Shanghai on high
In Gravitation-Shanghai Night Sky, local artist and photographer Shi Yong arranges photos of the tops of skyscrapers on 56 small light boxes. The photo subjects are wrapped in diffuse mist that reaches toward the night sky and makes for an illusionary and fantastic vision.
The work also brings to mind a new nickname for Shanghai that is very popular among locals at present - modu (mysterious city). The work also questions the significance of such mega buildings for the city and its people.
From 1992 to 2011, Shanghai artist Shen Fan collected statistics from the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and used them for the basis of his artwork. In this exhibition, two installation pieces by Shen embody his exploration process.
One, titled Landscape-9210-Point, is made of 19 mirror-finished pieces of stainless steel, each corresponding to one of the 19 years that Shen charted the market's movements.
Viewers can see their own distorted reflections in the mirror-finished material. LED bulbs with sensor controllers are embedded inside the pieces, and turn on when viewers approach.
The other piece, named Landscape-9210-Line, has over 200 cement bases with embedded steel bars that form the shape of a curve, which is derived from the data the artist collected.
In the opinion of Biljana Ciric, an independent curator based in Shanghai, the data that Shen collected is not only a timeline of the city and the country's economic development, but also a measure of wider change.
"The grand changes happening to China consist of all these small changes. The landscape of curves reflects the statistical standards for all walks of life. Art certainly is also included," she said.