With galleries largely in hibernation over the winter, exhibiting a group show of older works by familiar artists is considered a pragmatic but ‘soft’ option. Instead of making excuses, however, ShanghART is thumbing its nose at the criticism with works in gentle materials such as cloth, fake fur and cotton thread.
The show, for which there is no introductory text, has the willfully apathetic title of “Whateverland”. Yet the pieces by participating artists Xiang Liqing, married couple Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing, and MadeIn Company, are engaging and mutually reinforcing.
“Self-dyed” (2007), Xiang Liqing’s large cone shapes wrapped in rainbow bands of hand-dyed cotton thread, have the talismanic power of a David Lynch or Richard Kelly prop. Also wrapped in colourful threads, the river stones of a related installation, “Thread” (2010), are deprived of their murderous solidity. Xiang’s magic, one infers, is benevolent.
Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing also use textiles to confuse our sense of substance, rendering rocks, skyscrapers and white and blue ceramics in cloth for a work entited “Chinese New Potted Landscapes” (2006), which riffs on the instantaneity of modern Chinese cities. They also take on textiles’ traditional domestic connotation with a huge, pink, pregnant belly and a troubling but comic 12-limbed pram monster, entitled “Growing in the Baby Carriage 01”.
As if the title of the show weren’t enough to alert you to the curatorial ambivalence about this show, MadeIn Company’s “Inner World” (2011) installation reminds you to ask, what’s the point? For three RMB you can play a fur covered “Skilltester” game, attempting to win plush toy prizes by making a claw descend in just the right place. It’s totally futile, of course, much like showing exciting new works at the quietest time of year.
