July 12 to August 25, 2007

Morono Kiang Gallery is pleased to announce its second exhibition, Unpredictable, featuring the work of photographers Chen Wei and Jin Shan. This will be the first time that works by these emerging artists have been shown in the U.S. The exhibition will be on view from July 12 to August 25, 2007. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 12, from 5 to 9 PM, coinciding with the Downtown Art Walk.

Since 2001 there has been a sudden rise of a new generation of photographers from the southern region of China who are using their cameras to create enigmatic narratives and staged dramas that are often sinister and wholly unpredictable.

Chen Wei was born in 1980 in Shanghai and now lives in Hangzhou. His photographic images are idiosyncratic narratives that take us into a deeper realm of context and make us question what is going on in the captured moment of an ostensibly ongoing drama. These images are imbued with mystery—dark shadows conceal unknown elements—and they make us want answers.

Chen Wei is also a sound artist and the co-founder of 2pi Records, an independent experimental label based in Hangzhou. In 2005, Chen and Jin Shan performed as the multimedia duo Livescope.

Jin Shan, born in 1976, is also based in Hangzhou. He produces not only sound work, but video and photography as well. In this exhibition he will be showing photographs and video from his Junkman series; these images of men who collect scrap material from a vacant lot where junk is dumped are staged narratives that comment on China's disposable and rapidly changing landscape. His work comes from a raw impulse to create and comment on his immediate surroundings.

The newly opened Morono Kiang Gallery has approximately 3,000 square feet of exhibition space on the ground level of the historic Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles. The gallery promotes contemporary art—focusing on Chinese art from the last decade—and will host retrospective shows of recognized artists' works, as well as the work of emerging artists.

Catalogue available.