Shanghai artist Maleonn's (Chinese: Ma Liang) White on White  is at 18 Gallery this month.  

Maleonn hunted through flea markets for photos, ID pictures and personal letters - relics of other peoples' lives - for his installation. The name, White on White, references old photographs fading to white - the literal loss of memory. 

"Those people in the old photos were forgotten by their relatives, so they were thrown away. It's very sad." Maleonn said.

Some of the photos are displayed in operation plates - the kind surgeons use for organs when they cut them out of a human body.  A sense of loneliness presides over the exhibit. The somber installation contrasts its creator's cheerful demeanor.

"Theme and content are very important for me. I always hope my photography is like a poem, composed of several simple words, but showing extensive intent," he said.

Maleonn has been studying fine art for more than a decade. He spent eight years working in film. And has been focused on making his own art since 2004.

White on White will be at 18 Gallery from now until April 1.  

Painter and illustrator Emilie Record is kicked off her Shanghai debut "Hang Me Up" exhibit tuesday night at The Source.  Her studio-residence is conveniently located across from the editorial office. We were made awares via window manifesto:

We made the long, arduous journey across the alley to have coffee and cookies with Record in the funky home she shares with her fiancee, jazz musician Quentin Baquignon.

Canvasses are stacked against their living room walls, next to jugs full of paint brushes and a piano in the corner. Yeeep, definitely artists living there. 

Hang Me Up is all about trophy women. It's not feminist, Record said, it's about hunting for affection. She'll be showing the same series next month in Berlin.

Originally from France and trained as an architect, Record has devoted herself full-time to painting and design for about a year. She's been in Shanghai three years. Before, she lived in Vancouver and worked as an architect. But she first started exhibiting her art at age 10.

Hang Me Up will be at Source March 9 - 21. Checkout the work on Emilie's website.

Hang Me Up @ The Source, Opening 7:30 pm Tues., March 9

158 Xinle Lu, near Donghu Lu 

徐汇区新乐路158号 

Our new series looks at the people who run Shanghai's art market - the curators. Our second curator in the series is 31-year-old Briton Andrew James who opened Andrew James Art at 39 Maoming Bei Lu in March 2007.

Why did you open your gallery?
It was the natural choice for me, previously I was the gallery manager of an auction in London and wanted to open my own business one day, the gallery was the perfect solution.
 
And why did you choose this location?
I used to live on the corner of West Nanjing Road and North Maoming Road and walking around one day I happened to find this disused colonial Mansion. Location-wise it’s perfect, walking distance to most of the bigger hotels and two of the busiest shopping streets.

What sort of art do you normally show?
All the artists I exhibit come from either China, Japan or Korea.  It has to be contemporary art and the medium of the work can be anything from oil paintings, video, photography or sculpture.

Name a few of the artists you’ve shown in your gallery...
We had a solo show for Sheng Qi in 2008 whose work has been collected by New York’s MoMA. Later this year we will have a solo show for Lady Aiko who is a New York graffiti artist who is also the founding member of the Faile graffiti group. We’ve also shown works by leading Chinese artists such as Zhang Xiaogang and Wang Guangyi.

Take a ride with the acclaimed China chronicler

Peter Hessler made an immediate name for himself in 2001 with River Town, the story of the two years he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a Sichuan school and learning Chinese. The outstanding journalism about China (in places like The Atlantic and The New York Times) that followed that clear-eyed and moving book confirmed that he was a real voice to be reckoned with, someone willing to try to get a handle on China with a refreshing balance of open-mindedness and rigor. By the time he came out with his ecstatically reviewed second book, Oracle Bones, a look at Chinese history with his signature attention to ordinary people in undistinguished places, he was already the China writer’s China writer, and probably the most read among expats. Below he talks about his eagerly awaited new book, Country Driving (reviewed here), the story of his journeys all around the nation.

We've seen you describe yourself as shy, yet in Country Driving you strike up conversations with huge numbers of strangers. Were these interactions more difficult than you make them seem?
In the first part of the book, I drove alone across China, with an empty passenger's seat.  I picked up hitchhikers along the way, and in a situation like that a conversation is pretty natural.  It's easier than talking on a train or somewhere else, because there¹s a lot of privacy.
Also, I¹m not very shy in Chinese. I wrote about this in River Town, how I realized that I have a different personality in the different language.

In Chinese I¹m less guarded and probably more jokey, as people generally respond well to that.  A lot of this comes from my Peace Corps experience, when I was one of two foreigners in Fuling. The pressure was very intense at the beginning; there was an enormous amount of attention on me.  I was either going to learn to deal with it and interact with people; or I would have to retreat to my apartment and spend two years alone.  It took a while but in the end I became comfortable with most situations.