Many years of bad art, bad photography as well, has generated a notion that photographers are artists who cannot or would rather not draw or paint. It is an impression that is dispelled time and time again, of course, by artists who move confidently between those disciplines and more.

The artists in this exhibition are not taking the easy option either. Behind the photographic displays in this exhibition are stories of hard labour, enormous amounts of preparation and exemplary command of new technologies, such as Adobe Photoshop. Methods and techniques aside, the resulting work is a daring array of social commentaries on a fast changing China. The current financial turmoil inevitably has raised questions about the economic health of China the global supplier, that omnipresent 'brand' in everyday pursuits of ordinary people in both the West and the East. But while it may yet be early to detect signs of a major spillover of the financial troubles, there is plenty more for artists to reflect upon and use as material for potent works. The threat to China's environment, for instance, posed by profit-driven and perhaps ill-thought-through industrial proliferation, the urban sprawl and that old refrain, 'westoxication.' It is hardly surprising that the post-Mao generations sometimes feel that whatever escaped the juggernaut of the brutal and brutalising Cultural Revolution now risks being consumed by the advancing armies of globalisation (read: westernisation) and 'socialist capitalism' -- plus whatever else springs in their wake from within or outside China.

It is a mistake however to assign artists political roles or to read in their interpretations tidings of ominous events current or imminent. To the credit of a cautiously liberalising government, Chinese artists are able to step forward and make their statements, some grandiose, others naive, still others cynical if not patently negative. All this was unthinkable only a few years back. But how much more is permissible? No one knows, so in creating works loaded with social comment Chinese artists are being, well, artists and not necessarily testing the waters of tolerance, as journalists tend to do. It is creative licence, risk-taking and personal initiative all rolled into one coherent yet tentative whole and it is frankly, quite awe-inspiring and refreshing. The surprise is that so few in the West seem to be noticing, even when works such as these make it to large and sumptuous, albeit somewhat discreet, venues such as the Red Mansion. Maybe they will, soon or late.

The three artists present for the opening, Xu Changchang (Street Scene), Jia Youguang (Skin of the City), and Liu Jin (Lost Paradise), spoke with feeling of happenings around them.* But as visual artists they did not have to. They had their pictures to speak for themselves. The 'mixed maze' of the exhibition title, itself a mixed metaphor of a sort, perhaps best understood in the spirit of a Chinese proclivity for embellishing what is already well-defined, is effectively invoked in the artists' individual takes on themes close to their hearts. A curatorial statement warns darkly, "China's contemporary art is at risk of disintegration, unless a multitude of widespread copycat imagery is eliminated as patrons grow tired of their faddish conspicuousness. It is at this time, when history comes to a critical impasse, that the moment has come for new artists to seek fresh expressions to portray their perspective, and find a way to escape the maze." This is part rhetoric, part well-meant wishfulness and quite apt, too, in today's financial turmoil. It is essentially a clarion call for what is known in the world of finance as 'a correction.' As with financial markets, a correction of this sort is almost always impossible to predict, but is almost always prefigured to possess curative properties. But, in contemporary Chinese art, how can we be sure what is broken and what needs fixing? And how can we ensure authenticity by mentoring or stage-managing change? We shall see anyhow. If Chinese art communities, artists and art critics in particular, are unhappy over the splurge of copycat art and its inanities, they should take a closer look at western contemporary art markets, where less is more virtually by the hour.

The works in this exhibition certainly warrant a closer look from artists, art educators and curators, not only because of their substantive content and visual appeal but also because of the intellectual vigour of the artists' response to colossal change, one the like of which has not been witnessed in the West for a very long time.

Xu Changchang's commentary on violence, Street Scene, achieved by shooting through the back of a photograph and then photographing the perforated image from the front, is an alarming tease for the viewer. Liu Bolin's variations on Hiding in the City are startling, imbued with humour, and deliver the message of anonymity and invisibility with contemporary clarity, even as the theme well predates urban congestion and occurs as far back as One Thousand and One Nights, not forgetting various scriptural interpretations. The notions of camouflage no doubt bear other resonances for those touched by the long arm of the law, whatever the context or locale,

Yang Yongliang's fun-packed highrise structures, evocative of Sacred Mountains and set in mock classical landscapes, are also playful in their use of corporate logos masquerading as vermilion seals on hand scrolls. Embedded in his classical mountains are stacks of cranes and skyscrapers, the bane or boon (depending on one's outlook) of present-day Shanghai. Jia Youguang's cage-like depictions of ordinary people doing ordinary things while trapped inside Sixties-style rectangular structures, as in Skin of the City, illustrate well the crushing humdrum life to which denizens of a metropolis, in this case Beijing, can often be reduced. This is similar to devices used in other artists' work. The difference is that Jia lets his people be as they are, instead of indulging in scandalous or other unusual behaviour, and offers instead the incongruity of shifting perspectives, bodies scaled somewhat out of proportion to their confined spaces, The overall effect is deeply unsettling and cleverly designed to disorient the viewer.

Looking at Liu Jin's naked angels, as in Lost Paradise, the first thought is of the artist's resourcefulness in securing consent of the participants to shed all and don, instead of fig leaves, little white angel wings -- a quintessentially western (or rather more accurately Judeo-Christian-Islamic) idea of an object transplanted on quintessentially East Asian personae. The intention, Liu Jin explained during the interview, is to illuminate an absurdity that, on a given day, may encompass any range of experiences in modernising China, be that dislocation or displacement, acquiescence or denial, or multiple conflicting realities. Liu Jin's angels perform other roles, too, reflecting upon the insanities of modern life and a David vs Goliath encounter between personal realities and those looming over us in seemingly benign but relentless projections of power.

The artists in the exhibition belong to a growing community of practitioners across East Asia who, schooled in some of the finest academies, see transition to the new media, including manipulated photography, as a natural progression. But few of them are content to let go of their passion for innovation. For them, what the camera captures signals only the beginning of a journey of discovery.

MIXED MAZE: Five contemporary Chinese Photographers: Jia Youguang, Liu Bolin, Liu Jin, Xu Changchang, and Yang Yongliang. Curated by Dr Chunchen Wang.