Until March 20, ShanghART gallery in Moganshan is home to ‘A Pile of Passion’, a mutli-media group exhibition spanning a wide range of dramatic, chaotic, and subtle forms. At first encounter, the gallery seems to be in a state of philosophical and aesthetic disarray, as traditional, and maybe expected, forms – oils, clay, installation, and photographs -- share and compete for space with neon lights, a live bull, rice paper, wire netting, fiberfill, taxis, and leather. Creative “passion” is communicated both subliminally and brazenly, with undeniable wit and humor. Taken as a whole, the exhibition belies the impression that contradiction is at the core of passion, and the creative impetus assumes both lofty and juvenile expression. And so the most enjoyable thing about this exhibit is that it is not pretentious. Viewers are frequently laughing out loud thanks to titles like Tang Mahohong's: ‘Watch out, you may get punched if you shit in open places’. Many of the integral pieces of the exhibit have been provided by the art company, MadeIn, under the direction of local artist, Xu Zhen. It’s vibrant and thought provoking stuff. One of the most arresting pieces at the exhibit is a massive 400 x 250 cm of 3D passionate chaos, entitled ‘Spread B-037’, perhaps a satirical look at the idea of passion, expressed as a mélange of disorder, noise, and vomiting. The piece depicts a man drowning in the pages of a book, dogs marked “right” and “left” fighting, and a man stifling the urge to puke, all wrapped up in orange and with a certain loud and silly sensibility -- passion goes hand in hand with comic futility and confusion. Sounds of acceleration rip through the air as Zhang Qing's ‘Taxi Samba’ loops from the depths of a shaded projector. Zhang also features a performance of a new take on bullfighting. This, however, is a much more exaggerated depiction than that of the traditional “sport” -- a naked man, painted red, dukes it out with a long horned bull. The crowd shrieks with delight and laughter each time the bull charges. Huang Kui’s mouthwatering depiction of ‘Pretty Woman’ combines 2D and 3D space in order to create a sexy yet tawdry image – beauty is perhaps re-orientated as the inspiration of the juvenile fantasies of 12-year-old boys. The folds and creases in the image belie a certain sense that the body is perverted by reproduction and its presentation as a second-hand image, inherited from some kid’s youth. In Shi Yong’s ‘A Bunch of Happy Fantasies’, represented in an installation of neon lights, Chinese characters are written in cursive and upside down. It’s a linguistic challenge, or maybe a challenge to the concept of language itself, to communicate emotion and feeling with syntax and grammar. So go see it -- ‘A Pile of Passion’ at ShanghART. Be prepared to rejoice in an internal frenzy of fears, food, sentiment, and all emotional outbursts, as the thematic topic of “passion” is turned inside out, both celebrated and decried, and depicted, in the very basest terms, as an idea not without conflict and contradiction. *** 'Pile of Passion' is on at ShanghART until March 20.