Sookoon Ang and Susanne Winterling

Over the last three months, Berlin-based Susanne Winterling and Singapore-based Sookoon Ang have been working in studios on the top floor of Shanghai’s Duolun Museum of Modern Art. Despite the loud bustling of the prosperous metropolis, the two artists have found a niche for their very personal contemplations. Both explore what might be called a girl’s world: In their dual show, Ang presents flowery, melancholic pencil drawings, black-and-white paper models, and animated videos that look as if they were shot in an old dollhouse; the soundtracks recall the tinkling of an antique music box. As if to suggest that our so-called reality is a wasteland of visual-information overload, the artist points us toward an illusory parallel sphere. Winterling, on the other hand, takes a purer approach. Her insistent camera follows the uniformed schoolgirls of Shanghai as they go through the motions of basketball or badminton. Homing in on the individual members of sports teams, she allows us to see the traces of each girl’s singular personality. Thanks to her meticulous observation, we are confronted with an intimate picture of the confusions of adolescence, in which the girls appear to be both objects and subjects of a continuous search for identity.