its microscopic parts. He peels off the external attachments and dissolves everything to explore the most authentic parts, like an infant not yet influenced by the collective ideology. For him, art is actually an experiment to observe and analyse human and social cognition.

Opening : 4 PM, 27 December, 2019

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