Jim’s Terrible City – Ballard’s Shanghai – James H Bollen

Posted: July 26th, 2012 | No Comments »

A rather interesting project I’ve been receiving occasional dispatches about reaches fruition with an exhibition in Shanghai worth checking out I feel…

JAMES H. BOLLEN: Jim’s Terrible City
LI WENGUANG: Fallacy

July 29 through August 31, 2012

VIP opening reception: July 29th, 2012, Sunday, 6-8 pm
Venue: James Cohan Gallery Shanghai
Address: 1F, Building 1, No.170 Yueyang Road, by Yongjia Road

James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present its summer exhibition by two young Shanghai-based artists, James H. Bollen and Li Wenguang.

James H. Bollen’s exhibition features twelve color photographs from his recently completed book-length project, and the title of his debut exhibition, Jim’s Terrible City. The photographs are inspired by the legendary British writer J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), and Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun. Ballard was born in Shanghai in 1930 in what was then known as the International Settlement. Through extensive readings of Ballard’s highly visual fiction, Bollen explores a literary past and heritage of Shanghai with his own painterly photographic language. The twelve images in the exhibition—all sharing a sense of the unreal—construct an urban landscape where time ceases to exist and life becomes like a stage set. In Bollen’s eyes, violence, flight, car crashes, the incongruities of time and life can seem so immediately cinematic, or a like a ghostly glimpse of life experienced by J.G. Ballard while living in Shanghai during the Japanese Occupation. Many of these themes and images can be tracked throughout J.G. Ballard’s writings, where a near-hallucinatory state of mind merges memories of a Shanghai past while continuing to exist in the city’s present.

See samples of the images here

The real JG…

And as portrayed by Batman….

James H. Bollen is a graduate of School of African and Oriental Studies, London University. His work has been shown at the Beach London Gallery, London (2012), SH Contemporary Art Fair, Shanghai (2011) and FotoGrafia Festival Internazionale di Roma, Rome (2010). He works and lives in Shanghai.

Li Wenguang was born in Shanghai. His work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at Stir Gallery Shanghai in 2011; Huating Space Shanghai, Songjiang, Shanghai (2011, 2010); and most recently his work has been exhibited at the Shangyuan Art Museum, Beijing, 2012.

For further information or additional images, please contact Ms. Ivy Zhou at izhou@jamescohan.com or +86 – 21 – 54660825 *602. Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10-6 p.m., Sunday 12-6 p.m., and Monday by appointment.

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