VHILS Solo Show + “Overlook” group exhibition (Jonone, JR, Maleonn, Wang Keping, Xu Wenkai, Yang Yongliang)
Gallery Magda Danysz, 188 Linqing Road (x Pingliang Road), Shanghai, http://www.magda-gallery.com
Gallery MD is a new gallery that opened in a new creative park a few blocks from the Yangpu bridge in Shanghai Puxi. The location is a bit off from other gallery clusters, but it’s nice to explore a new area of the city, and the walk through the lively lane with street vendors has its charms.
The creative park seems to be another location managed by Shangtex (i.e. same as M50). Gallery MD is the first ‘arty’ tenant to have moved in. The gallery has a beautiful big space that I guess has probably custom-built for them. The ceilings are high and there is a lot of glass and transparent surfaces. It signals that this gallery is going to be a ‘picture hanging gallery’, making use of the natural lighting from outside, and probably not ‘black box’ to see video and media art.
Magda Danysz has worked for the Bund18 Gallery before moving out to open this new space on her own. This fact sets the expectations as to what expect. Not that much for me, as I was never really going to Bund18. So what is on show?
The inaugural exhibition at was dedicated to VHILS, a Portuguese street artist. His trademark is large scale ‘wall carvings’ created by removing the outer layer of the façade on old houses. In appearance of the result looks like a large scale silk screen print. The gallery invited VHILS to Shanghai to create ‘site specific’ work. He walked around the city, took photos of typical (read: old) Shanghai residents, and after some Photoshop work, went on to render this portraits on the city’s walls, and on discarded furniture parts (i.e. in wood). The text that accompanied the exhibition talked about ‘looking beyond the surface’ (referring to the technology of ‘carving’ into the wall/wood). However, I could not find anything that would really go beyond the surface in a non-literal sense. Faces as the surface of personalities hidden behind them, walls as surfaces of the city. Scratching the wall does not take one under the surface of a city. In this sense, the artwork did stay on the surface, not venturing beyond. It was spectacular in the technology used, size and precision. Not in the conceptual meaning.
The follow up show is titled “Overlook”, and it is a group show loosely dedicated to the topic of city and urban space. The first thing which strikes the visitor when entering the show are the ‘leftovers’ from the VHILS show – that pieces that were too large and immobile to be carried out of the gallery. That in itself is ok, as they can relate to other works by street artists in the current show, but I start to dread whether or not these will become the permanent inventory of the gallery, greeting me every time I enter. The works in the show are a mixture and a clear story line remains hidden. Street art seems to be the topic, but in that case Wang Keping does not much fit in. Alain Delorme’s photos of Shanghainese tricycle riders carrying huge piles of different materials would look good in a National Geographic magazine, but in relation to the other works, and in relation to the gallery, I feel that they are too close and direct, just like a simple copy what I have seen while walking down the street to the gallery, without any conscious reflection. Xu Wenkai (not listed on the invitation) has one of his digital TV noise prints on glass (mounted on an LCD wall holder). Also in it self a meaningful work, but here strangely disconnected from the ‘street’. Yang Yongliang creates what appear to be traditional ‘Chinese style’ landscapes, which at closer look are constructed of urban tower blocks and other elements only. Zhang Dali is creating text-based paintings, which at a bigger distance reveal portraits, created by the subtle color changes in the script. Then there is Icon Tada, a digital-only painter from Japan, who has a few small size prints in the exhibition. A number of French/American graffiti/street artists represented by the gallery have been added to the show as well: Moermann, Jonone, JR… JR’s work is highly resembles that of WHILS in its topic (taking photos of Shanghai residents and paste the picture on a Shanghai wall), just that the medium is different (photo copy instead of wall carving).
The show allows guessing the tastes and interests of the gallery owner. Here we are talking about street art, urban landscapes, graffiti and text as a visual expression… However in the show, everything seems to be put together in a loose chain of associations, without too much second thought about the resulting whole. I believe the overall result of the show could be largely improved by either splitting it into sub-themes, or by creating more of a storyline by leaving out some and emphasizing other artistic statements. There is the calligraphic aspect of graffiti (shapes and color) and the documentary aspect (being here and now). Similarly urban photography can document from a distance, or interpret and relate.
Given the similarity of the two shows on display so far, I will be looking forward to the follow up shows and how they relate to what has been shown so far.