'Man With Good Taste' explores perception in the digital age

As part of its Emerging Artist Program, Fotografiska Shanghai is going to present "Man With Good Taste," a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Li Chenchi, between June 19 and August 9.

Centered on the artist's signature aesthetic of "in-betweenness," the exhibition is a response to the current era of image proliferation, accelerated visual consumption, and fragmented attention.

Through a diverse spectrum of cross-medium visual creations, the artist constructs a meditative field for slowed-down observation and intensified perception – one that exists in the liminal space between the mundane and the sacred, personal memory and grand history, and poetic tenderness and structural fragmentation.

While taste is commonly regarded as a mere matter of personal aesthetic preference, Li proposes that aesthetic judgement is never individual or arbitrary.

Instead, it is a profound evaluation system embedded within social stratification and visual politics.

In aesthetics, the binary distinction between "good" and "bad" is not a simple reversal of values but rather a description of an illusory, fleeting, and threshold-like moment of ambiguity.

This unique liminal state serves as the core thread running through the artist's practice and constitutes his primary artistic reflection in resisting fast-food-style visual consumption.

Experimenting intricately with texture, tone, imagery, and material interplay, Li has developed a highly malleable creative methodology that merges the expressive languages of painting, photography, and printmaking.

His works adopt layered pigmentation, superimposition, and collage techniques, moving beyond straightforward narrative representation.

Each piece traverses dual boundaries – the ordinary and the transcendental, individual recollection and historical narration – transcending flat documentation to construct a contemplative visual field that slows down and redirects the viewer's gaze.

Showcasing the artist's diverse experimental approaches to borderline aesthetics, this solo exhibition invites viewers to slow down, shift their perspective, and rediscover the profound power of images: the hidden poetry within fragmentation and the quiet divinity embedded in ordinary life.

If you go:

Date: June 19-August 9

Admission: 80 yuan/US$11.6 (weekdays), 100 yuan (weekends & public holidays)

Venue: Fotografiska Shanghai

Address: 127 Guangfu Rd 光复路127号