Artist’s pandas express pessimism

A Ferris wheel with a cluster of colorful pandas stands on Jinzhu Road.

It's not another carnival, but rather an installation for Yuan Kan's "Allergy for Tomorrow" exhibition at SPSI Art Museum.

Inside the museum, a desolate and melancholic ambience wafts over the space, as if doomsday is coming. About 1,000 emotionless white pandas conjure up several scary scenarios.

The young sculptor aims to reflect the inner side of humanity through the pandas.

"There is a famous saying, everything will die in order to be reborn, and I like this saying," Yuan says. "These personified animals cannot escape their fate, just as we humans witness the process without any control."

The highlight of the exhibition is groups of small white pandas sitting on the staircase leading to the museum's second floor. The pandas have blank facial expressions, as if their souls are empty.

"This exhibition is quite pessimistic, perhaps I am a pessimistic person due to the dramatic changes of the natural environment and our surroundings," Yuan says. "Although pandas are popular because they are cute, I use them to refer to something different."

Yuan says the pandas represent urban people, or to be more precise, the living conditions of depressed urbanites.

For example, the work titled "Titanic" features a big sinking boat with groups of small pandas struggling not to fall off. Some are on the floor, broken into pieces.

Xiao Gu, vice director of the Shanghai Sculpture and Oil Painting Institute, says: "This exhibition breaks the stereotype of traditional sculptures by combining installation, space and video.

"But I really hope the artist's vision of tomorrow does not come true."