Liang Shuo

Liang Shuo is no stranger to taking a transformative approach to space, having filled Kunsthalle Baden-Baden with cascading waves of wood for his 2017 show there. For this exhibition, “Scenery,” Liang continues this macro strategy, arranging landscapes around a meandering spiral path constructed from metal and plywood. This setup prevents visitors from immediately seeing works in their entirety, lending a durational aspect to the paintings, some of which are long horizontal scrolls. Liang further intervenes in traditional Chinese landscapes through irreverent traces of contemporary life that intrude into the paintings.

The Scroll of the Great Mian Mountain, all works 2019, is the first piece on view and also the longest. Initially, the half-complete handscroll resembles a standard modern take on traditional landscapes, acrylic paint replacing ink in depictions of bucolic streams and peaks. But step a few paces forward, and weird details emerge: ancient warriors and literati converse with dinosaurs, and later on horror movie monsters and modern buildings built into cliffs pop up. Ikea curtain holders provide support for two other works, including Trash Can of Five Days in a Cave, which features a mountain tourist site’s strangely shaped garbage bins hovering in speech balloons of lurid pink smog.

Liang conceives the exhibition as a form of wòyóu—literally “roaming the mountains while lying down,” a concept dating to antiquity in which literati would view landscape paintings as a means of armchair travel. Yet these paintings also make clear that the idealized premodern world this would evoke is gone: not only industrialized, but also filled with kitsch pop culture. Reaching the center of the spiral, viewers might grow slightly disoriented in search of an exit. The structure verges on gimmickry, but fortunately things remain understated, the show’s different elements coalescing to bring the viewer on a vicarious journey through vistas at once natural and post-industrial, idyllic and bizarre.