LEO XU PROJECTS

Taus Makhacheva:
Second World, Third Attempt

November 10th through December 23rd, 2017
Opening reception: Friday, November 10th, 6-8pm

AAAJIAO: USER, LOVE, HIGH-FREQUENCY TRADING

May 27th through July 22nd, 2017
Opening reception: Friday, May 26th, 6-8pm

“User, Love, High-frequency Trading” marks the second solo exhibition with the gallery by Shanghai and Berlin-based young new media artist aaajiao. Aaajiao, the artistic persona of Xu Wenkai, was first created as his internet handle. As a user of many websites, social media and applications, aaajiao has been exploring the notions about such role and new identities and personalities a user may assume through his or her operation of one specific medium. This two-year long research has crystalized into the exhibition “User, Love, High-frequency Trading”. It goes through multiple aspects—for instance, user’s alter ego, social media communication, and new economies driven by algorithms and networking of users—and arrives at a particular moment in current social and technological development, which has both resonated and contrasted with many of Sci-fi cinema and literature’s Ballardian or cyberpunk fantasies of an early 21st century.

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Performing Time

April 23rd through July 20th, 2016
VIP reception Saturday April 23rd,6-8pm
 
Artists: Chris Huen Sin Kan, Li Qing, Elizabeth Neel, Ken Okiishi, Shahzia Sikander, Taocheng Wang
 
“Performing Time” is the second curatorial collaboration between Pilar Corrias Gallery (London) and Leo Xu Projects (Shanghai), following a critically acclaimed exhibition in Hong Kong “The Tell-Tale Heart” (2015) where the relationship between narrative and new media was addressed. The new group exhibition otherwise steers its focus to painting as a medium that has recently gained vigor and repertoire from new ways of image-making, data, and performative languages in a world constantly reshaped by digital media. A product of the galleries’ ongoing opinion exchange on the gestural and time-based nature of Chinese calligraphy and ink painting, the show evaluates the boundaries of painting by and through time: How the notion of time in its physical and metaphysical sense has influenced artist’s respective practices.
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March 5th through April 10th, 2016
Opening reception: Saturday, March 5th, 6-8pm

The title of the exhibition is taken from American author Mark Twain’s novel “The Gilded Age – A Tale of Today” (1874). While the novel illuminated the superficiality that obscured social problems in the ‘gilded age’, Michael Lin projects a vivid ideology of ‘gild’ onto the cosmopolitanisms of the current era by way of dissecting a single day in our own time. Through the study of transportation and mobilities, he extends his critique to contemporary economic flows and urban circulations.
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November 14th, 2015 through January 24th, 2016

Opening reception: Saturday, November 14th, 2015, 6-8pm.
 
“[…] the music and atmosphere carry the dancers as they search for their dream.
But in the end, the club makes everyone the same.
You can’t go against the crowd.”
 
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September 7th through October 10th, 2015
Opening reception: Monday, September 7th, 5-8pm

“From ‘Happiness’ to ‘Whatever’” is the first solo exhibition in Shanghai of young Chinese female artist Liu Shiyuan who splits her time working and living between Beijing and Copenhagen. The exhibition brings together a body of photographs and installation representative of Liu Shiyuan’s practice and made within the past 3 years, and a series of commissioned new works created specifically for this exhibition and for the gallery space in a old Shanghai lane house.

“From ‘Happiness’ to ‘Whatever’” originates with the artist’s confusions, such as “what is a good life”, “how can one be balanced”, “what is the right value system”, “what kind of social system can provide the best for the progress of human’s wisdom”, among others. The exhibition is a process of questioning and answering with the artist’s engagement by way of visual production and performance, and a quest that begins at the question “what is happiness” that extends to the mentality of various individuals.
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July 18th through August 23rd, 2015
Opening reception: Saturday, July 18th,  4-7pm

The first solo exhibition of Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo in Shanghai, “Weed Party” is the third project on plants and socio-politics of the artist, which follows the critically acclaimed presentations “Plants Living in Shanghai”—a found botanical garden of weeds and a series of online public lectures about plants and Shanghai—Zheng Bo produced for the first West Bund Architecture and Contemporary Art Biennale (curated by Gao Shiming of China Academy of Art, 2013) and “Plants Occupy Shenzhen”—an audio tour—for the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (curated by Marko Daniel, of Tate Modern, 2014).

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January 16th through April 12th, 2015

Opening reception: Friday January 16th, 5-7pm.
 
“alias: aaajiao” marks the first solo exhibition with the gallery of the widely exhibited young Chinese media artist Xu Wenkai. Based in Shanghai and working under the vague and comical internet alias of aaajiao, the artist will be presenting a body of new and commissioned works, which measure the new dimension of high technology and media-based works, and address the issues derived from contemporary living with Internet and digital technology. The exhibition runs from January 16th through March 8th, 2015, with a series of events and presentations to take place on and off line. The artist will be present at the opening reception on Friday January 16th, 5-7pm.
 
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Venue: Leo Xu Projects
Lane 49, Building 3, Fuxing Xi Lu, Xuhui,
Shanghai 200031, China

Date: Friday, December 12th 2014, 6:30 pm

Organised jointly by Francesco Vezzoli, Arthub and Leo Xu Projects, this screening includes two works by Francesco Vezzoli “Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story! (Part One)” and “GREED, A New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli”, starting at 6:30pm.

Francesco Vezzoli will be joined by Leo Xu, Shanghainese art critic and director of Leo Xu Projects, and Shaway Yeh, group style editorial director of Modern Media Group in a artist talk Saturday, December 13th, 2:00 pm at Aurora Museum Shanghai.

November 23rd, 2014 through January 4th, 2015.

LEO XU PROJECTS is pleased to present the gallery’s second solo exhibition of Beijing-based painter Cui Jie. Featuring a range of works from this year, the exhibition displays a selection of works from three of the artist’s recent series exploring urban landscapes, the relationship between the cityscape and its’ public artworks, as well the artist’s own connection with her architectural interests and research. Expanding on the continuous survey of the artist’s personal interpretations of her architectural surroundings in various urban environments in China, the exhibition presents not only the endlessness of urban development, but also the innate cyclic behaviour of metropolitan life.

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September 20th through November 2nd, 2014

Opening reception and live performance: Saturday, September 20th, 6-8pm.

February 22nd through April 30th, 2014

VIP reception: Saturday, February 22nd, 6-8pm

LEO XU PROJECTS is proud to present one of the most sought-after international artists Gabriel Lester’s solo show “The Ears Have Walls”. Featuring an eerie musical performance, architectural installations, photos and videos etc., this exhibition demonstrates different aspects of artist’s sensibilities and insights on our present urban life. Bluntly making jokes of what he observes in real life, the artist stages a magical world of voyeurism, eavesdropping and cynicism while making people laugh.

The confusing title of the exhibition “The Ears Have Walls” borrows from an internet typo originally for the naming of Gabriel Lester’s mixed media work “Super-Sargasso Sea (phantom play #1)” included in Performa 13 in New York, 2013. Inspired by the accidental incident, the artist develops an amusing compilation of jokes that illustrates the absurdity of reality through a variety show.

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