Back in 2005 when I started this blog I had an idea that I'd try to make it a goal to get into the city (meaning New York) every once in a while to do a post about some interesting exhibition or gallery show. New York City is a great place to be an art teacher- its never hard to find a field trip opportunity, and there is always something new to see.

Well, it didn't happen. It's amazing how hard it is to find the time to get into Manhattan sometimes, even when you're living in Queens.

One of the nice things about art in China is that most museums and galleries don't mind if you take pictures. In fact, some galleries seem to enjoy when I take out my camera. So I'm going to try and post about the Shanghai art scene here from time to time, and perhaps broaden the scope of what you'll find here at the Revolution.

Last weekend, Kim and I went to the HWAS gallery on Hongmei Lu in Gubei (a small suburb of Shanghai where we do a lot of our grocery shopping). Our friend Ellen was looking for a space for the High School Art show, and we got to talking about the contemporary art in Shanghai. Ellen commented that much of Chinese contemporary art has no ground- that everything floats. Its interesting, I quite like a lot of what I've seen in the museums, expos, and galleries that we've been to, but she's absolutely right- and now that I see it, its hard to un-see. Take a look at some of the images from the gallery and you'll notice as well, specifically, the work of Luo Dan, Wu Wei, and He Jan.

Of course, not every piece is bereft of background, and in some of the artwork, I quite like the space that it creates. However, as Ellen explained- its harder to get the students to pay attention to the the backgrounds in their own paintings when this is what they see dominating the art scene in Shanghai.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

You can see the flickr set here for more information about the paintings (including the artists, titles, dates, and mediums).