Last summer at the Gallery Magda Danysz, artist Liu Bolin impressed Shanghai audiences with his innovative photography series Hiding in the City featuring the artist being painted into the same colors of the various backdrops he selected from around the city.

One year later and the Beijing-based artist is still searching for new sites for this same photography series; but meanwhile he has embarked on a new project. 

Entitled The Crawling Man, Liu's solo exhibition at Gallery Magda Danysz features installations from his Charger Series and photographs from Hiding in the City. The show will run until June 29.

Decay and chaos

On a plain white wall the artist has installed a set of nine kneeling human figures, each of which is entirely made up of cellphone chargers. The wires from these chargers, curled and tangled, hang down from the bodies, emanating a sense of "decay and chaos," in Liu's own words.

By the entrance to the gallery, Angels is a set of all-white heavenly hosts suspended from the ceiling, seemingly in flight, and which are also created from phone chargers.

According to the artist, Charger Series, which he began in 2010, was inspired by a drawer in his house in which he keeps all his discarded and obsolete electronic devices, including cellphones and chargers.

"I'm sure every family has such a place to store out-of-date electronic devices; people are reluctant to throw them away, although they are sure that they will probably never use them again," said Liu, who describes the apparent paradoxical attitude that people holds towards such defunct possessions as "the trace of desire."

"Just like many people pursue the iPhone series, these electronics become the trace of their desire. What I present in my installation is a record, or a satire, of this reality," Liu told the Global Times.

According to Liu, Crawling Man series reveals the "heaviness of life," while Angels is a statement about the "expectations of the future."

All about lives

Crawling Man works also feature a horn-like point on the forehead of every figure which, according to Liu, can be interpreted as a "mutation of human genes."

"You can't deny that human genes may change in our highly developed era, and when humans have put so much pressure on themselves from society," said Liu. "Especially in China, where people are not only confronted with problems posed by technological developments, but are also challenged by visible environmental pollution and invisible food hazards."

These issues are also touched upon in the Hiding in the City series, in which the artist expresses his fears that the unchecked development of economics, culture and politics has "devoured human beings' original identity."

Photographs from Hiding in the City on view at the exhibition include Mobile Phone, in which the artist becomes "invisible" against a wall displaying hundreds of mobile phones.

Liu is now working on a series of paintings of welders' masks. These works resemble the faces of Peking Opera characters, but are composed of images of junk food packaging and hazardous plastic materials.

Date: Until June 29, 11 am to 6 pm (closed on Mondays)

Venue: Gallery Magda Danysz Shanghai 上海MD画廊

Address: 188 Linqing Road

临青路188号

Admission: Free

Call 186-1615-1670 for details