Spring Awakening

Wu Yiming at ShanghArt H-Space

In my last post, I mentioned briefly the MadeIn Company piece that's up at ShanghArt's H-Space. The exhibition, "Foundational Work", is a great show and it ends this week. Some of my favorite artists are on view, including a new work by Wu Yiming (pictured above). I brought my visiting family along to see the show; seeing exhibitions with non-art world people is always an enlightening and rewarding experience. My father-in-law Eli especially has the best responses to art that he purports to not understand. We were gallery hopping in Chelsea a couple of years ago and I brought my family to a Doh Ho Suh show at Lehmann Maupin where his piece Fallen Star was being shown. Eli opted to sit in the corner while my guests and I oohed and aahed at his intricate doll house; after staring at the work for some time, he got up to take a closer look and realized just how amazing it was, asking, "How did he do that??". He came in a skeptic and left with a profound impression. With the Wu Yiming above, Eli marveled at how the artist could create such brightness with just ink. He thought it was created by the light shining on it. 
    Also showing at "Foundational Work" is Huang Kui, Zhang Enli, and Sun Xun, who contributed several works on paper. One of my favorites is this lovely gem: 

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After ShanghArt, I took them to see Vanguard Gallery's new show, "Exercises of Living", featuring companion paintings to Gao Mingyan's works currently on view in MoCA. It's a continuation of the idea of reimagining everyday objects that the artist encounters on a daily basis, in this case, objects in his studio. The artist created a bizarro world where camels are bikes, rhinos are washing machines and a crane is a fan (one of my favorites):  

Another favorite was a tea kettle turtle, which would make an adorable companion piece to a Huang Kui painting I have of a tea kettle.

    I finally visited the new K11 mall to see the show curated by Leo Xu. It's a retrospective of sorts, documenting works by artists in Shanghai. He included many of the artists that he's worked with at his gallery, like Gabriel Lester and Michael Lin, but there were also pieces by Shanghai mainstays like MadeIn, Liu Jianhua, Zhou Tiehai (who recently left his post as Director of Minsheng Art Museum. Sad news!), Liang Yue, and Yang Zhenzhong. I was happy to see a piece by Yang, especially a funny one like Fatality, which was first shown in 2009 at a massive group show in Songjiang. You don't get the full effect of the piece here, since it was originally an installation that shot out ping pong balls at random intervals. Written on the balls were various medical conditions and diseases and I never fully investigated the weird and wonderful conditions that the artist included. Here I was able to:

I'm not sure what future shows at K11 will be like. The space is enormous and there didn't seem to be enough artworks in this current show to fill it up. It's great that the mall has a dedicated exhibition space but I'm hoping to be wowed by future shows. They do seem to be making an effort with their educational programming. They have this ongoing "In the Studio" event, where different artists from the current show talk about their work. The lectures are in Chinese and are a great way for the local community to meet artists. I haven't had the chance to attend one yet but so far, they've had Liu Jianhua and our friend Qiu Anxiong.
    Tomorrow I head back to M50 to meet with Rebecca and see her new show at OV Gallery. She had some problems with the Cultural Bureau (again!!) with her last show and she had take down pieces by Qian Rong. I don't think she's had any issues so far with this new show; fingers crossed that she catches a break this time around!