Li Shan Solo Exhibition at The Armory Show

中文

Li Shan Solo Exhibition at The Armory Show
Solo Exhibition Art Fairs Javits Center, New York, U.S.A

Date: 09.09, 2022 - 09.11, 2022

Artists: LI Shan 李山

Booth Nr. 404
VIP preview: September 8, 2022

ShanghART Gallery is delighted to announce Li Shan’s solo exhibition at The Armory Show 2022, focusing on his long-term research in the field of Bio Art. Li Shan, born in 1942 in Heilongjiang, China, is one of the leading figures in Chinese contemporary art. Over his fifty-year artistic career, he has been a participant and witness to many important art movements and has played a central role in developing contemporary art in China.

This exhibition selects important and never seen works from 25 critical years of the artist's career. These five works attest to Li Shan’s insistence on contemplation, constant exploration, and reflection on the relationship between human beings and nature through artistic creation.

In 1993, inspired by the half-human, half-animal Loughton Candidate, by the young Matthew Barney, Li Shan began to sketch and experiment with his Bio Art, the Reading series, which includes very early artworks completed under the guidance of molecular biology. The logic of his Bio Artworks is to combine different parts of animals and human beings through genetic transcription and technology, filling the picture with his wild imagination of the possibility of creatures and human beings. These often winged, heteromorphic creatures, grow and populate the frames like living cells.

Documentation of Li Shan’s numerous sketches (presented on a screen) let the public enjoy the artist’s creativity and research and gain insight into the visual strategies and decision-making process for creating Bio Art.

Exhibitions
Future of the Arts, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2019); Decoding (Solo) ShanghART, Shanghai (2019); Supernatural, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney (2018); Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A.(2017); PSA Collection Series (Solo), Power Station of Art, Shanghai(2017); Extension Expansion (Solo), MoCA@Loewen, Singapore(2014); Reading Li Shan (Solo) MOCA, Taipei (2012); Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); The Pumpkin Project (Solo), ShanghART, Shanghai (2007); Inside Out, Asia Society; PS1, New York (1998); Biennial of Sao Paulo (1994); China's New Art, Post 1989, Art Centre, Hong Kong (1993); Venice Biennale (1993); Li Shan (Solo), Shanghai Theater Academy (1990); China/Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (1989) .

Online Video “Scripts” selected from booklets of “Special Records of the Biological Laboratory” by Li Shan

Excerpts from Li Shan's "Special Records of Biological Laboratory":

December 17, 2020, at the apartment in Manhattan
Light = a photon is a small piece of energy, so like a wave.

Nadape Green
Dark Green to Gray
Golden Edge
Blue
Light Link
Black Line

January 19, 2021, in Manhattan
Stephen Hawking examines time in terms of objects' speed of motion and the absolute speed of light. What he gives is still the phenomenon of time, not the essence. Only the orbit of Nibiru (the twelfth celestial body) around the sun has been confirmed.

While ethical hurdles are bypassed, it's not what I ultimately want. In 2007, "the Pumpkin Project" was exhibited at ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai. Artists, critics, students from art academies, and general audiences gathered in the exhibition hall. What surprised me was the rare silence in the exhibition hall. Only one audience asked me, "Mr. Li, is your pumpkin eatable?" I sincerely felt that Li Shan had been excluded from the public or society.

May 29, 2021, at the apartment in Manhattan
The Miami Heat were swept by the Milwaukee Bucks and became the first team to be eliminated from the playoffs. Butler, Iguodala, Ariza, what happened to you guys? The Bucks are rushing on the Heat fire.

Melvin Calvin, a Russian botanist at the University of Berkeley, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961 for his achievements in using isotopic techniques to study photosynthesis.

Chromosomes are a specific form of remnant material present during cell division, resulting from the tight assembly of chromatin structures. Cells of different organisms contain different numbers of chromosomes, and the chromosomes contain DNA that makes up the organism's genome.

Ribosomes are cells that synthesize proteins inside cells, and the main components are RNA and protein. It is essential for the process of protein translation. The protein translation machinery is a cell's most complex structure, like a mobile factory.

The ones in black are Ribosomal proteins.
The ones in light colors are rRNAs.

2007 in Shanghai
Li Shan