This November, Shanghai kicks off with an illustrious art week as the global art community gathers for Art021 (November 7–10) and West Bund Art & Design (November 8–10), two major fairs that have brought together international galleries and local institutions to the city for over a decade. To help navigate this year’s art week, our associate editor Louis Lu has compiled a list of the best galleries and exhibitions to visit across the Chinese megacity this month.

Sep 20–Apr 6, 2025
Rindon Johnson
Best Synthetic Answer
Rockbund Art Museum

Known for his multidisciplinary practice, American artist Rindon Johnson’s language-based work investigates how the effects of capitalism, climate, and technology construct our realities. His most comprehensive institutional presentation in Asia Pacific to date, “Best Synthetic Answer,” is an extensive project that examines the fluid expanses of the Pacific Ocean. The exhibition features 18 new works across five floors (some of which will be rotated throughout the duration of the exhibition), including a newly commissioned video installation, Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing… (2024), which simulates a real-time, seven-month journey from Johnson’s birthplace—on the unceded territories of the Ohlone people in San Francisco—to Shanghai.

Oct 26–Jan 5, 2025
A Cloud in Trousers: Painting Today
West Bund Museum and Pond Society

“A Cloud in Trousers: Painting Today” is the first collaboration between the West Bund Museum and Shanghai’s Pond Society. The exhibition convenes 23 works by artists from different generations and backgrounds that explore the structural possibilities of painting—one of the most traditional and, some might say, conservative art forms—in the current post-medium condition.

Nov 2–Jan 4, 2025
Bony Ramirez
100 Rabbits Minus 1
BANK Shanghai

Dominican American artist Bony Ramirez presents his debut solo exhibition in Asia at BANK Shanghai, showcasing a collection of paintings and ceramic sculptures. The exhibition title, “100 Rabbits Minus 1,” is a playful examination of the elusive nature of being perfect: a relentless pursuit of the number 100—which represents both a sense of wholeness and an unrealistic ideal—and the haunting feeling that perfection is often, if not always, just beyond our reach.

Nov 6–Jan 12, 2025
Shuang Li
Distance of The Moon
Prada Rong Zhai

“Distance of the Moon” is Berlin- and Geneva-based artist Shuang Li’s first solo institutional show in Asia. Deeply rooted in the contemporary digital landscape, Li’s work comprises performance, interactive websites, sculpture, moving images, and multimedia installations. Drawing on the artist’s personal experience growing up in China during the infamous one-child policy, the exhibition features new works that explore the complicated relationship between mother and child, as well as the dilemma of communication in today’s highly mediated reality.

Nov 6–Dec 21
Ali Banisadr
The Fortune Teller
Perrotin

Marking Ali Banisadr’s debut in China, the Tehran-born artist presents his solo exhibition at Perrotin Shanghai. The exhibition showcases 11 paintings that weave together intricate abstractions and mysterious visual symbols. At once vibrant and elaborate, subdued and enigmatic, Banisadr’s work blends otherworldly scenes with hybrid creatures, reminiscent of surrealist dreamscapes.

Nov 6–Feb 28, 2025
Patricia Ayres
Unrequited Remnants
TANK Shanghai

Drawing on the concept of “matter out of place” by British anthropologist Mary Douglas, American artist Patricia Ayres presents her solo show, titled “Unrequited Remnants,” at TANK Shanghai. The exhibition showcases various sculptures enmeshed in gunk and residues while adopting anomalous forms, exploring themes of the body, social constructs, and identity.

Nov 6–Jan 19, 2025
Issy Wood
What I Eat In A Day
TANK Shanghai

Fur coats, silk shirts, high heels, pearl earrings, and leather handbags—these everyday objects and symbols of consumerism pervade American artist Issy Wood’s body of work. Her solo exhibition at TANK Shanghai, “What I Eat In A Day,” features a collection of small-scale, but equally ominous and disquieting, paintings that showcase the intimate fragments of the artist’s daily life. Blending photorealistic depictions with an eerie atmosphere, her work explores themes of fetishism, desire, and value through myriad objects and pop culture references, often revealing the psychological undertones of contemporary material experiences.

Nov 7–Dec 17
ALCHEMISTS
Pond Society

Inaugurating Pond Society’s new Shanghai space, the group show “ALCHEMISTS” presents the works of nine contemporary artists that seek to challenge conventional storytelling and representation. Referencing Paulo Coelho’s eponymous novel The Alchemist (1988), the exhibition highlights the transformative power that bridges narrative and abstraction, the intangible and the visible.

Nov 9–Feb 16, 2025
Yin Xiuzhen
Piercing the Sky
Power Station of Art

Curated by art historian Wu Hung, the former power station-turned-institution presents a solo exhibition of Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, titled “Piercing the Sky.” Known for her site-specific installations and sculptures made of used or recycled items such as clothing and domestic objects, Yin’s work functions as a sculptural documentation of personal memories in a rapidly globalizing and homogenizing world. Over ten large-scale installations are on display, including the eponymous steel-frame work, covered in cloth, that connects a Volkswagen Santana, a handheld tractor, and a Boeing 747 aircraft model with daily life objects.

Nov 9–Jan 5, 2025
All The Images Will Disappear
ShanghART Gallery

Curated together with Philippe Pirotte, the co-artistic director of the 2024 Busan Biennale, the group exhibition, “All The Images Will Disappear,” references a quote by the French writer Annie Ernaux. Featuring 11 artists across various environments and mediums, the show explores the tension between memory and recollection, reflecting on how meanings shift in an increasingly fragmented world.

Louis Lu is associate editor at ArtAsiaPacific.

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