Artist sees surreal, sci-fi Shanghai

BEIJING, July 4 -- If you really want to talk about culture, you will end up with nothing" - no one will be interested, says artist Ricardo Arena, whose exhibition "Four Times a Tree" is underway at Shanghai's 1918 Art Space. The Italian artist from Milan is showing intriguing, playful works based on his three visits to Shanghai over the past two years. He says they're not profound, not even meaningful, just interesting images. The show features eight computer-graphic prints, five collage works and one video. They depict scenes straight out of science fiction - Shanghai's ring roads overgrown with strange plants. The humorous artist has given long, strange and meaningless titles to his works, and to the exhibition itself. For example, "He Communicated His Intentions through the Mutation of the Carbon-14 Radiation Lying within... [read full story]