清影

Inna Art Space will launch a solo exhibition themed Bad Water for artist Shang Simin on June 25, 2022, when nearly 20 acrylic paintings on canvas created by him over recent years will be showcased. These works, containing interesting images, present exquisite and flat visual effects. The stories outlined often go beyond the reality, and the peculiar characters render a defamiliarization aesthetic orientation, provoking the search for the metaphorical meanings.

Shang Simin has created a conceptual world named Isle of Pandan in his paintings. As his works unfold, the world keeps expanding. The world can be regarded as a collection of various concepts, reflecting the artist’s understanding of and reaction to the real world. Pandan, a girl with two ponytails, is the main character in this conceptual world. Constantly-changing hair color and two cute little hands popping out of the hair ends deliver an atmosphere of fantasy. In addition, around this girl are a group of strange characters evolved from anthropomorphic animals. These characters help Shang Simin explore the relationship between an individual and the environment, and narrate stories related to emotions and growth.

With a keen interest in the visual materials in online communities, Shang Simin has creatively used emoticons in a lot of his works. In his eyes, those wild, undesigned online emoticons represent a form of spontaneous growth. They contain strong emotions and cause enlightening effect, though without intensive decorations. Such quality undoubtedly comes from the vitality of grass-roots culture. He tries to extract this vitality and integrates it into his paintings.

Inna Art Space will launch a solo exhibition themed Bad Water for artist Shang Simin on June 25, 2022, when nearly 20 acrylic paintings on canvas created by him over recent years will be showcased. These works, containing interesting images, present exquisite and flat visual effects. The stories outlined often go beyond the reality, and the peculiar characters render a defamiliarization aesthetic orientation, provoking the search for the metaphorical meanings.

Shang Simin has created a conceptual world named Isle of Pandan in his paintings. As his works unfold, the world keeps expanding. The world can be regarded as a collection of various concepts, reflecting the artist’s understanding of and reaction to the real world. Pandan, a girl with two ponytails, is the main character in this conceptual world. Constantly-changing hair color and two cute little hands popping out of the hair ends deliver an atmosphere of fantasy. In addition, around this girl are a group of strange characters evolved from anthropomorphic animals. These characters help Shang Simin explore the relationship between an individual and the environment, and narrate stories related to emotions and growth.

With a keen interest in the visual materials in online communities, Shang Simin has creatively used emoticons in a lot of his works. In his eyes, those wild, undesigned online emoticons represent a form of spontaneous growth. They contain strong emotions and cause enlightening effect, though without intensive decorations. Such quality undoubtedly comes from the vitality of grass-roots culture. He tries to extract this vitality and integrates it into his paintings.

The exhibition theme “Bad Water” is derived from a common saying “a bellyful of bad water”. The “bad” here is often referred to as a kind of negative emotions. Most often, people are filled with jealousy, anger and hatred, but their awareness of moralities and moral evaluation by others will inhibit the release of these emotions. However, the energy of these emotions cannot be ignored. It will not disappear for no reason; instead, it will be transformed in a variety of ways, including turning into something positive and charming. In Shang Simin’s opinion, the transformation of “bad” is an interesting experience; artistic creation is certainly a wonderful way to transform such emotions into objects/images, and thus a new meaning appears.