Strategies for concealing

Shock and awe - C-Space provokes

C-Space special curator Maria Rus Bojan mounts an exhibition about the popularity of reality TV, and online communities, acting as camouflage that allows viewers to blend into contemporary, mediated surroundings and conceal themselves from the ‘enemy’. This group show consists of photographs, videos, paintings and sculptures subtly hiding desperation, loss and anxiety.

Carine Weve constructs tiny baby shoes out of army combat leaf patterns, implying militarisation at birth. Catalin Petrisor paints simple photo-realistic-style black, white and grey scenarios, with faint horrific acts lightly sketched in grainy pencil onto everyday, banal subject matters.

Emily Bates’s ‘Sea of Trees’ could be a normal forest anywhere on Earth, except for the tiny white squares of paper with writing on them that are scattered about. The photos, taken in the Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, are of what is thought to be the second most popular suicide spot in the world (after the Golden Gate Bridge). The paper signs urge people not to give up hope; to stay alive.

Dr Stefan Tiron and Alexandra Croitoru present us with a fictitious report about Romania’s clandestine programme of psychotronic weapons of mass destruction, including a brochure stocked with photos of secret pine tree antennas and mind-invasion technology purportedly in use during the reign of the dictator Ceausescu.

Xing Danwen shows two prints from her ‘Urban Fiction’ series of murderous or erotic acts taking place in the clandestine corners of city high-rises. Levi van Veluw’s video uses his own face as the topography for a living mountain hosting a moving model train atop his head, mowing through the field of his torso, replete with miniature stop signs and blinking lights. All of these images combine to produce a disturbing show rich with fresh, critical implications. Ellen Pearlman

Until Feb 8 Imagine Gallery, 8 Feijia cun, Yishu gongzuo Shi, Feijiacun, Laiguangying Dong Lu, Chaoyang district (6438 5747/139 1091 7965;www.imagine-gallery.com).Open 10.30am-5.30pm Tue-Sun 朝阳区来广营东路费家艺术工作室8号院