Introduction

A particularly generative aspect of Lu Chunsheng's work is the way it breaches the boundary between documentary and fiction. His conceptual and methodological coherence broadens and extends the inquiry into everyday life rather than merely illustrate it. Lu Chunsheng is now focusing on photography and video art. In his work, he articulates a surrealistic and neutral attitude in his videos. Using fixed camera positions, endless drawn-out shots and unprofessional shooting techniques, he documents human behavior in bizarre situations. But unlike many of his fellow artists emerging from the same generation, he does not focus on the alienation following an accelerated urbanization (including its stream of rapidly moving images and perplexed inhabitants). Instead, he has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations. The absurdity takes its form in a series of photographs entitled "Water" (2000), where a man stands motionless in a nightgown while growing seawater accumulates at his feet. This is documented in progressive stages without any recognizable narrative or explanation. Similarly strange, the large-scale photograph "I Want to Be a Gentleman" (2000) depicts nine men standing on tall plinths in front of a run-down industrial building like statues on display in a museum.

In a recent series of photographs entitled "Carlin", Lu Chunsheng strikes a balance between documentary realism and filmic aesthetic encounter. The quasi-documentary directness is created consciously with respect to a given site. These pictures are beautifully composed with a strictly demarcated horizontal line resembling traditional landscape photography, playing on foreground and background. However, this reading is subverted by a human figure riding a broom, as if it was an imaginary horse. The interpretive process is thus one of deferral or unraveling.

Lu Chunsheng graduated from China National Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture. He has exhibited widely in China and abroad. He resides and works in Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include PERSPECTIVES: LU CHUNSHENG, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C, U.S.A.(2011); Moving Image In China : 1988-2011, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai(2011); Lu Chunsheng, Part of Everybody Knows This Ss Nowhere: A Programme of International Moving Image, Stephensons Work, Newcastle, U.K.(2010); The Materialists are All Asleep, A Retrospective of Lu Chunsheng, The Red Mansion Foundation, London, U.K.(2008); 10th International Istanbul Biennial , Not only Possible, But also Necessary-Optimism in the Age of Global War, Istanbul, Turkey(2007); China Contemporary Art, Architecture and Visual Culture, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam(2006), The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York(2006), Out of Sight, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam(2005), Double Vision, 1st Lianzhou International Foto Festival, Guangdong(2005) and Zooming Into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum, Beijing(2005) and subsequently in Mexico City and Shanghai.