Lives Deep in the mountainous area of Central Zhejiang Province, Liang Shaoji takes the entire life cycle of the silkworm as the vehicle while the interaction with nature as the power. In the past 25 years, he explored with great concentration on the frontier between art and science, sculpture and installation, performance and multimedia, approaching the ultimate inquiry of both time and life. Shanghart Gallery will unveil the new face of the “Nature serious” created in the past 5 years by Liang Shaoji, who is honored as “The hermit of Chinese contemporary art”. This is a selection of artworks shuttles between heaven and hell that incarnated the simplicity and the strengthen, dynamic and static, hardness and softness while taking on the balance between “stillness” and “obscurity”.

The exhibition is entitled as “Yuan”, which means original, basic, genetic, element. In Chinese ancient rhetoric, “Yuan” is interchangeable with “Yuan(garden)”, which embodies nirvana. As has been revealed , the artist intended to open a wider space more abstract, more rational and even more pure. In the natural way of “homecoming” and “estimate”, he regards the silkworm as “oneness”of “yuan” and said: “silk for me, is end of both time and life. It reveals the long process as it lines out the ‘one’ which is both infinitely vast and infinitely trivial.”

The whole exhibition showcases both quiet and lively ambiances, which will be installed simultaneously in H-space and Building 16 of ShanghART Gallery. An enormous mixed-media installation “Destiny” uncovers at first sight a hell-liked scenes: Huge iron chains drilling in the swampy mud, confronting with whom is the little lives and the struggling winder silk. The black gold leaking from the heavy chains forms a strong contrast with the defused silver silk, appeals the meditation of audience. Stage “Zen”’s real meaning, the installation works “A Move in Silence”, Sound of Heart”, “Snow Cover”, “Planar Tunnel”, “Stele” and “Mending Sky”(video) have a diametrically opposite context to “Destiny”, “Pitfall” and “Nowhere to Hide”.

-ShanghART Gallery

Image: © Liang Shaoji
Courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery