Review by Niki Grangruth
If you are at all familiar with the global art market, you probably have noticed that in the past five years or so contemporary Chinese art has made an explosive entrance onto the scene. Hyde Park Art Center jumped on board with the show Shanghype! currently on view in
HPAC's Black Box Gallery. Now, I must warn you that this is not a show that you can run through quickly. You're going to need a couple of free hours to see the entire exhibit, which includes 16 video art pieces and short films ranging in length from three to eighteen minutes each. I was amazed and impressed by the diversity of perspectives, aesthetics and approaches in these video works.
In the last 20 years, Shanghai experienced a drastic increase in urbanization and industrialization due to economic and political reform. It then comes as no surprise that the focus of many of these works centers around the juxtapositions of old and new, tradition and innovation, rural and urban, and nostalgia and progress. The approaches these artists take are also diverse, from Mathieu Borysevicz's piece Tai'an Lu (2008) which functions as sort of a love story in linear narrative form to Tang Maohong's animated work, which shows various mechanical objects and uniform figures.
The aesthetic approaches of the artists also range from banal to surreal. Zhang Ding's Great Era (2001) exemplifies the latter, opening with a scene of a man in a white suit in front of a red theater curtain. An object is hidden under a red blanket, and the man pulls it off to reveal a bicycle equipped with a horse head with reins and a saddle for a seat. The video follows the man on a series of short, dreamlike adventures on his horse-bike. The video alternates between a dream state and reality, revealing symbolic metaphors for the thousands that migrated to Shanghai from rural areas to find work. The surreal beauty of the video is heightened by the dream logic narrative and circus-like audio.
On the more banal end of the spectrum is Yang Zhenzhong's Spring Story (2003) which features 1,500 workers from Siemens, a mobile phone factory, each reciting a word from a speech given by Deng Ziaoping, a leader who was key in inducing the economic reform and development in China. The resulting video is the entire speech compiled from flashes of 1,500 people and voices. The uniformity of the people, all in white lab coats, and the factory environment reflect the unity and formality required for the swift reform that made Shaghai into the cosmopolitan metropolis it is today.
Yang Zhenzhong "Spring Story" 2008
Shanghype! offers a multidimensional interpretation of the rapid urbanization and industrialization of Shanghai through juxtapositions, abstraction and experimentation. However, this show may not be for the "armchair culturist." You'll have to go to the gallery. You'll have to spend more than ten minutes there. But it'll be worth it.
Other artists not mentioned: Qiu Anxiong, Song Tao, Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, David Cotterrel, Xu Zhen, Pierre Giner, Olivo Barbieri, D-fuse, Speedism and Zhou Xiaohu
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Tags: MathieuBorysevicz, NikiGrangruth, Shanghype!, YangZhenzhong, ZhangDing
