Zhenzhong expands the credo that each picture there is always another picture into each picture there is always a specific medium. The exhibition Foreplay focuses on these mediating devices that constitute the imagery of Zhenzhongs exceptional work, whether it is video, photography or installation art.
Solo-Exhibition
ShanghART Gallery & H-Space is proud to present a solo-exhibition with works by Yang
Zhenzhong (b. 1968).
Using innovative techniques Yang Zhenzhong expands the credo that each
picture there is always another picture into each picture there is
always a specific medium. The exhibition Foreplay focuses on these mediating
devices that constitute the imagery of Yang Zhenzhongs exceptional work, whether it
is video, photography or installation art.
Yang Zhenzhong involves his audience in explorations intended to generate visual
effects and stimulate feelings and thoughts to bring about unforeseen experiences
and multiple points of view. Foreplay provides an ample chance to view a practice
that resists any specific style, medium or material.
The desire to challenge normative notions and fixed formats of social behavior
informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong's work. He is pre-occupied with a tendency
to invert the order of things and often touches upon taboos such as death and
out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative: His
videos often start from witty ideas, employing pictorial repetition and rhythmic
coordination of sound, language and image. Yang Zhenzhong became famous in 2000 with
his half-hour video (I Know) I Will Die that features short sequences in which a
series of people speak the phrase "I will die" to the camera. It is a disconcerting,
soberly presented film that confronts the viewer with existential questions. Yang
Zhenzhong recognizes that individual participation is the starting point for the
transformation of perception. Another landmark video includes Lets Puff which
premiered at the fourth Shanghai Biennale (2002) and the 50th Venice Biennale
(2003). The video starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and
exhaling in a busy street. Every time the woman breathes, the image of the street
moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception
are altered with the rhythm of the woman's breath. Consequently, the image is not
fixed, but remains in a state of change. Yang Zhenzhong's playful videos are more
than visual reflections; they are intelligent comments on the design of contemporary
society.
With a sincere attitude, but in a playful manner, the artist explores the
contemporary preoccupation with questions of identity and perception, and the
ability of images to turn apathy into anticipation, and ordinariness into
desirability. He uses part fiction and part reality that tangles both the euphoric
enthusiasm and deep anxiety of day-to-day experience. His work has lately been
described as an extraordinary distillation of an artistic practice that couldnt
be more preoccupied with the nature of what is real.
Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhenzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He
graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in
Hangzhou in 1993 and began working with video and photography in 1995. Yang
Zhenzhong's work has showed at major international exhibitions, biennales and
triennials. Recent exhibitions include China Contemporary Art, Architecture and
Visual Culture, Museum Boiman van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2006), Yang
Zhenzhong Solo-Exhibition, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2006), and China Power
Station Part I, Battersea Power Station ¨C The Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
(2006).
Opening Reception: Nov. 4th, 5.00-7.00 pm
Shanghart H-Space
Nr. 50 Moganshan Rd. - Shanghai
Opening Hours: 1-6pm (Tue-Sun)