Gallery Crawl

This weekend promises to be yet another scorcher, so get out of the sun and into some nice cool galleries.

And who knows more about cool than the Danes?

The opening of the Danish Faurschou Gallery in 798 last year was rather overshadowed at the time by the splashy arrival of its neighbor Pace Beijing. Now Pace is shuttered, in what is apparently a permanent state of “renovation”, and Faurschou quietly thrives.

Currently they are showing the work of Danish artist, Erik A. Frandsen, in a show enticingly entitled “Frozen Moment Desert”. On hand are contrasting works – in one room floral and verdant forms from the natural world rendered in the coolest steel, in another large format flamboyant paintings taken from photographs.

Meanwhile, across the district at the UCCA, you can wander through an installation by Shen Yuan. Shen participated in the seminal “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition in Beijing twenty years ago and subsequently has spent most of her career in France. Here she returns home to intrigue us with a giant hairbrush and a forest of hairdryers – it’s fun, check it out.

In between Faurschou and UCCA there are numerous possible pitstops. Perhaps most worthwhile this weekend is to catch the last days of the “19 Games” exhibition at the T Art Center (8456 1529). This exhibition is funded by the UN Development Program and Marie Stopes International and brings 19 leading artists, including Zhang Xiaogang, Xu Bing, Cui Xiuwen and Shen Shaomin, together around the question of how people survive and live with AIDS. Sounds depressing, but the works are varied, meditative, sometimes even funny. Take a moment to think and drop in.