Beijing Artists Show 'Unities' at DDM Warehouse

Itching for a cab ride that takes about as much time as it does a laowai to pick up Mandarin? Leave behind the Bund in all its day-glow glory and fly down shockingly un-peopled streets with your cabbie to a northeastern corner of Shanghai and a location almost off the map: DDM Warehouse located on Dongdaming Lu.

Dropped at an unmarked alleyway, left with instinct alone as your compass, you'll eventually locate the gallery three stories above ground in a building that belongs in New York's meatpacking district at a time when the bums still warmed themselves by the glow of a trash heap fire and prostitutes lurked unfettered by strident law enforcement. A sense of grunge pervades and you enter thinking that this is the way "real" art should be displayed. Nevertheless, the gallery space shares one thing in common with Moganshan Lu, its upscale sister that bustles with tourists and coffee shops: you feel entirely safe poking around an alley in the middle of nowhere searching for an exhibit that you're pretty sure exists.

In addition to its underground location, DDM Warehouse is mired in some decade (or century) when curators remained unaware that cigarette smoke harms oil paintings and free champagne doesn't mix with well with bronze sculptures scattered intermittently on the gallery floor. That said none of the art at this opening looked any the worse for wear ­­and in fact was the some of the most impressive, well-arranged collection of contemporary art on display in Shanghai.

"Three Unities," the exhibition that opened this past Saturday evening, is based on Aristotle's conception of drama, which should have "unity of place, unity of time and unity of action." Otherwise unrelated, the three sections of the exhibition are united in place –– all artists are Beijing born, and time ––all are children of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Unity of action occurs in DDM Warehouse, where three different forms of media unite in a triumvirate of social critique mixed with Chinese loyalism.

Two photographers working together for the first time, Wang Lang and Liu Xinhua, operate under the Roland Barthes epithet "society consumes images now instead of beliefs, in order to keep them from reaching madness." Reading this statement, one is left with the lingering notion that images can be just as deceiving as beliefs; although the intangible nature of a belief could perhaps drive one to "madness," images deceive precisely in their insistence that they capture reality – if we see something in front of our face we (wrongly) assume there can be no trickery.

The photographers toy with Barthes' idea through "re-photography," a process that might be more accurately described meta-photography. A series of photographs taken of already published images from a teen magazine de-contextualizes and unravels any "truth" proffered by these ditzy images of whimsical youth.

A photomontage encompasses the range of Chinese citizens, from the fresh-faced and eager to the toothless and wrinkled, each counting wads of cash and grinning mirthfully. Although the series takes a stab at the commercial nature of China, the display simultaneously treats its subjects gently and humanely, capturing the individuals in flattering light and playing up a sense of character.

In her first solo exhibition, "Red Memories," Ren Hong contributes oil paintings to the exhibition. Ren paints meticulous abstractions of popular images from her childhood. Although the images she recalls and channels into her own work were often ones commissioned by Mao, or at the very least, severely affected by his presence, her works stray from outright critique of the artistic endeavors from that time period. Instead, Ren communicates nostalgia for the images of her childhood by painting traditional images "filtered through kaleidoscope patterns."

These patterns are a nod to pointillism, in which thousands of dots merge to create a coherent image. Rather than dots, Ren's paintings are comprised of Chinese symbols –– butterflies and birds transform into colorful clothing and faces; the blank spaces left between each butterfly causes the paintings to appear shadowy and surreal, placing these images firmly in the past. The precision evident in these renditions is almost painful; but the effect is ethereal and effortlessness, like the hazy existence of a far off memory.

Zheng Dali, the most famous of the artists, offers the sculptural aspect of the show. Although Zheng is perhaps well known as a graffiti artist, his life-sized bronzed sculptures are the dominant force in this show. The sculptures depict the interplay of man and beast, often in compromising positions. All-nude figures suggest a close connection between man and beast, easily viewed once man has been stripped of clothing. Throughout the sculptures, beast tends to dominate man, standing over him or holding him in his clutches. Zheng uses this positioning to suggest that the so-called beast in every human is the driving force, rather than one that has been sufficiently tamed by society.