Some consider Shanghai to be the ‘new New York’, and so it’s no surprise that the city is all about bright lights. Dutch new media artist Daan Roosegaarde, who’s work plays with the effect of light, already got the clue and created a hub of his office in Shanghai this summer. Roosegaarde’s poetic way of using lighting is also embraced elsewhere in the art scene of Shanghai. Cutting edge art and new media collective Liu Dao takes it a step further, creating refreshing artworks that combine LED lighting with ancient Chinese technique.

written by Esther Muñoz Grootveld

Liu Dao, which translates to ‘Island 6’, runs the Island 6 Arts Centre in M50, one of Shanghai’s most prominent art districts. The collective uses it not only as a production site but also as a gallery, exclusively presenting their work. Frenchman Thomas Charveriat founded the art centre as well as the collective in 2007. He decided to support young Chinese contemporary artists in the midst of the creative boom that came over the city of Shanghai. Charveriat believes that rising commercialism can endanger true creativity, and so he gathered an eclectic group of artists from photography, sculpture, digital arts, theatre, literature and many other fields to join his initiative. He managed to form a true collective of artists, working solely together. The credits for each art piece can be compared to those of a film, involving writers, directors, models, cameramen, technicians, painters, programmers, choreographers and editors. Liu Dao claims that it wants to remove the egocentrism and the drive for fame that can be seen in young artists in the Chinese contemporary art scene.

 

 
The thing that the members of Liu Dao have in common is their interest in human interaction through technology. In most of their artworks Liu Dao creates intimate dialogues, mixing art, technology and science. Most striking is the LED art. Programmed LED lights show bright video animations on a canvas of printed rice paper. Taking photos is useless; it is the movement that makes the works come alive and so interesting to look at. Like in ‘Thin Skin’, in which a woman (that could usually be found in one of Shanghai’s more raunchy bars) dances to a background of a traditional Chinese paper cutting. In this piece, and in many others, Liu Dao manages to bring technology to life and make it sensual and seductive.

 
Esther Muñoz Grootveld is strategic consultant in design and fashion and will be living in East-Asia for the next year.

for further info:
http://island6.org/index.html