ShanghART Gallery: Liu Weijian

Last week we ventured in to No. 50 Monganshan Road. I expected to find streets of galleries, shops and otherwise... something like a cross between Chelsea and the flea market outside Washington Square in the warm months.

Instead we found a fair share of commercial spaces (selling portraits of 1920's Shanghainese women or jade carvings), a few western style coffee shops (overly priced, but you can get "mixed greens" or "apple crumble" for somewhere around 40 kuai), studio space (which I thought was great- it seems like one can go from square one to the showing of the finished product all within the same 10 block radius), and many, many galleries. We also found a lot of enthusiasm. Everyone who works at the galleries is more than excited to talk to you and give you more information.

ShanghART Gallery was probably my favorite. Liu Weijan is doing a solo exhibition there. The show opens with the painting above. A majority of the paintings depict people (mostly alone) working with different machines. I really enjoyed it. It ends on the 31st.