Weltschmerz

Chris Gill / Terence Lloren

December 4 2010 – January 16 2011

Having just hosted the World Expo, and with other tragedies, Shanghai is suffering Weltschmerz a kind of world weariness, a langour, a melancholy pain, indescribable, but there nonetheless.

Terence Lloren and Chris Gill, two long term Shanghai based foreign artists have created a project to address this issue, that will take visitors on a journey through their interpretation of the Shanghai psyche. Lloren has recorded several thousand hours of sound, and Gill has painted several tens of thousands of centimeters of canvas. Combined together into a unique landscape that reflects the city, with visual and sound elements that are intended to offer some insights, to meditate what it is to be in Shanghai, what it is now, and what it was before, who we are and where we are going.

As we enter this period of post expo ennui, it is a good time to rediscover the city, now all the parachutists, hustlers, diplomats, hookers, grifters and showboats have left town. There were some nice people too. Both artists, though aliens, have an ongoing conversation with the people of Shanghai. Lloren records Shanghai dialect, the sounds of the city and the changes of the seasons. Gill works mostly in visual imagery, sometimes frighteningly accurately predicting the future, and also musing the changes in people's mental and physical makeup.

Using portable recorders and sometimes elaborate on-location recording sessions, Terence LLoren creates a snapshot of the current life and reality of present day Shanghai. His personal works are more documentary than art, and can be considered as somewhat esoteric, relating specifically to Shanghainese or individuals with a particular interest in field recording and sound art. Lloren emphasizes the concept of time in his recordings, resulting in long-term projects lasting several years or months in order to capture the true candid character of a location over several seasons or events.

Lloren was born in Washington, D.C. in 1978 and studied as worked as an Architect before going back to school for audio engineering in NYC. When not working on his own projects, Lloren freelances as a sound recordist as well as an Interior Design lecturer. The recordings for Weltschmerz are 6-hour continuous recordings made in the Shanghai municipality with hidden tape recorders randomly placed throughout town. No two days will be alike during the normal operating hours of the gallery until the end of the exhibition."

Chris Gill has a degree in Politics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the People's University of China. Gill also studied and worked as a printmaker in the UK. He has developed a visual language commenting on the social environment in China since 1992, when he first established a studio at the Old Summer Palace. Since then he has exhibited widely in China, with galleries such as Red Gate Gallery, Eastlink and Shanghart, and has exhibited at Shanghai Art Museum and Duolun Art Museum. He also works as a writer, currently he is China correspondent for London based The Art Newspaper. Gill's work has a certain resonance with people who have experienced the ongoing changes in China, to which he is bearing witness. He incorporates language (Chinese and English) a very varied mix of materials, as well as photography, sound, video, installation, and numerous other elements into his work.