Shanghype (Turin)

Co-exhibitors:

Zhang Ding, Liang Yue, Song Tao, Melanie Jackson, Alexander Brandt, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong.

 

Shanghype! portrait of the city from dawn to dusk

The spectacular building of Museo del Cinema hosted a selection of art videos devoted to Shanghai including new works produced especially for the event.

“The years fly by in Shanghai and each month changes the one that follows. In just a few years, we went from technological pre-history to the digital era. LED screen and LCDs are everywhere – in taxis and skyscraper lobbies, in the subway and on entire facades of buildings, or on huge screens taken out at night on barges on the river Pujiang, so bright that you just cannot help but look at them. What I’m trying to get across in this latest version of Shanghai is its inevitable contradictions, for it is bent through the eyes of artists until it becomes a fictitious, distorted reality that nevertheless conceals extravagant details somewhere in between poetry and drama, revealing once again the true face of Shanghai.” (Davide Quadrio)

Shanghai was presented through the eyes of local artists such as Zhang Ding, Liang Yue and Song Tao and the well-known video by Yang Fudong, Robber-south, 2001; the animation video by Melanie Jackson Made in China; a multimedia installation, The Next Second, be Alexander Brandt, a German artist who lives in Shanghai. And more: the video clip Hero by David Cotterrell, the historic Shouting video of 1998 by Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong’s work subtitled Skyscrapers: Phallic Symbols?: the city as a phallus, in which architecture is no more than space snatched away from the sky.