Reversed Images
@ Museum of Contemporary Photography
600 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605
Opening Thursday, September 24th, from 4PM - 7PM
On view through Wednesday, December 23rd
Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture examines the city of Shanghai and its development into one of the global economy’s most productive cities in the new millennium. Shanghai is known for its impressive population growth, the increasingly rapid rate of its cultural and environmental transformations, and the tension between Western and traditional Chinese values, lifestyle, and work habits. In addition, the city is caught between a not-so-distant communism and a late-arriving capitalism, between a world founded on its labor force and the world of new technologies. Within this environment, the role of the arts becomes ever-important as artists look to interpret the experience of inhabiting a city and a time that is in the process of defining itself, struggling with the contradictory natures of its past, present, and future. The participating artists in this exhibition take various approaches to capturing a city that seems to continually transform before our eyes.
Reversed Images is divided into three thematic areas. The first looks at the romantic notions of Shanghai’s past and how it flourished as a center of commerce for trade between the East and West—represented by the illusion of Shi Guorui’s large-scale camera obscura photograph. It also examines the city’s shift from the past to its development into a hyper-modern city. This theme is represented in the exhibition’s sub-sections: Upside Down/Progressing and Glorifying the City Present/Future. The second theme, titled Artist: Urban Comments, explores how Chinese artists are interpreting their role in Shanghai, living within a contradictory environment that imposes limitations while also producing an extraordinary stage for artistic exploration and visual/conceptual research. The third section, simply called Interiors, describes the secret spaces and unexpected privacy in a city of eighteen million people. The exhibition includes architects, urban planners, and graphic designers, as well as artists using photography.
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