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The 800 Show creative park used to be the People's Electric Machine Plant. [Shanghai Daily]
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A vintage electric machinery plant is crackling with current ideas as Shanghai's newest creative park, 800 Show. It throws open its doors for a two-week-only contemporary art show.
Shanghai has more than 300 creative parks and hubs, most of them in vintage factories, and the latest is 800 Show, a high-end extravaganza in a sprawling old electrical machinery plant in Jing'an District.
Before the high-end design and other tenants move in to the sprawling compound - it covers 20,000 square meters - a free public art show is welcoming visitors in a huge 4,200-square-meter space, its spectacular main hall.
The entire renovation is visually stunning. The art space itself is one any gallery would envy, so enjoy it now.
The address is 800 Changde Road, hence, the name.
The show "Rebirth" that opened on September 11 will run through the end of this month.
In many commercial parks, the creative company work goes on largely behind closed doors and the public doesn't see a lot. Other creative spaces, such as 1933 on Shajing Road in Hongkou District and Bridge 8 on Fuxing Road W., house smaller businesses, galleries, studios, open spaces, stages and other places where the public can visit.
When it officially opens for business in October, 800 Show will house high-end creative companies in art, design, advertising, film, fashion, architecture, music, IT, and other fields.
The exhibition "Rebirth" features 13 young Chinese contemporary artists working in many media, plus installation and performance art.
The title signifies both the rebirth of Chinese contemporary art and the rebirth of the factory buildings, some dating back 70 years.
"We wanted to find a common ground between architecture and art," says Curator Zhang Bing.
"The exhibition explores the concept of 'value' as in the changing value of historic buildings and the changing value of art. This is especially relevant today as Chinese contemporary art has gone through a period of over-valuation, and young artists are trying again to find the real value in art," Zhang says.
Highlights include Hu Jieming's installation "Altitude Zero" that invites spectators to look through a ship's porthole, half below the waterline of what is supposed to be the Huangpu River. Drifting by are flotsam and jetsam that once were valuable - posters, shoes and household items.
