My sofa, Acrylic on canvas, 2013, by Liu Weijian. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The ShanghART Gallery will host a solo show by Liu Weijian, exhibiting more than 20 acrylic paintings he created between 2011 and 2013, from March 22 through April 24.

Li, born in 1981 in Hunan province, graduated from the Shanghai Normal University College of Art in 2005 and lives and works in Shanghai. Typically, his paintings features simple and everyday objects, such as a handbag, a garbage can or a water bucket — the kind of thing we walk past a thousand times and never give a moment's thought.

His acutely observed depictions of these objects add up to a strangely compelling visual language. As the show title "Under the Sun" indicates, Liu bathes each object or frozen moment in sunlight and depicts them in the manner of still life painting, keeping a distance from reality.

Without any supporting context, the subjects are transferred onto the canvas. "They are expressions of a life filtered through memory," said the exhibition curator and art critic Demetrio Paparoni. Every summer, Liu spends two months simply walking down city streets or country roads. He picks a road at random, walks along it, and paints whatever he sees along the way.

Paparoni said Liu manages to catch and subtly reveal the emotions that fill his journeys. In such a double journey of reality and the inner world, the artist "lacks a specific purpose. Instead, they are animated by a tension with something that is not clearly defined, and they find their purpose within themselves", Paparoni said.

Given that these images constitutes the reality of today and offer no clues, it is unsettling to search for hidden meanings or imagine how the subject fits into a wider story and viewers have to make of them what they will.

If you go

10 am – 6 pm, March 22 - April 24, ShanghART H-Space, Building 18, 50 Moganshan Road, Putuo District, Shanghai