A new media art exhibition at K11 Art Mall in Shanghai features a new wave of Chinese and French digital art.

The exhibition, Metamorphosis of the Virtual 5+5, comes on the heels of the highly successful showing at K11 Art Mall of Master of Impressionism - Claude Monet.

The new exhibition offers a glimpse of today's art and the future, says Adrian Cheng, founder of K11 Art Mall and chairman of K11 Art Foundation. Metamorphosis features five artists and artists' groups from France and five from China. Curator David Rosenberg is from Paris but has rich experience working with Chinese artists.

Cheng, who came up with the idea for the exhibition, saw a piece by Pia Myrvold titled Video Wall in Venice and was inspired to hold a new media art exhibition. He then brought in Rosenberg to help make the exhibition happen.

Myrvold, 54, was born in Norway and now spends her time living in Paris and New York. Her work on the exhibition at K11 is an expansion of Video Wall - an abstract 3-D animation project that she started in 2010.

"In the contemporary art scene, there is very little new-media art at present. I want to try and make a difference about it," Myrvold says.

She believes new-media art should be the main arena for contemporary art because "everyone is using new media now, in the sciences, economic, medical sectors. Most sectors are driven by digital developments, improving the world in so many ways".

The Monet exhibition attracted more than 300,000 visitors, and made K11, the new art mall, a big name in Shanghai. People have high expectations so "we can only present the best of artworks", Cheng says before the opening of the show.

Metamorphosis is part of a series of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sino-French diplomatic relations, along with another exhibition of contemporary art from China, which K11 Art Foundation will be holding in Paris in October.

The show begins with a large interactive video project by Miguel Chevalier. "He is like the father of digital art in France," says Rosenberg.

Entering the oval, arena-like space of Chevalier's work, surrounded by computer-generated music and patterns, one feels as if he is "diving into the digital world", Cheng says.

Moving through the exhibition, visitors will see Pascal Haudressy's digital rendering of the eponymous human organ, Heart; Caravaggio's original Saint-Francois in Meditation; female artist Orlan's video projection of the Statue of Liberty flayed and in motion, Skinned Liberty; and Xu Wenkai's video installation featuring crystals and rocks.

"I want people to focus on the images I create," says the young artist from Shanghai.

The emergence of new media art is like the rise of a new continent, "but that doesn't mean the old world has to disappear", says Rosenberg, referring to the connection between new media art and traditional forms, such as painting and sculpture.

The new-media art show probably won't attract as many people as the Monet exhibition, but Cheng believes it is more important to create an "eye-opening experience" for audiences.

IF YOU GO

Metamorphosis of the Virtual 5 + 5

10 am-10 pm, until Aug 31.

K11 Art Museum, B3, Shanghai K11 Art Mall, 300 Huaihai Zhonglu (Middle Road), Huangpu district, Shanghai.

021-6440-0379.

Admission: 20 yuan ($3.20).

zhangkun@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/13/2014 page9)