ShanghART Beijing is pleased to present Wang Youshen’s solo exhibition Per Square Meter on 13th September, 2014. This is the first solo exhibition with Wang Youshen in ShanghART Beijing space, and also the first solo exhibition in Beijing after a lapse of 20 years.
Per Square Meter is an exhibition about an ‘event’: Artist twice experienced the process of constructing to dismantling of his studio from 2007 to 2011.
Two Studios in five years, from sign a contract, start construction to demolition, from blossom to fade. Time and space are compressed, everything running in a absurd way. A 'Rashomon' story is completed, which recorded a 'uncontrolled' daily behaviour.
Per Square Meter describes an extension of a physical unit of space related to a social event or an art event. The whole process is consisted of installation, picture, sound, documentary and paperwork, the multiple visual relationship paves an interesting path to the explanation.
The recent four years after 2011, Wang started the project Per Square Meter, in the process of deconstruction and reorganisation, he tries to complete a unrealistic reconstruction. A 'uncontrolled' daily behaviour and social event switched into a 'controllable' art production and artistic event, everything seems never happened, everything from realistic physical world changed into a illusive mental world.
Our individuals are like plural ‘per square meter’, keep the constant melting and reconstructing.
Wang Youshen's art is characterised by a focus on the influence mass media exerts on our thoughts, emotions, and actions. For example, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, which are determined by value judgments if never explicitly stated. In his photograph-based images, Wang Youshen uses selected press images alongside private photos as the basis of his investigation into the various functions and values of images as well as their truth content and modes of employment. Having worked as a magazine editor, Wang Youshen is particularly concerned about the power of print imagery. This is directly reflected in his work Newspaper (1993), where he uses newspaper as raw material, both covering entire walls and printing them directly onto fabric for clothing. In a similar project called Newspaper Advertising (1993), he covered the Chinese wall with newspaper. By reusing the printed media in an entirely new context, Wang Youshen subverts and questions its original meaning.
When ShanghArt Gallery opened its doors in Shanghai in 1996, it was one of the first contemporary art galleries in China. Today, the gallery operates from two spaces in the city (West Bund and Putuo District), with additional locations in Beijing and Singapore.
