Blogs we like

Thanks to Steve and Arleen for guest blogging last week! They claimed to have had a good time here and we have no reason to doubt them.

When our cousin Andrew Binkley the Photographer found out we were going to Shanghai he gave us a small errand.  He was in Shanghai at one point making photography and left some of his work at the Yuandian Art Gallery. Recently he asked them what happened to his work but they didn't respond to his calls or emails, which left open several possibilities. Among others: they could have gone out of business, they could have sold his photography and mistakenly given the proceeds to another artist, or the art may be unsold on a shelf in a back room somewhere.  It was our job to investigate!

The address Andrew gave us led to a car wash and a half demolished building. After lots of questioning and pointing and wandering we found an agglomeration of small galleries sitting in an old factory. (It apparently produced something very large and heavy and round. All the stairwells were equipped with huge concrete waterslides. See the slideshow.) Liz was chatting up all the security guards and gallery people trying to find Andrew's gallery. When we finally got there, a sign on the door said it was closed for a week! Liz called up the owner's cell phone and had a lovely conversation in Chinese, which I'll try to recreate in English:

That part about the older brother needs some explanation. Liz's family relation vocabulary is limited to "mom", "dad", and "older brother". She thought the latter was most plausible. (Chinese word of the day: ge ge means older brother. Interestingly, younger brother is a completely different word.)

After that little conversation we strolled around some other galleries. We especially liked the Mao-Nixon painting and the R-rated riff on da Vinci's Last Supper.

Here's the slideshow, with pictures of the old factory-turned-gallery, the gutted buidings and carwash, Liz in conversation, and various pieces we liked. Be sure to view it in full screen mode. The button is in the bottom right corner.