ShanghART Beijing presents a group exhibition White Flash from 5 August to 31 August, 2018, featuring around 30 works of art. Ranging from paintings, installations, photographs and videos etc., more than 20 artists’ important works of different periods will be exhibited, including Zhang Enli’s painting Present, which was made 10 years ago, and his latest work Paper Clips, 2018. In addition, a sculpture by renowned British artist Michael Dean will be on view in Beijing for the first time.

The exhibition title White Flash comes from a technical norm of the same name used in the process of film editing, referring to the Fade to White transition that combines different scenes. Time is fleeting, and it has been 10 years since 2008, when ShanghART Beijing was established. At this moment, they seem to be taking a train just coming out of the time tunnel and now entering a wash of white, which is representative of a new beginning as well as an unknown spacetime. No matter what happens next, they will always keep our original intention in mind.

About the artists

Ouyang Chun

Works of Ouyang Chun (b. 1974) feature independent contemporaneity, various techniques and abundant gradations that refresh the audience’s eyes. The distinctive quality benefits from his manner of practice and the oppositional attitude to the academic education. Escaping from preciosity, Ouyang Chun’s paintings seek to draw stories childishly and unadorned which mirrors his own life experiences and creating style.

Sun Xun

The works of Sun Xun (b. 1980) are mainly drawing and/or short animation. Sun Xun also exhibits his individual cell drawings and other mixed media works, often times alongside his films. His single-channel animation Tears of Chiwen was made in 2017. Chiwen, the legendary animal used as ornaments on two sides of roof ridge on ancient eastern architectures, are known as the dragon’s son, who is good as spewing waves and making rain. Chiwen on the roof ridge are used as good omen to prevent fire and bring good fortune on the house. The tears of Chiwen is a metaphor. In recent east Asian history, each country absorbs western culture in different ways, and now demonstrates different appearances of westernization. Tears, are both tear and water, both sadness and fortune. Chiwen’s tears are introspection of the modernity of East Asian Culture under the context of globalization.

XU Zhen®

MadeIn Company was established in 2009 in Shanghai by artist XU Zhen. It is a contemporary art creation company focusing on the production of creativity, and devoted to the research of contemporary culture's infinite possibilities. In 2013, the launch of ‘XU Zhen’ was announced(XU Zhen®), a brand produced by MadeIn Company ("Xu Zhen - Produced by MadeIn Company").

“Curved Vase” initiated a new style of porcelain vase. The vase's shape, size, pattern and material strictly follow classical and traditional Chinese porcelain vases. The neck of the vase has been bent over at a 90 degrees angle.

Michael Dean

Michael Dean (b. 1977 Newcastle upon Tyne, now lives and works in London) starts his work with writing - which then abstracted into human-scale sculptures, using industrial and daily materials such as concrete, steel, padlocks, papers. Dean’s practice is not about presenting readable words, but rather about a disclosure of the personal, striking something in equality between the author and the viewer while placing the people in front of the work. Dean is having a solo exhibition at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle, UK) and will hold a solo show at the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico) in 2019.

Zhang Enli

For Zhang Enli (b. 1965), painting itself is a vital activity, no matter his brushes are featuring human activities or illustrating daily objects. As a painter who depicts the world in the perspective of daily life, Zhang devotes same attention and passion into every single bucket, wardrobe and individual. All the involved presentation is not only a re-presentation but an expression as well. Regarding the painting skills, a specific texture and volume of a single object or a group could be sensed through the transformation and conversion of lines and dimensions. Immersed in the inherent space of canvas, some of the objects in the paintings give a feeling that they are dissolved in the thin paint.

Geng Jianyi

The work of the artist Geng Jianyi (b. 1962) is characterized by an uncompromising resistance to any categorical form of representation. Since the mid 1980s, when he first came to prominence within the People’s Republic of China as a seminal member of the ‘avant-garde’ movement known as the ’85 New Wave, Geng has sought to foment this resistance through the use of a wide range of techniques―including various forms of painterly transcription, staining, frottage, photographic and filmic transfer, chemical transformation and textual juxtaposition—whose conspicuously disjunctive effects constantly undermine any attempt to arrive at definitive meaning. This series is implemented through continuous filtering. It is better to put the several books together for appreciation. Through various colors, the artist discusses the reason of influence. Reading is a luxurious entertaining activity for a few people. Different interpretations in reading are the continuity writing for a book.

Liu Yue

Liu Yue (b. 1981) takes photos of daily objects in darkness with his cell phone and posts on WeChat everyday. Each piece is named by time (accurate to a second) and has its own unique time and space. Each of the original black photos will have a different look after being exposed. However, including the artist himself, no one knows the final result before being exposed.

Liu places those photos on the platform where Internet images interact fast. What we see are these black repetitive pictures, seemingly without any information. However, the content can be transformed afterwards. They come from the real world where they are shot. But they are now beyond recognition, and thus become unique. To Liu, this transforming process is beautiful and attractive.

Tang Maohong

Tang Maohong (b. 1975) simultaneously references and undermines art history and popular culture. He has integrated a variety of visual elements and subject matters, producing works that inhabit the ever-blurred border between elegant art and popular illustration. His work is absurd, magical, humorous and confrontational, hinting that the juxtapositions of figurative objects might be more than just illusions. Tang Maohong's pictorial universe reflects not only a new subject - a psyche whose internal eclectic imagination is echoed in the environment of constantly flowing images - but also the inversion of out-grown traditions.

About the exhibition

Opening: 4 PM, 5 August, 2018
Duration: 5 August – 31 August, 2018 (11:00-18:00, Monday Closed)
Location: ShanghART Beijing, 261 Cao Chang Di, Airport Side Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Courtesy of the artists and ShanghART Beijing, for further information please visit www.shanghartgallery.com or contact: infobj@shanghartgallery.com | + 86 10 6432 3202.