(smartshanghai.com)
Updated: 2008-01-23 11:35

After the video display, a giant sculpture of the famous Chinese cartoon character "San Mao" next captures the attention. Situated in the centre of the gallery, painted in white and glistening in the sunlight pouring in from the atrium, San Mao, the cheeky little orphan, is holding a pair of wings and looking up towards to sky. Sadly, this image of hopeful freedom, seems cocooned by metal bars. From this confinement, out beyond San Mao, is a large video projector depicting scenes from Shanghai. The video had been produced especially for the SGA and presents the different aspects of life around the Bund. With a camera in hand, Yilin walks in a figure 8 formation weaving from one side to the other using the underground pedestrian tunnels, filming everything he sees along the way. On one side, the Bund is filmed at night and as has he walks slowly down the tunnels we see images of the homeless lying lifeless on the floor. As he walks past them and up the stairs again, it is daylight on the Bund with scores of people rushing their way through town. Hard-hitting stuff. Perhaps purposefully iconoclastic as well, when one considers the location of the gallery housing his work, Three on the Bund, the emblematic cradle of wealth, privilege and status in Shanghai's recent economic boom.

Another very striking piece is entitled "One Day," inspired from Yilin's real life experience where he witnessed a man escorted by the police, cuffed from his wrist to his own ankle. Yilin re-captures this experience in a video installation, where he films a Chinese man crouched over, hobbling through the streets of Hainan. "According to Yilin, very few people actually took notice and simply carried on with their busy lives," says Mr. Chan. As we watch this poor shackled man attempting to keep up with the hectic life around him, it seems to quite poignantly resemble the many people in this world who are desperately trying to keep up with the fierce rate of globalisation. Yilin is "very conscious of all that is happening around him," says Mr. Chan, who is clearly proud to display the work of a man who is both locally and internationally well respected. "I want to give him the opportunity to reorganize his thinking process and hope this show will help him find his next direction of topics to explore."

For someone who has not always been the first in line to visit an art gallery, I found myself admiring each piece of work. Although Yilin's work is overtly didactic and seeks to communicate a social message on the ill effects of modernization in the urban space, there was still enough leeway to interpret the works for myself and develop my own ideas about the material.

"A Spatio-temporal Tunnel" runs from Jan. 13 to Feb. 25 at the Shanghai Art Gallery.

Shanghai Gallery of Art
Phone: 021-6321 5757 or 6323 4549
Address: 3F, 3 Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, 3 on the Bund near Guangdong Road

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