Culture Beat: Domestic survival reality show premieres

Promotional material for Crush Over Photo: Courtesy of Tencent Video

Domestic survival ­reality show premieres 

Domestic competitive survival reality show Crush Over has premiered on Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video.

The show depicts talents from different fields, such as fencing, snowboarding, taekwondo, freestyle swimming, mixed martial arts and other professional sports fields trying to survive in the wilderness. 

There are also several Guinness World Record holders, winners of the three major gold medals in the world acrobatics Grand Slam, as well as retired firefighters who are all certified at the highest ability in their respective fields.

Crush Over has invited Hong Kong action actor Donnie Yen as host. He will accompany the audience to witness a 21-day trip during which participants will experience seven rounds of extreme difficulties derived from real life.

At a recent press conference, producer Bai Hongyu talked about the original intention of the show. "This is a very exciting attempt. The creative team achieved a perfect fit in the competitive survival genre," he said. 

Director Yan Min explained the creative reason for this "non-celebrity variety show." "I always believe that the future of variety shows are those in which the main roles are non-celebrities." 

"In this era of individuality, focusing on non-celebrities is also a very important direction that we will keep focusing on in the future," said Qiu Yue, the show's producer.

 

Exhibition 'Edges' on display in Shanghai

Contemporary artist Yang Yang is holding a solo exhibition, Edges, at the Aurora Art Museum in Shanghai.   

The exhibition features Yang's recent mixed-media paintings on canvas, which proclaim the contemporary representation of abstract painting: Mixed media is not only a means of artistic expression, but also an entryway to cultural cognition that leads to an iterative global civilization.

In this solo exhibition, the artist fully mobilizes the non-functional space of the back and frame of the canvas, allowing the color field and brushstrokes to explore a panoramic new perspective of history.

Obsessed with the study of murals, Yang found that similar visual symbols appear cyclically on rock walls and in patterns during different times in various regions. 

This ancient art is scattered in regions including Northwest China, Central Asia, India and Europe, but these works have experienced different degrees of loss. 

In his artistic career, Yang also cares more about the "destruction history" these losses represent. Therefore, on top of the large area of layered paint, Yang intervenes with lines and introduces unstable textures formed by biological and chemical reactions into the picture, trying to reproduce traces of human destruction and natural erosion.

The exhibition will run until November 12.