After this month’s big fancy art fairs, the even bigger Shanghai Biennale, and a host of shows by incoming superstar artists, here’s a handful of refreshingly smaller-scale exhibitions well worth checking out this weekend.

*** First is Tian Xiaolei’s futuristic solo, Overclocking opened last weekend as the first in a series of four shows taking place at the Goethe Institute and exploring issues of post-humanism. Not necessarily as apocalyptic as it sounds, curator Rebecca Catching explains: “Post-humanists would say that man is more than the sum of his parts, his gadgets, his tools, his networks, that these “prostheses” are actually a key component of the human experience.” Tian Xiaolei, An Unfinished Poem With that in mind, young digital media artist Tian Xiaolei presents a series of three new VR-based games inviting exhibition-goers to navigate a human avatar around a technology-saturated environment. Essentially an immersive computer game, players wear a VR headset, earphones, and use a joystick to pick up points, do battle with adversaries, and explore virtual worlds. Tian Xiaolei, Creation Unlike more standard games, though, Tian Xiaolei’s call on art-related imagery -- Necessity, for example, features Venus de Milo whose lost limbs have been replaced with multiple robo-arms to create a quasi-religious figure. Others invite the user to curb the hybridization of technology and human desire with “uterus sticks.” There’s also a series of computer-generated screen-based works further exploring these motifs: trippy and surreal, they’re populated by human-robot composites with an imagined super intelligence that’s not a little menacing… Hsuan-Ying Chen @ Banshe Art Lab Taking a totally different, altogether more familiar approach is Taiwanese artist Hsuan-Ying Chen, who taps into existing human environments in a solo opening this weekend titled Domesticate. Her whimsical paintings take inspiration from IKEA catalogues and the home to question to what extent our physical environs, furnishings and mod cons mirror our own aspirations - as well as those projected on to us. That grandly opens Saturday 26 November at Banshe Art Lab from 2-6pm. Details here. Hsuan-Ying Chen Before or after, head to UNDEF/NE in M50 Saturday afternoon for the opening of photography exhibition, Forest of Imagination. Co-organized with photography platform Go East Project, that sees nine young artists explore issues of man and nature, space and memory, violence and depression, and identity. Taking a pleasingly expanded approach to its medium of choice, the show includes photobooks, installations, moving image and performance. Artists are Ronghui Chen, Yang Zhou, Diwu Yangyang, Yuxin Jiang, Chaoyu Li, Yuxi Tan, Leslie Zhang, Qingshan Wang and Zhao Qian. For a sneak peek, the exhibition launch takes place Saturday 26 November at 4pm. Jiang Yuxin @ UNDEF/NE As ever, for everything else check the art calendar.