Anomaly OPEN Space unveils street-side gallery portraying streetscapes of Shanghai
Anomaly Shanghai has presented “Flâneur” at Anomaly OPEN Space. The exhibition takes the format of a street gallery which intends to be browsed and experienced by the city wanderers from the pavement on their cruise through the historical neighbourhood of South Wulumuqi Road where Anomaly is located.
Anomaly OPEN is a cultural platform established by Anomaly Shanghai, that hosts talks, events and exhibitions in support of the broader creative community. Past notable exhibitions in the space have included typography designer Ying Yonghui, artist Nathan Zhou, photographer Rich Shuie, and a collaboration with Magazine B to create an immersive Reading Room experience.
The concept of this exhibition derives from the term “flâneur” which was famously interpreted by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin as a modern urban spectator. The flâneurs discover the uncanny imagery in the most familiar urban settings, and they inspire us to digress from our daily routine, even just for a few moments, to appreciate and imagine the visual mechanism of our surroundings. We invite you to join our path of stroll in experiencing Shanghai’s time-honoured texture and thinking about the coexistence of living and the city.
The exhibition manifests in two consecutive instalments. From August 26, the gallery will be occupied by the large-format photography of Lin Shan, a Shanghai-based photographer and architect. Lin Shan applies his eyes of an architect and the approach of architectural photography to the heritage buildings of Shanghai. His works capture the profile, design and overall impression of the landmarks which are impossible to perceive in full-scale in the condensed urban layout, recalling their blueprint image and the vision of their original designers. The series transforms the urban inhabitants into Gulliverian travellers, rendering Shanghai’s familiar cityscape as a spectacle of miniature. “I’d like to introduce an imaginative perspective of looking at the city. I hope the viewers can discover the unfamiliar beauty and colour of urban living when they brush shoulders with this street gallery in a city that they are so familiar with,” said Lin Shan.
For the second part of the show, from October 21, designer Li Dan will present his black-and-white illustration that meticulously outlines the era-defining urban façades. Influenced by Machine Aesthetics, Li Dan highlights the linear order of Shanghai’s skyline and fused it with the Art Deco style the city is known for, creating slick and sublime monuments out of history laid with stones. The visual outcome that Li Dan engineers is geometric, precise, structural, and ideal, as if a scene abstracted from the 1929 science-fiction film Metropolis, with a sense of vintage while undeniably futuristic. “My works transform the three-dimensional world into a series of symbolic and dynamic patterns that are open to diverse interpretations. What I’m trying to do is to connect cultural heritage to personal memories while treading between rationality and sensibility,” said Li Dan.
Anomaly also invites Lin Shan and Li Dan to give on-site talks on their practice. To find out about the event schedule and ways of participation, please follow TheUnreasonable, Anomaly’s WeChat platform for cultural programmes. The exhibition opens for free to the public daily around the clock though October 28, 2022.
Exhibition Duration: August 26 to November 25, 2022
Address: Anomaly OPEN Space, 205 South Wulumuqi Road, Xuhui, Shanghai
Open daily
