ShContemporary 2008    Sep 9 - Sep 13, 2008

SEPTEMBER 9 – 13, 2008

Works by Shao Fan, Wang Tiande, Gu Wenda, Isidro Blasco, Golnaz Fathi, Naiza H. Khan and Arif Mahmood Combine Eastern and Western Influences to Create a New Artistic Vocabulary

Collectors Preview Part I (by invitation): 9th September, 2pm - 6:30pm
Collectors Preview Part II (by invitation): 10th September, 12pm – 6pm
VIP Night (by invitation): 10th September, 6pm – 10pm
Public days: 11th-13th September, 12pm - 7pm

Booth B11, Shanghai Exhibition Center, No. 1000 Yan’an Zhong Road 200040

SHANGHAI – At ShContemporary 2008, Pearl Lam’s Contrasts Gallery will present work by leading artists from some of the art world’s most promising new arenas, including China, Iran, and Pakistan. This exhibition, featuring work by Shao Fan, Wang Tiande, Gu Wenda, Isidro Blasco, Golnaz Fathi, Naiza H. Khan, and Arif Mahmood, will offer a uniquely contemporary picture of how eastern and Occidental influences are interpreted and revised in works by the same generation of artists from different emerging markets. Contrasts will show how the socio-economic climate has redefined these artists’ works, while demonstrating Blasco’s exploration of Chinese culture after months residing at Contrasts’ artist residency.

Famous for his deconstructed functional and non-functional combinations of traditional Ming-style furniture and modern materials, Chinese painter, sculptor, designer Shao Fan was one of the first Chinese artists to blend formal artistic training with an interest in traditional Chinese craft, including woodcarving. His Ming Style Bamboo Fragment (2007) captures the essence of the traditional craft of Ming joinery, using mortise-and-tenon to link a graceful wooden sculptural depiction of a fragment of bamboo, recalling Chinese traditions in a modern sculptural form.

The bold acrylic paintings by Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi incorporate traditional Iranian calligraphy, graphic design and painting to create work that is both transnational and autobiographical. Cultural motifs, calligraphic forms and oblique references to locations in Iran that are of personal significance to Fathi are combined with white areas of canvas that signify silence. Preferring to leave her work open to interpretation, Fathi does not name her pieces, leaving room for intuitive engagement that transcends nationality and cultural background.

Naiza H. Khan’s recent works in metal, such as corsets, chastity belt and body armour, were created while she was deeply engaged in the study of Bihishti Zewar, a text written in Urdu and addressed to women outlining a reformist and scripturalist Islam. What is the possible relationship between obsolete European implements that seek to shape and control the female body, and modern Islamic legal, social and ethical injunctions for women? This insurmountable condition is well illustrated in Naiza's metal armours -- a blend of body and garment. Beginning from the middle of torso, these end up in a piece of cloth, with folds jutted out. Whether it is shielded behind the metal armour or under the suede leather-covered saddle-like object, it is the body of a woman that re-surfaces with its power to re-assert, despite all efforts to hide it.

Gu Wenda, a Chinese-born artist now based in New York and Shanghai, creates work that explores the interaction between aesthetics and globalization. Born and educated in Shanghai, Gu studied traditional Chinese ink-and-brush painting and it is with the time-honored medium of ink that he creates his celebrated Gu’s Phrase stone steles series. In this series, also known as China Phrase, Gu uses existing Chinese characters to create new phrases that have no historical precedent in the Chinese language but can by read easily by anyone who can read Chinese. For example, in Gu’s Phrase Stone Stele No. 6 (2005-7), the artist combines the actual Chinese characters for the words “art” and “skill” into one “character” and “love” and “feel” into another “character,” carving them into a stone stele and using the carving to create an ink print. Gu’s re-engineering of Chinese characters comments on the way that Western audiences (the majority of whom cannot read Chinese) might view actual characters as random arrangements of brushstrokes, completely missing the meaning that they are intended to convey, while also creating new meaning for those familiar with the written Chinese language.