Everything black and white: Gallery 49

Neoclassical architecture, over the top décor, anything goes-make that everything goes-in the visual landscape of Beijing. That's why Gallery 49's new exhibit The Dearth Of Colour, featuring only black and white works by young artists, is so refreshing.

According to gallery director and curator Jennifer Lin, “Black and white is the most essential means in which we perceive the world around us; in that they are respectively the absence and totality of light and colours.”

Bradford Kessler's work “Ladies and Gentlemen”speaks to this sense of substance and inward nature. The installation features silhouettes of human embryos inside black plastic animal cut-outs. Mounted against a white wall, the embryos appear white. Evoking modern interpretations of primitive cave painting and gesturing toward an uncanny mythology, the work also comments on Western discourses of reproduction and genetic engineering. In lieu of any final verdict on human nature, at the most basic level, Kessler's works are simply fun to look at.

Yan Wei's ink on paper series likewise addresses some essence of human nature. In her manga-influenced style, her works feature pubescent girls with lascivious expressions or in compromising positions hinting at bondage. Her neo-Lolitas at once disturb and joke, posing an unavoidable moral debate around the sexualization of children and more broadly, society’s role in conditioning desire.

Other works in the exhibition include a portrait of an ancient, gnarled tree by photographer Matthew Niederhauser, snapshots from the Parisian subway by Sisco, meditative photo-compositions that put the O in om by Andrew Binkley and a triptych by Wolfgang Stiller that challenges the artistic value of chalk and blackboard.

Taken as a whole, The Dearth of Colour embodies a universe of meaning against Beijing's cluttered yet senseless urban and art backdrop.