artnet News introduces five of the best shows to see in Shanghai this month.

Tsang Kin Wah, The Fourth Seal – HE Is To No Purpose And He Wants To Die For The Second Time (2010).
Photo: Courtesy of the artist and K11 Art Foundation.

“Metamorphosis of the Virtual 5 + 5” at chi K11 Art Space
The chi K11 Art Space has held some impressive exhibitions since opening on the third floor basement of a Huaihai Road shopping mall. Past shows include works by Hong Kong–based photographer Michael Wolf and a Monet exhibition that drew over 350,000 paying customers. The current exhibition, impressively produced with innumerable projectors and sensors, brings together five Chinese and five French new-media artists. Highlights include Feng Mengbo’s Vector Drum, an animation composed in real time on an early ’80s gaming machine called a Vectrex, and Zheng Da’s Virtual Portrait—Invasion Project, which reads viewer’s movements to allow them to virtually destroy buildings, a ubiquitous scene in China’s ever-evolving urban environments.
“Metamorphosis of the Virtual 5 + 5” continues at chi K11 Art Space until August 31.

Video still, Chen Tianzhuo, Picnic.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist and BANK.

“Strange Days” at BANK
Two solo shows are running concurrently at BANK during August. One is Wang Jiaxue’s morbid oil paintings of humans with empty eye sockets and tentacles in place of arms. The other is videos, photographs and rugs by polymath Chen Tianzhuo, who also directed a bizarre performance for the exhibition opening that featured two performers tearing up a leg of raw mutton and one of them inserting a long lavender-ponytailed butt plug. Chen’s work is a kind of mood board for a conceptual art opera he’s working on that will feature rapping little people covered in pseudo-religious tattoos of the artist’s invention.
“Strange Days” continues at BANK until August 31.

Jiang Pengyi, Intimacy No.5 (2014).
Photo: Courtesy of ShangART Gallery.

“Jiang Pengyi” at ShanghART Gallery
Jiang Pengyi, a photographer as concerned with manipulating sources of light as he is with how he captures them, is exhibiting works from three series at ShanghART’s warehouse H-Space. “Dark Addiction” has him trapping fireflies in a camera obscura, mapping their time inside in chaotic lines and dots of light. In “Intimacy” he has created photographed fluorescent paper to create images that resemble minimalist paintings—artworks that have evolved from his experiments with fluorescent candle wax. “The Suspended Moment” sees Jiang discover photographic readymades, water trapped in movement when reservoirs in northern China freeze over.
“Jiang Pengyi” continues at ShanghART until August 15.

Shan Feimang, Waking from Hibernation (2014).
Photo: Courtesy of M97 Gallery.

“Waking From Hibernation” at M97 Gallery
Like Jiang, Shan Feiming is a photographer exhibiting work from three series. There are similarities between the two artists’ works, with the “Silent Distance” featuring moths caught in the firelight at a funeral vigil for his grandmother, and the white balance of the moonlight tweaked to create large planes of blue and yellow suggestive of abstract painting. “Jungle” also features photographs that are not “correctly” shot, while deliberately underexposed images of southern Yunnan emphasize the inscrutability of the province’s jungles. “Waking from Hibernation” features similar material shot differently, with hugely detailed tangles of foliage exposed perfectly and framed so that the brilliant blues of a lake behind break through, as if intended by some ecological textile designer.
“Waking From Hibernation” continues at M97 until August 24.

“Gas Station 7: Great Rejuvenation” at Vanguard Gallery.
Photo: Courtesy of Vanguard Gallery.

“Gas Station 7: Great Rejuvenation” at Vanguard
“Gas Station 7: Great Rejuvenation” at VanguardGas Station is an annual series in which Vanguard fuels new works by upcoming artists. This time, Chinese video artist Mu Jin and German new media artist Tobias Rosenberger collaborate on a video installation that tussles with cultural stereotypes beginning with 19th-century British novelist Sax Rohmer’s villain (and famous mustache style) Fu Manchu.
“Gas Station 7: Great Rejuvenation” continues at Vanguard until August 24.