Exhibitions
In Clouds
Cai Zhisou is one of China's most representative sculptors whose major works include the Old Country, Rose, Clouds and many others. Born in 1972 in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, Cai graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. He taught at the central academy until 2008 and is currently working and living in Beijing as a professional artist. As an internationally renowned sculptor, Cai has held many solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world in recent years. Many of his works have been collected by well-known museums, galleries and art institutions, among them the Rockefeller Foundation for the Arts, Tyler Foundation, the Newark Museum of Art, the Museum of Regensburg, Greece Art Gallery, National Museum of Indonesia, National Museum of Singapore, Deutsche Bank, National Museum of China, the China Art Gallery, He Xiangning Art Museum, Zhejiang Art Museum, and Today Art Museum.
Date: from December 19 to February 27, 11 am to 7 pm (closed Mondays)
Venue: Leo Gallery Shanghai
Address: 376 Wukang Road 武康路376号
Admission: Free
Call 5465-9278 for details
Divine Ruse
Jin Shan is having a solo exhibition entitled Divine Ruse at BANK Gallery. Divine Ruse features a series of new sculptural works constructed out of the artist's own secret resin concoction. Conflating references as diverse as ancient Greek and Roman history, Renaissance art, Christianity, Taoist and Cultural Revolution iconography, the artist interrogates mankind's incessant ideological pursuit of transcending his own carnal condition. By repurposing the gallery as a fictional war zone - a landscape strewn with fragmented figures and objects that are equally sensuous and repulsive, Jin demonstrates the aftermath of man's attempted ascensions. In this hallowed land mankind's visceral and ephemeral energies are exteriorized as petrified spiritual matter. A leading voice in an emerging generation of socially engaged contemporary artists in China, Shanghai-based Jin Shan is an agent provocateur. Preferring wit and satire to aggression and conflict, his work uses allegory and play to draw audiences into a confrontation with the social, cultural and political problems of the day. While specifically describing aspects of contemporary China, his investigation of human motivation extends beyond national boundaries to the seemingly insatiable desire for power programmed into humanity's DNA. Jin Shan's work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Singapore Biennale, the Spencer Museum, the Groninger Museum, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, among others. His work is in the collections of M+ Museum, Hong Kong, the Kadist Foundation, Paris, the DSL Collection, Paris, and the Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas, among others.
Date: Until January 6, 10:30 am to 6:30 pm (closed Mondays)
Venue: BANK Gallery
Address: 1/F, 59 Xianggang Road 香港路59号1楼
Admission: Free
Call 6301-3622 for details
Wings of Mexico
Mexican sculptor and painter Jorge Marin is having an exhibition entitled Wings of Mexico at Long Museum West Bund. Marin was born into a family of 10 brothers and sisters whose father is a well-known architect in Mexico. Marin began to sculpt ceramic in the early 1980s. With over 25 years of artistic work, Marin has successfully entered into Mexico's artistic scene and has become a representative of figurative international sculpture using bronze as a particular seal. His work often depicts horses, centaurs, children, madonnas, acrobats, along with elements such as spheres, masks, arrows, boats and scales. These concepts are consistent with recurring themes such as reflection and balance. Marin has so far more than 250 exhibitions around the world. Some of his sculptures are in cities like Berlin, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, Long Beach, Sarasota, Los Angeles and Shanghai.
Date: Until February 22, 10 am to 6 pm
Venue: Long Museum West Bund
Address: 3398 Longteng Avenue 龙腾大道3398号
Admission: Free
Call 6422-7636 for details
Frameless Heads
Frameless Heads, a new exhibition of work by South Korean artist Kang Hyung-koo at MoCA Shanghai, fittingly takes its name from a lyric in the Don McLean song "Vincent."On the third floor of the venue, the song accompanies a video about Kang, who sold one of his portraits of Vincent van Gogh for $350,000 in 2004. Meanwhile, the first and second floors are filled with dozens of larger-than-life human portraits, each hung on a white wall, most featuring large heads with eyes that gaze outward. Born in 1955, Kang is famous for his hyper-realistic portraits of famed figures, including political leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and cultural icons such as Samuel Beckett, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. He also paints a large number of self-portraits.
Date: Until January 16, 10 am to 6 pm
Venue: MoCA Shanghai
Address: 231 Nanjing Road West 南京西路231号
Admission: 50 yuan
Call 6327-9900 for details
Glass Master Toots Zynsky Solo Exhibition
Born in 1951, Mary Ann Toots Zynsky has been one of the most popular glass art masters around the world. Through her distinctive heat-formed filet de verre technique, she manages to build glass artworks that cross the borders between painting, sculpture and decorative arts. Her works have been collected by 70 museums worldwide. Liuli China Museum will host the first solo exhibition of the artist in Shanghai and will showcase about 20 extraordinary glass pieces, which take inspiration from everything in life including landscape, wild life, as well as performing arts.
Date: January 12 to June 1, 10 am to 5 pm (closed Mondays)
Venue: Liuli China Museum
琉璃艺术博物馆
Address: 25 Taikang Road
泰康路25号
Admission: Free to children and students, and 20 yuan for adults
Call 6467-2268 for details
Carré d'artistes First Gallery in China
Carré d'artistes, established in France 15 years ago, has more than 30 galleries around the world promoting emerging artists of different backgrounds. Recently its first branch in China has opened at Hubindao of Xintiandi area. The gallery has signed with more than 600 artists and about half of them are from France. The feature of Carré d'artistes is that most of artworks in the gallery are created in four fixed sizes and priced between several hundred to several thousand yuan. Artworks on view range from ink and wash drawing, oil painting, photograph as well as mixed media painting.
Address: E10, 1/F, 150 Hubin Road 湖滨路150号1楼E10
Call 6333-9272 for details
Impermanent Sceneries
In Impermanent Sceneries, Art+ Shanghai Gallery's first exhibition of 2016, three young Chinese artists present works that stake a perspective, questioning our understanding of the city and exposing its inherently fluid nature. Hu Weiqi draws attention to the oxymoronic situation of the saturated vacuum - places chock full of images and eye-catching headlines that are devoid of actual stories - what French theorist Debord defines as a "society of spectacle." Zhang Wenchao creates a fictionalized version of the city which transforms the idea of the city into the besieged fortresses of adventure games. Sun Yu conceptually explores the accompanying shifts in the mentality of China's consumerist society, which is always in need of ever-more spectacular sceneries.
Date: January 8 to February 28, 10 am to 7 pm
Venue: Art+ Shanghai Gallery
Address: 191 Nansuzhou Road
南苏州路191号
Admission: Free
Call 6333-7223 for details