A Star From the Mist
Shang Chengxiang
商成祥
Production date
2013
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
180.5 x 180.5 cm
Notes
Shang Chengxiang records his dreams, and the dream-like states of an active imagination: his hyper-realistic oil and acrylic paintings depict unsettling, surreal images. Influenced by Surrealist master, René Magritte, Shang merges his memories of the post-industrial landscape of abandoned factories and obsolete machinery in his hometown of Shenyang with references to dystopian science fiction, lunar landscapes and psychedelia. In particular, Shang is interested in psycho-analytic theories of the unconscious mind and the interpretation of dreams. His paintings are disturbingly ambiguous; each canvas is an encounter with the uncanny. ‘A Star from the Mist’ developed from the ‘Cloud Path’ series, originally inspired by a dream of a rainbow-coloured forest, which he struggled to recreate in paint. Thinking about the elusive quality of dreams and the ephemeral nature of clouds and smoke, he combined the two to create these strange juxtapositions of the everyday and the imaginary.
Accession number
2018.067