SHANGHAI—ArtInfo’s Shanghai correspondent takes us on a tour of some of the city’s most interesting gallery and museum shows, including an exhibition that explores the notion of “Chineseness” in contemporary art and one that considers how art might help give “soul” to one of the city’s high-tech commercial districts.

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MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS

Museum of Contemporary Art-Shanghai
“MoCA Envisage: Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity”
Through Nov. 15

To celebrate the museum’s first anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art has launched its own biennale, the so-called MoCA Envisage, with the help of big names in the Chinese contemporary art world.

While the museum is known mainly for its flashy, Pop-heavy exhibitions, “Entry Gate: Chinese Aesthetics of Heterogeneity” shows MoCA in a decidedly more contemplative mood.

The exhibition was largely inspired by a conversation between the museum’s art director, Victoria Lu, and Uli Sigg, the noted collector of Chinese art and author of Mahjong: Works from the Sigg Collection.

After reading Sigg’s book, Lu contacted him to discuss the “Westerness” of his Chinese contemporary arts collection and how works with a strong Chinese essence (sometimes dubbed “Neo-Literati” works, which incorporate traditional Chinese philosophy and aesthetics into what is still decidedly contemporary art) were underrepresented in it.

The resulting exhibition, “Entry Gate,” hopes to explore this idea of “Chineseness” in contemporary art and create an open dialogue about it within the Chinese art world.

Whether or not the exhibition successfully brings together works that share in the tradition of Chinese art is debatable, and it will take many more “Envisages” to fully expand on this exploration-worthy idea.

But there are many individual works in the show that stand out that—and clearly take their inspiration from traditional Chinese art and bring it into a modern context.

Shanghai artist Qiu Anxiong’s experimental videos, In the Sky and Flight to South, are a beautiful display of animated ink paintings. Brushstrokes come alive and the ink seeps around the screen with a life of its own.

Hong Kong-born Sara Tse works with a traditional medium in a very non-traditional way. Fabric and other everyday objects are dipped into liquid porcelain and then fired. The result of Tse’s innovative use of this revered medium is an installation that plays on traditional definitions of stature (and statuary). Instead of delicate vases, we have dumplings that have become fine china sculptures and an ordinary dress that has become a work of extraordinary beauty.

GALLERY EXHIBITIONS

Ofoto Gallery
“Rumor and Legend: Gu Zheng Solo Photography Exhibition”
Closed Nov. 14

A new player to the Shanghai art scene, Ofoto Gallery sits at the end of an alley of mediocre galleries at 50 Moganshan Rd. The gallery counts artist Luo Yongjing as a neighbor (his studio can be reached through a door at the back of the gallery) and, like Yongjing, the gallery specializes in contemporary photography.

For its second exhibition, Ofoto is focusing on a well respected name in the Chinese contemporary art world: Gu Zheng, former vice-director of the Research Center for Visual Culture at Fudan University, who has been known more for his extensive curatorial work and published books on photography, rather than for his own art.

But this exhibition finds him behind the lens in his first solo exhibition since returning from a 10-year stint in Japan. The small selection of grainy, black-and-white white photographs mainly focuses on anonymous images of ordinary life in Shanghai, showing a city in transition.

Most works have a sad and nostalgic feeling to them. The subjects rarely look at the camera; in fact, most have their backs turned to the viewer and seem to be contemplating this city that is moving and changing before their eyes.