Art spotlight: Digital dreamland

Last update: June 26, 2009 - 1:00 AM

DIGITAL DREAMLAND

Continuing: With her petticoat skirt, fuchsia flats and flower-bedecked anklets, petite Chinese artist Wang YanShu looked much younger than her 24 years at the recent cocktail opening of her "Dreamland" photo show in Minneapolis. She had flown in from Beijing a mere two hours earlier but was charmingly fresh as she explained, through a translator, that her fanciful pictures "try to capture my childhood memories" and are, she hopes, "a bridge between dreams and reality." A recent graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, YanShu has digitally fashioned a youthful fantasy land in which a girl soars through a marvelously pure blue sky, sails paper airplanes, gazes at a distant Ferris wheel, cavorts among Easter Island's statuary, reaches for the moon, unravels a ball of yarn and nibbles watermelon in a sea of bubbles. With their cotton-candy colors and unspoiled innocence, her images have a winsome purity of heart reminiscent of Maxfield Parrish illustrations. This is YanShu's first solo show and her first trip outside her homeland. We wish her sweet success. (Ends Aug. 8, free. Burnet Gallery, Chambers Hotel, 901 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. 612-767-6900 or www.chambersminneapolis.com.)

MARY ABBE

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