Lu Chunsheng 陆春生
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
Lu Chunsheng is a Chinese photographer and video artist best known for his fabricated scenes depicting men and women in strange or unnatural situations. Born in 1968, Lu lives and works in Shanghai.
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[edit] Date & Place of Birth
Lu Chunsheng was born in 1968 Changchun, Jilin province, China.
[edit] Education & Development
In 1994 Lu graduated from the Department of Sculpture at China National Academy of Fine Arts.
[edit] Art
Since the late 1990’s, Lu's photographs, video and multimedia art works have been recognized internationally, following a period of domestic renown in China, where he is regarded as influential within the new generation of Chinese avant-garde.[1]
Lu Chunsheng’s work consists of brooding films and photographs which appear preoccupied with the Industrial Era and Communist History. However, the stories told are more mystic than nostalgic. There is a surrealist attitude to his videos; using fixed camera positions, endless drawn-out shots and seemingly amateurish shooting techniques, he documents human behavior in inexplicable and often bizarre situations. Unlike most of his fellow artists emerging from the same generation, he does not focus on the estrangement generated by accelerated urbanization (including its stream of rapidly moving images and perplexed inhabitants). Instead, he has developed an oeuvre where the characters depicted (either photographically or on video) find themselves in undoubtedly weird situations, far from the everyday conse. The absurdity takes its form in a series of photos entitled Water (2000), where we witness a man standing motionless in a female nightgown while increasingly a sea of water accumulates at his feet. This occurrence is documented in progressive stages without any recognizable plot and without further explanation. A correspondingly fantastic situation is articulated in the large-scale photoI Want to Be a Gentleman (2000), which depicts nine men standing on tall plinths in front of a dilapidated building as if they were statues atop a pedestal in a museum.[1]
[edit] Exhibitions
Liu's recent exhibitions include: “China Contemporary, Art, Architecture and Visual Culture” at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2006); “The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now”, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY, USA (2006); “Out of Sight”, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2005); “Double Vision”, 1st Lianzhou International Foto Festival, Culture Square Lianzhou, China (2005); and “Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from Haudenschild Collection at the National Art Museum”, Beijing, China 2005, and subsequently in Shanghai and Mexico City. More recently, Liu has displayed his series ‘The History of Chemistry I & II’ (2004 and 2006). As the artist himself puts it: “Modern chemistry is derived from ancient Western alchemy. Pacific Asia today is like a big alchemist’s workshop; that is why I selected this title for my video." [2]
For Liu's full exhibition history, click here.
[edit] Gallery Affiliation(s)
Lu Chunsheng is represented by ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai.
[edit] References
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/luchunsheng http://www.artnet.com/artist/424817028/lu-chunsheng.html http://www.gasworks.org.uk/residencies/detail.php?id=271 http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K19368.html http://the-artists.org/artist/Lu-Chunsheng
88MoCCA: The museum of Chinese contemporary art on the web: Lu Chunsheng
