"Individual: New Art from Beyond Beijng"

"Individual: New Art from Beyond Beijng" is an exhibition at Red Gate Gallery from May 23 to June 30 2009. Curated by Tally Beck, a Asian contemporary art specialist, it features Liu Dao, Chen Jiao, Wei Yan, Zhang Lulu, Tang Xueting, Hao Liang, Wen Jing and Xie Guoping, 8 Chinese contemporary new artists from outside Beijing, notably Shanghai, Sichuan and Chongqing.

The show celebrates the technical skill of the young artists and their drive to innovate and break new ground in China's art scene in the face of the few conventional artistic movements that have dominated the Chinese art scene for the past few decades. Curator Beck observes, "Changes in the market have set the stage for new voices. It's amazing how these younger artists are so dismissive of the established formulas."

Indeed, the spirit of experimentation is very much alive in the astonishingly diverse collection of art pieces that have been brought together in this exhibition - including mixed media, installations and electronic art. Each piece is stunning example of technical ability and bold, edgy vision.

Liu Dao's LED artwork perfectly encapsulates the essence of innovation in the theme of exhibition. The art collective draws on the human body as an inspiration for its production processes. The blithely moving LED images on the body of the works are a result of a simple yet sophisticated process. Information stored on chips embedded within each artwork is communicated by a signal passing through each LED unit, spreading like sensory information in the delicate framework of the human nervous system. Liu Dao thus brings together the corporeal and the mechanical in a true celebration of breaking boundaries and challenging set norms.