Headed to the M50 district yesterday – the Art District in Shanghai, near shanghai Railway station. It was onnce an old textile mill but now the complex houses galleries, studios and art spaces. Its a strange mix, some good a lot pretty average. In particular I wanted to see Shanghart
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/
Just my luck closed for installation – but there is the opening next saturday. Feeling a touch dissapointed, we jumped on a cab and headed to Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art.
By this time it was pouring rain. We got soaked trying to find it on People’s Square. mmm.. closed again – there was a PIXAR exhbition on, which had just closed a few days before. Surely the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art would have a permanent collection? Anyway, no matter how much I tried to explain this to security – my Chinese is zero, and their english zero – I couldn’t work it out. They tried to guide us up many flights of stairs with the pram to the restaurant. We left, dissapointed and frustrated – I was somehow thinking I was about to see an amazing collection of contemporary chinese art. What happened? Can it really show just a pixar exhibition? I will ask around a bit more, it just didn’t seem right.
We then headed to the Shanghai Museum of Art, home of the Shanghai Biennial. This had closed in January. The buidling was a British-built race course, and the museum building was the jockey club. Some of the details on the ceiling of the building are gorgeous.
http://www.sh-artmuseum.org.cn/
Pablo fell asleep in the pram and we saw a few good shows. On the third floor was a lot of propoganda etchings from western magazines like Harpers bazaar documenting the colonial life in Shanghai. There were no english captions, but the images were an intriguing insight into the times. On the second floor there was an exhibition be austrian artist, Xenia Hausner. A lot of the works use photos as a starting point, then oils are layered over the photo. The technique was intriguing and the colour palettes beautiful. The works profiles strange, loving, and violent relationships. On the first floor there was an exhibition by Xue Song. His works are seducingly textural,and for me, with my love of collage, I found them beautiful. Built up by layers of collage – torn pieces of paper, some with their edges burnt, others ripped. In the early 1990s Song’s studio burned down destroying all his works. He took the ashes of his old works and used them to create new works. Xue Song carefully chooses the material of his collages from newspapers, magazines and books. He mixes images and text, western and Chinese, selecting the fragments depending on the subject of his work. He uses projectors to sketch an outline of a figure, (usually a political figure, an image made famous through the press, a culturally charged icon, a commercial product). He will then collage the inside of the line differently to the outside of the line.
We made our way to the old city and found somewhere on the street to have a few beers and ponder the day, while Pablo slept. We made our way back home on subway – right a peak hour. The sea of people moving was incredible. We managed OK – yesterday, Matt got caught with the train door trying to close on him and the pram with Pablo in it. I panicked when I saw what was happening. I shoved everyone back into the train so hard, to quickly make room to let him on. Its amazing what happens on the public transport here – shoving and pushing to make some room is just part of the process – I have been here over a month now, and I am shoving and pushing like the best of them.
