文章预览
Go almost anywhere in China and you’ll see street after street of garish, bright-red signs. They’re widely derided as ugly and mass-produced, so why can’t cities get rid of them? Five years ago, the Chinese artist Huang Heshan began “construction” on a digital metropolis of the future. Huang’s virtual urban space, which he dubbed Too Rich City, is unmistakably a creation of our hyper-industrialized age: Towers loom so densely that there’s no skyline to speak of, while aircraft glide past in an echo of the cyberpunk cityscapes found in “Ghost in the Shell” or “Blade Runner.” But take a closer look, and the generic futurism gives way to something surprisingly rooted in a specific space and time. Saturated red plastic shop signs and unruly banners for hotels and foot massage parlors infest the facades like a fungal bloom — emblems of Too Rich City’s thriving street life and a nod to the artist’s hometown in the southern province of Guangdong, a chaotic yet thri
………………………………
