Most avant-garde art shows may be difficult to understand or appreciate, but the "Second-Hand Reality" exhibition in central Beijing's Today Gallery seems especially entertaining.

With their installation work of 10 hounds running and growling on 10 walking machines, one facing another, artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu attracted most of the attention at the opening of the exhibition. The work - entitled "Controversy Model" - mocks the debate among media outlets controlled by different interest groups.

The exhibition runs until October 16 and features installations, performance art, videos, photographs and paintings by 28 young Chinese artists.

Curated by gallery director Zhang Baoquan and independent curator Gu Zhenqing, the exhibition has a theme like that of the Hollywood movie "The Matrix" - that is, it questions whether we really feel the world in which we live.

Gu said: "The media set up a special, carefully manufactured reality. This second-hand reality has cut us off from true reality, replacing it with a limitless number of information sources."

Following the overall theme, artist Yin Xiuzhen has installed a beautiful, spectacular work entitled "Weapons." More than 100 model television towers, made with bamboo poles and plastic basins and wrapped with colourful cloth, hang horizontally from the roof to the ground. Sharp knives are attached to one end of the poles and thus the television towers are turned into weapons.

With the participation of many active artists and the two curators' mastery of various art forms, the exhibition stands out among the many avant-garde art shows during the current Beijing Biennale, with creativity both in the works themselves and the way the exhibition has been curated.

However, some visitors complained that the exhibition was "more like a funfair than an art show."

(China Daily September 29, 2003)