Gu Dexin at Gallerina Continue - Until Sep 6

Rotting meat is this artist's signature dish

Until September 6 Galleria Continua

Less sophisticated than country kids at a county fair, the contemporary art world is always fascinated by a one-trick pony.

Veteran Beijing artist Gu Dexin is not a exactly a one-trickster, but he has resorted to the same trick with enough frequency to be mistaken as one.

He first turned European noses at a satellite show of the Venice Biennale in 1995, when he dumped three hundred kilos of raw beef into three glass coffins set in a local casino.

In the heat of summer, poisonous gases from the rotting meat quickly forced officials to clean up the show. This shy enfant terrible of the art world went on to astound European audiences in a succession of shows, placing raw meat or fruit in public places and letting them rot.

Up until this year, when he installed raw pork at the Legation Quarter, the formula has served him brilliantly. Part of the force of this current show is the absence of decay – resulting in a sterile and odourless silence.

A large square in the main space reads, in Chinese, ‘We can go to heaven’.

But around the walls, Chinese characters surround us, repeating the words: ‘We Killed Men, We Killed Women, We Killed the Old, We Killed the Kids, We Ate Humans…’

Above this cheerful mantra, placed in the high windows of the space, time-lapse videos depict white clouds forming in a blue sky. It’s as if we have actually arrived in paradise.

Gu has not stated the source of his inspiration. But we infer that whenever we get to heaven – if we do – memories of our collective sins will poison our permanent bliss.

Abandoning his antics of rot and stench, Gu has presented us with the most serene and disturbing show of the year. Stacey Duff