Observer’s Guide to What Not to Miss at This Year’s Shanghai Art Week

As Shanghai gears up for its art week, which coincides with the West Bund Art & Design and Art021 fairs, the city’s galleries and institutions are unveiling some of their most impressive shows of the year. With many acclaimed international artists featured, the metropolis seems to be trying to reinforce its status as a vital art hub in Mainland China, and despite recent threats of demolition in the West Bund art district as part of a government redevelopment initiative, the fairs still promise to bring fresh artistic energy to the area. Galleries and institutions are also activating new spaces in other districts, such as the bustling central Bund and the increasingly vibrant Pudong, led by the dynamic programming at Museum Pudong. Observer has reviewed the full lineup of Shanghai Art Week exhibitions and events—many of which open tomorrow—so you know exactly which ones not to miss.

Chinese Artists from the ’80s, Issy Wood and Patricia Ayres at Tank Shanghai

Tank Shanghai, one of the city’s leading non-profit art centers focused on research and experimental programming, has put together an impressive lineup. Housed in five tanks originally part of Shanghai Longhua Airport—one of China’s first airports, decommissioned in 1966—the center sits in the heart of the Xuhui Riverfront along the Huangpu River. Its architectural structure offers a seamless and unique exhibition experience, guiding visitors smoothly from one show to the next.

In the first days of Shanghai Art Week, Tank is opening a curated exhibition, “Remnants & Pictures of the Post-80s Generation: Generational Leap,” dedicated to the first generation of artists who came of age during China’s rapid economic growth. These artists navigated a new framework of globalization, grappling with the tension between capitalism’s pull and the rigid structures of a communist regime. Featuring work by thirty-five prominent contemporary artists born in the 1980s—including Li Liao, Zhang Ruyi, Chen Wei and Cao Yu—the show captures the dynamic exchange between cultural and artistic production and a rapidly evolving society, nationally and globally.

SEE ALSO: Five Must-Visit Contemporary Art Museums in Shanghai

Tank is also presenting a solo exhibition by the acclaimed British painter Issy Wood, “What I Eat In A Day,” showcasing a selection of her smaller-scale works and offering a glimpse into her creative process. Her moody, dark canvases provide cinematic glimpses of body gestures and fragments of humanity, all enveloped in a dusty pall, with a sense of mystery and impending tragedy that makes them both dramatic and captivating. Each object within this cinematic frame is obscured in shadows, appearing as neglected relics or material memories slowly slipping into oblivion yet memorialized in paint.

Finally, in its project space, Tank has mounted a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Patricia Ayres titled “Unrequited Remnants.” Ayres’s uncanny sculptures, ranging from totemic figures and wall-mounted cocoons to amorphous floorworks, evoke remnants of tormented or oppressed bodies. She gradually forms human figures that are both imposing and vulnerable, exposing skin-toned, fleshy folds that hint at emotional burdens and the physical oppression inflicted upon them. Her work draws from a variety of societal constraints, including the ritual morality of Catholicism, the U.S. incarceration system and commercialized ideals of the body in media. These sculptural assemblages function as “matter out of place,” a concept explored by Mary Douglas in relation to dirt: the unconventional, unstable categorization of these convulsing entities invites viewers to see them as both profoundly human and alien.

“Remnants & Pictures of the Post-80s Generation: Generational Leap,” Issy Wood’s “What I Eat In A Day” and Patricia Ayres’s “Unrequited Remnants” are on view at Tank Shanghai through January 19. 

“Another Avant-Garde: Photography 1970-2000” at the West Bund Museum

Located on the banks of the Huangpu River in the heart of the Xuhui Waterfront and designed by British architect David Chipperfield, the West Bund Museum is extending its collaboration with the Centre Pompidou for another five years, following the success of their initial partnership. The exhibition opening on November 8 marks the first large-scale presentation of the Centre Pompidou’s photography collection in China, featuring nearly 200 pioneering works by avant-garde artists from both East and West. The lineup includes pieces by Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Andreas Gursky, John Baldessari, Jin Shisheng, Zhang Huan, RongRong and Song Yongping, with more than thirty other artists. This exhibition explores the essence of contemporary art, celebrating the diversity of artistic expression through photography, reviewing a pivotal 30-year period and highlighting photography’s emergence as a central medium in contemporary art. Organized into ten sections, the exhibition traces the avant-garde history of photography’s evolution from a tool for documenting the artistic process to a recognized independent art form.

“Another Avant-Garde: Photography 1970-2000” is on view at the West Bund Museum through February 16.

Anish Kapoor at Lisson Gallery

In his debut exhibition at Lisson Shanghai, Kapoor presents a series of new drawings and gouaches centered around the concept of the “void.” His intense brushstrokes, rendered in vibrant and visceral colors, trace the tension between the inner and outer worlds, between light and darkness, infusing these works with an epic sense of tragedy. The energetic sweeps of color and nuanced play of shadow and light create a physical, psychological and emotional depth, weaving an interplay between background, foreground, and interiority that suggests an infinite space drawing the viewer inward. Oscillating between the corporeal and the transcendent, Kapoor’s new series reveals both an internal and external landscape, where primordial forces of chaos and harmony engage in a vital dialectic tension from which all creation seems to arise.

“Drawings” is on view at Lisson Gallery Shanghai through January 25.

Ali Banisadr at Perrotin

Voraciously drawing from the entire sweep of art history, Ali Banisadr’s intricate canvases become repositories of the full spectrum of human drama, spanning the physical and psychological, the imaginative and the historically grounded. Chameleonic and seemingly chaotic, his work flows with forms, fragments, and textures, creating fantastical synesthesias of color and brushwork. Banisadr’s process is highly intuitive, almost divinatory, akin to the surrealist concept of “automatic drawings.” Sharing similarities with Max Ernst’s surrealist techniques of grattage (scraping) and frottage (rubbing), he allows mysterious figures and hybrid creatures to emerge from the dense swirls and gestures of paint across both large and small canvases. His paintings are allegorical and symbolic, poetic in their ability to connect with reality while transcending it, tapping into otherworldly and parallel realms. For his debut show in China, Banisadr has created a heterogeneous body of work, ranging from figurative and narrative pieces to more abstract compositions, establishing intriguing connections with traditional Chinese ink painting’s ability to capture transient moments in nature, translating energy flow and atmosphere within and around his subjects.

“Fortune Teller” is on view at Perrotin Shanghai through December 21. 

Zhang Ji and Fu Liang at Hive Contemporary and Hive Becoming

Drawing from the Buddhist notion of “Phowa,” which refers to the moment a person’s consciousness is transferred to enlightenment or a higher state of being, Ji’s new solo exhibition at Hive Contemporary presents a series of interconnected paintings. Ji’s powerful abstractions explore various states of consciousness and intuition, hinting at something deeper beyond the visible surface of reality. Using a meticulous approach to pigments, colors, and mediums such as wax, charcoal powder, and resin, Ji creates layers of complexity that resist direct reference or narrative. As the press release notes, his paintings are neither bound by the laws of “purity and self-criticism” nor confined to interpretations (which, for painterliness, can be a form of superficiality) of any single image. Instead, they remain open to multiple readings and continuous reactivations.

Also this week, Hive is debuting the first solo exhibition in Asia by emerging painter Fu Liang in their space “Hive Becoming,” part of their commitment to supporting young artists. Featuring a dozen new paintings, Liang’s work delves into archetypes and cultural complexes within the human unconscious, which surface through the painting process. Navigating the boundaries of consciousness and subconscious, between control and intuition, Liang immerses himself in textures that evoke a sense of void and suspension. His subjects often appear mysteriously, emerging from dark hues as if surfacing from old memories or a dreamlike state. These visual echoes of personal or collective memory remain suspended between internal and external space, the visible and invisible worlds, as the original physical objects dissolve.

“Phowa” and “Echoes of the Void” are on view at Hive Contemporary and Hive Becoming through December 11. 

“ALCHEMISTS” at Pond Society

Featuring a stellar lineup of major names and rising stars—including Jadé Fadojutimi, Ilana Savdie, Emma McIntyre, Marina Perez Simão, and Daisy Parris—this group show opening at Pond Society during Shanghai Art Week celebrates the transformative power of abstraction. These artists explore innovative ways to make the intangible visible through gestural flows, contrasting paint tides and dynamic tensions. The nine contemporary women artists with works displayed here challenge conventional storytelling, offering fresh perspectives on narrative conveyed through an abstract language of color. They channel energies and sensations that transcend linguistic and symbolic realms, inviting viewers to experience emotion and movement beyond words.

“ALCHEMISTS” is on view at Pond Society through December 12. 

Bony Ramirez’s “100 Rabbits Minus 1” at BANK / MAB Society

For his first solo show in Asia, “100 Rabbits minus One,” Dominican Republic-born and New Jersey-based artist Bony Ramirez embarks on a playful exploration of the relentless yet complicated pursuit of perfection, starting with an investigation of models and values imposed since childhood and often mainly shaped by parents’ expectations. “The idea of reaching excellence, to be flawless, is something we all chase,” Ramirez states in the press release. “But somewhere along the way, there’s always that extra step, that feeling that 100 is never really achievable. This exhibition explores that gap – between how close we come and how far we feel.” In this new series of multimedia work, the artist employs the theme of ballet training to explore the complex emotions behind striving for an unrealistic ideal, between frustration, ambition and desire for perfection that is often beyond human capabilities.

“100 Rabbits minus One” is on view at BANK / MAB Society through January 1.