The City: Manufacturing Urban Landscapes

Exhibition Duration: May 5th to June 27th, 2010
Opening Reception: 7pm May 6th, 2010
Participating Artists: Ge Fang, Lin Guocheng, Huang Xian, Li Wei

The City: Manufacturing Urban Landscapes is a group exhibition highlighting China’s changing cityscapes and illustrating how economic reform, a new influx of personal wealth and rapid industrialization have effected urban environments.

Representing artists working in mediums of painting, photography, video and graphic design, The City uses street life, proliferation of skyscrapers and historic monuments as avenues for exploring not only the transformation of China's major cities but a myriad of artistic representations. 

The 21st century has ushered in a new vocabulary for cityscape art providing artists with an outlet for exploring our urban centers. Concrete towers and busy streets provide an urban backdrop in these manmade landscapes.

The City highlights four emerging and young artists whose impressions of the city are as varied as their medium of expression. Similarities in geometric symmetry arise from the architectural landscapes of Huang Xian’s collages and Li Wei’s contemporary charcoal drawings, each with distinct aesthetics that differs drastically.

Themes of sacrifice however are shared between Huang Xian’s treatment of the earth’s soil and Lin Guocheng’s symbolic reference of trees as martyr, representing the embodiment of nature, sacrificed to the city.

Less melancholic images are viewed in Ge Fang’s Street Cinema. Fang, brings us into the city with photography and video pieces where cars providing the backdrop and screen to popular Chinese films.