The exhibition showcases the artist’s reflective use of surrealist legacy, steering the rigid representation of reality towards the absurd. It elucidates how she adjusts her relationship with reality according to her intentions, achieving a balance between the ideal and the distorted, the elegant and the wild, the human and the non-human, to realize coexistence.
Shang Liang’s oil paintings begin with portraits, employing surreal and discomforting image interventions to create illogical and surprising effects, subverting tradition. In Shang Liang’s view, anxiety is palpably present in the current moment, leading to the visible alienation of humanity. Therefore, the artist believes that a mere reflection of reality in painting is insufficient; creation must also be psychological, integrating with one’s personality, and intellectual, diagnosing one’s personality and the world.
In the gallery, Shang Liang continues her previous series’ technique of alienating humanity through deformation, creating her own biomorphic characters. The luster and texture of human skin, fingers morphed into gun barrels, mouths with sinister smiles replacing facial features, all possess both recognizability and unrecognizability.
Historically, biomorphism refers to an artistic movement represented by artists like Joan Miró, who focused on the forms and structures of nature’s organisms, drawing inspiration or imitation from them. In Shang Liang’s contemplation and practice, humanity is repositioned as a biological entity in nature, an object of post-human imitation rather than a subject of life drawing; through human forms, Shang Liang attempts to redefine the understanding of the human species, which has been reduced to market relations, religious postures, and continuous resistance to suffering, urgently needing liberation.The exhibition will be open from September 12th to October 26th. The specific business hours are subject to the day’s conditions.
