The 2011 season at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) opens with No Snow on the Broken Bridge by Chinese auteur Yang Fudong, a subliminally beautiful black and white multi-screen film that explores the lives of the generation of young intellectuals who have grown up in a country hurtling toward modernisation.
 
"Yang Fudong’s work epitomises how the recent and rapid modernisation of China challenges traditional values and culture," Dr Sherman, Executive Director of SCAF, said. "He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness. His works investigate the structure and formation of identity through myth, personal memory and lived experience."
 
Yang Fudong’s film and video work is about the human condition and mostly portrays his own generation of individuals in their late 20s and 30s seeking personal relevance in a rapidly expanding China. Using sophisticated cinematic language, actors and lush locations, No Snow on the Broken Bridge explores personal memory and lived experience and the alienation that young intellectuals feel. Fudong’s elite milieu seem indolent and confused, trapped by a sense of self-imposed ennui as they search for personal relevance. The film is sumptuous, classically beautiful and timeless.
 
Fudong’s seminal five-part film Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, 2003-07, will be screening in the SCAF Annexe throughout the exhibition.
 
Fudong will visit Sydney for the opening of the exhibition.