Try to turn on a light.
Fresh Expectations
“In this series of videos, paintings and images, Shang Guo explores the intersection of fine art with modern internet culture. The pieces in this series are short vignettes designed to be viewed and shared via social media, each of which tells a basic narrative or visual metaphor. As an artist implanted in a foreign culture, Shang uses her art to create a universal language: these simple stories told through a purely visual medium are equally accessible to her native Chinese audience as they are to the domestic British, and further to a global audience, united by the global nature of the internet. Her universal language travels beyond the confines of the world of fine art, and into the frontier of social media, where the viewer becomes the curator and chooses what is worth sharing, and where content must by nature be accessible and innately consumable. In creating consumable content, she draws inspiration from traditional slapstick comedy, with visual punchlines creating a striking impression to underline the themes of each piece.”
Shang makes use of a mixed medium: oil painting is combined with cinematography and post production techniques. In this way, the static painting becomes an organic medium, capable of movement and of producing surprise. Visual illusions and contradictions arise from the modification of the paintings, and senses of perspective are created that would be impossible in painting. Visual tricks such as these seem natural in the often absurdist world that the artworks evoke.
The camera pans over the artwork and constrains the view to a single path and a single pace. In this way, the subjective experience of the viewer is made objective – the artist takes full control. Out of place in a traditional gallery, this is perhaps a necessity in the cyber world of easy consumption. Freedom of interpretation gives way to the creation of one single experience – but is this really a loss, when the average viewer chooses not to interpret at all?