Muskegon, Museum of Art

Xuhong Shang: A Paradise Up in the Air

Extended through January 3, 2010

 

Painter, photographer, and installation artist Xuhong Shang will create this exhibition exclusively for the Muskegon Museum of Art. Using images from his ongoing “World Airport” series and objects commissioned from artisans in his native China, Xuhong Shang has constructed an installation that explores the uneasy dualities of vision and reality, meaning and metaphor. He is interested in the ways in which we perceive our environment from a standpoint of reason and logic versus imagination and intuition, and the resulting impossibility of a truly impartial, objective evaluation of the world around us. Visitors to the installation will find themselves immersed in an artificial environment created from landscapes existing in the outside world and from objects suspended away from the gallery walls.

Xunhong Shang was born in Shanghai, China. He received a BFA in painting and drawing from the Shanghai Teachers University in 1984. He also holds an MA in painting and drawing from Illinois State University and an MFA in painting from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He currently teaches at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Learn more about Shang and his work at www.xuhongshang.com.

RIGHT, from top:

"Butterfly" installation object

Airport Series #3, digital photograph on archival paper, edition 25; part of A Paradise Up in the Air installation

Installation in the Wiener Gallery at the Muskegon Museum of Art