LU CHUNSHENG::::
born in 1968, Changchun, China
lives and works in Shanghai

Lu Chunsheng is one of most original artists of today’s dynamic chinese art scene. In his work, he explores the mysterious effects created by a rapidly changing world—a world filled both with phenomena that he “can hardly understand” and with intense, uncertain, and uncanny scenes suspended between movement and stillness, silence and noise, violence and peace, banality and eccentricity, and normality and extraordinariness. Deeply inspired by experimental films and music, he has created a number of movies, often with extraordinarily long and mystic titles, both to unveil and remystify the secret of human productive and communicative activities. Realized in China and the UK, the series The History of Chemistry I and II (2004 and 2006) is the latest and the most spectacular achievement of his exploration of such a familiar but remote world. As the artist himself puts it, “modern chemistry is derived from ancient Western alchemy. Pacific Asia today is like a big alchemist’s workshop; that’s why I selected this title for my video.”