James H. Bollen: Jim’s Terrible City & Li Wenguang: Fallacy

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詹姆斯•伯伦：吉姆的可怕城市 李文光：谬论

2012年7月29日至8月31日

VIP开幕酒会：2012年7月29日，周日，晚6-8点 上海James Cohan画廊 地址：徐汇区岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼，近永嘉路

上海James Cohan画廊将荣幸推出由两位工作和生活于上海的年轻艺术家詹姆斯•伯伦（James H. Bollen）与李文光带来的夏季展览。

詹姆斯•伯伦在画廊的首次展览与他最近完成的摄影项目同名《吉姆的可怕城市》，展览展示了该项目中的12幅彩色摄影作品。这些作品的灵感来源于英国的传奇作家J.G.巴拉德（1930-2009）及其半自传体小说《太阳帝国》。巴拉德1930年生于上海当时所称为的公共租界。通过广泛阅读巴拉德高度视觉化的小说，伯伦用自己独特的艺术摄影语言探索上海文学性的过去与历史遗产。展览中的12件作品——都存在着一种不真实感，构建了一个时间逐渐消失，生活变成一个剧场布景的城市景观。在伯伦的眼中，暴力、飞行、车祸、时间与生活的不协调性看上去立刻显得电影式的，或是J.G.巴拉德在日本占领时期的上海生活体验笔下的如鬼魅般的一瞥。许多作品的主题与图像都能追溯到J.G.巴拉德的文字作品中，而一种近乎幻觉的状态与上海的过去交织重叠在一起，并继续存在于这个城市的当下。

詹姆斯•伯伦的作品绘制了城市的过去与现在，而在第二展厅，李文光则为我们绘制出知识的范围。在李文光的语汇中，谬论是他独特的抽象等式的起源。他使用谬论来解释他自己在当下的短暂存在。这些极其个人化的特殊表现，通常以图解与建筑的形式，既是对信念，也是对误解的体现，以及对知识基础相对于对苦乐参半的荒诞的认知的体现。作为一位自学成才的艺术家，李文光使用中性笔，画笔，墨与丙烯颜料，将他的作品详细得描绘在宣纸上，并做成中国传统的立轴形式。通过材料使用的多样性，李文光为我们探索了平时不曾了解或了解很少的，在梦的领域与梦境行为中的事物知识。艺术家将其定义为他的“伪科学”：一种被误认为可用科学方法证实的信仰与实践的系统。

詹姆斯•伯伦毕业于伦敦大学亚非研究学院。他的作品曾在伦敦Beach画廊（2012），上海艺术博览会国际当代艺术展（2011）与罗马国际摄影节（2010）展出。他目前工作与生活在上海。

李文光出生于上海。他曾于2011年在上海Stir画廊举办个展；并在上海华亭空间与松江美术馆举办群展（2011，2010）；最近他的作品在北京上苑艺术馆展出（2012）。

更多信息或图片，请联系 周冰心 izhou@jamescohan.com或 +86-21-54660825 *602。画廊工作时间：周二至周六，早10点至晚6点，周日中午12点至晚6点，周一请预约。

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JAMES H. BOLLEN: Jim’s Terrible City LI WENGUANG: Fallacy

July 29 through August 31, 2012

VIP opening reception: July 29th, 2012, Sunday, 6-8 pm Venue: James Cohan Gallery Shanghai Address: 1F, Building 1, No.170 Yueyang Road, by Yongjia Road

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present its summer exhibition by two young Shanghai-based artists, James H. Bollen and Li Wenguang.

James H. Bollen’s exhibition features twelve color photographs from his recently completed book-length project, and the title of his debut exhibition, Jim’s Terrible City. The photographs are inspired by the legendary British writer J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), and Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930 in what was then known as the International Settlement. Through extensive readings of Ballard’s highly visual fiction, Bollen explores a literary exhibitions and heritage of Shanghai with his own painterly photographic language. The twelve images in the exhibition—all sharing a sense of the unreal—construct an urban landscape where time ceases to exist and life becomes like a stage set. In Bollen’s eyes, violence, flight, car crashes, the incongruities of time and life can seem so immediately cinematic, or a like a ghostly glimpse of life experienced by J.G. Ballard while living in Shanghai during the Japanese Occupation. Many of these themes and images can be tracked throughout J.G. Ballard’s writings, where a near-hallucinatory state of mind merges memories of a Shanghai exhibitions while continuing to exist in the city’s present.

While James Bollen is mapping the city’s exhibitions and present, in the second gallery, Li Wenguang is charting the boundaries of the knowledge. Fallacy, in Li Wenguang’s words, is the origin of his distinctive abstract equations, which the artist uses to explain his own momentary existence in the present. These highly personal, idiosyncratic renderings, often diagrammatic and architectural in form, are as much about belief as about misconception; about the basis of knowledge versus the bittersweet qualities of the absurd. Li, who is a completely self-taught artist, presents his finely detailed works on rice paper mounted to traditional Chinese silk scrolls using a combination of pen, brush, Chinese ink and acrylic paint. Through his dynamic use of these materials, Li Wenguang is exploring images and subject matter where we sometimes have limited or little knowledge in the realm of dreams and the act of dreaming, or what the artist himself defines as his ‘pseudoscience’: a system of belief or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on verifiable scientific methodology.

James H. Bollen is a graduate of School of African and Oriental Studies, London University. His work has been shown at the Beach London Gallery, London (2012), SH Contemporary Art Fair, Shanghai (2011) and FotoGrafia Festival Internazionale di Roma, Rome (2010). He works and lives in Shanghai.

Li Wenguang was born in Shanghai. His work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at Stir Gallery Shanghai in 2011; Huating Space Shanghai, Songjiang, Shanghai (2011, 2010); and most recently his work has been exhibited at the Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing, 2012.

For further information or additional images, please contact Ms. Ivy Zhou at izhou@jamescohan.com or +86 - 21 - 54660825 *602. Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10-6 p.m., Sunday 12-6 p.m., and Monday by appointment.

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