POWER STATION OF ART, Shanghai, China

After a morning of the former French Concession, a short taxi ride took us to the former Expo ground by the Huangpu River for an entirely different side of Shanghai. Opened in 2012, Power Station of Art is China’s first state run contemporary art museum. Like London’s Tate Modern, the 440,000 sq.ft art museum is housed in a former power station. We spent about two hours at the art museum.

Upon arrival at the grand hall on the ground floor, we were immediately astounded by the gigantic piece of installation art that involved a life-size train carriage and a number of mounted animals. The piece belongs to French-Chinese artist Huang Yongping (黄永砯) as the centerpiece of his exhibition, Baton Serpent III: Spur Track to the Left. On the upper floors, through a retrospective exhibition marking his 60th birthday, we got to know about the magnificent works and tragic life of Datong Dazhang, a Chinese artist from Shanxi Province active in the 1980s and 90s, and eventually committed suicide in the year 2000. With vivid posters, drawings and videos illustrating renowned architect Bernard Tschumi’s design philosophies, we spent a brief time full of architectural thoughts at Tschumi’s exhibition, Architecture: Concept & Notation. The last thing we saw before leaving the museum was In the Name of Architecture, a design exhibition by Atelier FCJZ encompassing the studio’s ideas on architecture, fashion, lifestyle, and graphic design.

Built in 1985, the Nanshi Power Station was turned into the Pavilion of Future in 2010’s Shanghai Expo, and subsequently converted into an art museum by Original Design Studio.

Today, the Power Station of Art has become a prominent cultural venue in Shanghai.

The life-size train carriage of Huang Yongping’s Spur Track to the Left.

Huang Yongping’s Spur Track to the Left.

Other installation by Huang Yongping’s on the ground floor.

Huang Yongping’s Baton Serpent on the second floor.

View of Huang Yongping’s Spur Track to the Left from the third floor.

Huangpu River and the former Expo ground as viewed from the museum’s outdoor terrace.

Outdoor terrace of the Power Station of Art.

Greatly under valued and seen as a social dissident during his lifetime, Shanxi avant-garde artist Datong Dazhang (大同大張) lived a harsh life in the 1980s and 90s as an artist who was way ahead of his time. Entirely self-taught and self initiated, Zhang works ranged from installations, photography, performance art, and drawings.

Datong Dazhang’s Questioning the Weight of Scales.

Datong Dazhang’s The Fear of Math, where pig heads were arranged in an abacus arrangement.

Prohibited from showcasing his art because of political issues, Zhang continued to make art during the 1990s and documented a number of performance arts with zero audience.