Toomey Tourell Fine Art is pleased to announce a group exhibition of new work by four Shanghainese artists: You Si, Ma Liang, Ying Yefu and Perk (the collaborative team of Si Wei and Jin Ningning).
Shanghai is a city of clichés. Representations of Shanghai in the media, both Chinese and Western, perpetuate an image of unbounded economic and ideological development in the wake of the city’s reinvention as Communist China’s number-one capitalist port of call in the country’s post-Mao boom years. These images are fantastic and spectacular: They highlight the city’s breakneck pursuit of material wealth and upward mobility, its embrace of values based purely on economics, its dauntless destruction of traditional neighborhoods and lifestyles, its determination to distinguish itself as modern cosmopolis par excellence, and its creation of a young and superficial middle class devoid of cultural, political, socio-political and environmental awareness and outlets.
The four artists represented in this exhibition are primarily concerned with looking inward. Although certainly shaped and influenced by their living and working in Shanghai, they are more concerned with intimate personal investigations than attempting to exploit an overt connection to a collective and recognizable “Chinese” identity, placing them and their work outside of the “Chinese” art space defined by the parameters of the international art community. Instead, they retain their individual selves and their conflicted Chinese selves without exploiting the latter to construct an identity based on what the market deems desirable and saleable. It does not actively pursue a comparison of East-West, a revisioning of tradition, nor an ironic view of recent history. It stays away from exotification and representations of otherness in order to fully explore a personalized, unique space.
Shanghailand: Countercurrents in the Mainstream
curated by monika jm lin
Dates of Exhibition: December 19 through January 31, 2009.
Artist Reception: Thursday, January 8th from 5:30-7:30 PM.
Perk - Perkboy 3, 2005, digital inkjet on rice paper, 27 x 35 inches, digital ink jet print on canson paper, 35 x 45 inches
Ma Liang - Book of Taboo 2, 2006, digital print
Ma Liang - Book of Taboo 4, 2006, digital print
Ma Liang - Book of Taboo 9, 2006, digital print
Ma Liang - Book of Taboo 14, 2006, digital print
Ma Liang - Shanghai Boys 10, 2005, digital print
