Fun with frogs and frivolity

• Source: Global Times
• [09:26 August 02 2010]
• Comments

Batman and Robin by Paperina. Photo: Nick Muzyczka

Colors are vivid and engaging, but there is nothing that holds the work together. Impressive as it is to have created something substantial in the one day it took the artist, it is hard to think of Battle of the Eyes as anything other than a bigger and more beautiful version of something that might be scrawled on a blackboard by schoolchildren.

When asked how she devised her Shanghai-created works, Paperina was candid about her methodology: "I don't know, I came here and had two canvases and wasn't really sure what to draw. Believe me, I really didn't know. I just started with the eyes and then created the UFO scene around them. It just went piece by piece."

Relaxed and unaffected by the admission that her work has absolutely no pretentions in terms of deeper meanings, the artist responded to the suggestion that she used human eyes as her topic because she was in a bizarre and unfamiliar environment with a good-natured, yet slightly indifferent, shrug: "Yes, maybe it's some kind of Freudian thing happening. Maybe I chose this theme because everyone seems interested in my blond hair."

While many of the lighter pieces can be evaluated very quickly, the exhibition does contain a few works with enough detail to encourage contemplation. The Global Times particularly enjoyed one series of manipulated photos which uses the lids of paint cans as canvases.

Each is a swirling mess of different colored paints with a central image in the middle of the lid. These images range from a slightly confused looking pig with a Nazi symbol etched on its forehead (again, for absolutely no reason) to Batman and Robin kissing.

The exhibition's curatorial statement offers the following: "Just like writing a text message, Paperina's work is a reflection of new means of communication, short yet striking, and always getting straight to the point."

While "straight to the point" may actually miss the point, it is interesting to think about to what extent artistic output will be affected by the increasingly rapid and data-dominated state of contemporary existence, with information being communicated in previously unheard of quantities, but with less time for analysis and evaluation.

Date: Until September 12, midday to late daily

Venue: 18 Gallery

Address: 4/F, Bund18, 18 Zhongshanyi Road East 中山东一路18号4楼

Admission: Free

Call 6326-8099 ext 3001 for details