Contemporary art from China has, over the last couple of years, become a real force to be reckoned with. It has galvanised curators, collectors and gallerists around the globe to pay heed to both a vast market and a very deep font of talent. An endless parade of gallery and museum shows, along with record-breaking auctions, confirms that this is no passing phenomenon.Fortune Cookie Projects has been long dedicated to bringing the West to the East, with shows of young contemporary Americans, video art, master painters such as Polke, Lupertz, Baselitz, Penck, Kirkeby, Immendorff and Schnabel. Now, with “Selections from China,” it has brought the East to the West. Fortune Cookie Project’s focus is on new media: photography, video, digital, installation and any kind of art that doesn’t have a Mao or a big painted head.The contemporary art scene has been devouring paintings of Mao wearing rouge, pretty young Pioneer girls, babies in Mao suits and any kitsch a Chinese painter can fob off onto the endless parade of Western art buyers. By bringing truly original, ground-breaking conceptual work to new audiences, we aim to demonstrate that there is work coming out of China that not only addresses the dynamic changes occurring in the Middle Kingdom, but that can also communicate with audiences using an international vernacular.Zhou Xiaohu, who can be seen in the upcoming Tate Liverpool exhibition “The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China,” takes the stance of a non-critical observer of events and relationships. His paintings, stop-action animations and clay-mation works are viewed through the filter of another medium, usually television. There’s a wryness to his approach that makes his work immediately accessible, but leaves the viewer unsettled by its very subtle message.Wang Qingsong, heavily featured in the travelling survey of contemporary Chinese photography and video, “Between Past and Future,” tackles history and the myth of history in his large-scale stage sets. With imagery ranging from Chinese folk culture to contemporary society, there is an opulent extravagance that addresses the shifts from a Confucian society to one of rampant consumerism, with all the inherent frustration and despair along the way.Performance artist Zheng Lianjie, whose work was included in last year’s Allbright-Knox exhibition, “The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art,” creates events that convey a sense of ritual and poetry, underscoring the sense of loss of history and culture. The documentary photographs of these events take on a formalist beauty of their own, becoming stand-alone works of art.Dong Wensheng’s work, in contrast, is a more contemplative view of changes occurring in society and an individual’s role within. The themes are not as grand as in Wang Qingsong’s or Zheng Lianjie’s works, but the quiet intimacy of both photographic and video work is filled with enough quirks and challenges to engage the viewer.Cheng Ran’s two works, Family Capitalism and Lightsource, while clearly disparate in both pace and imagery, underscore the duality—the yin and yang—of life and experience that is the very essence of not only a Confucian or Taoist view, but of a universal understanding of balancing opposites.Chen Wei’s large format photographs present narratives or, rather, suggest narratives, as the stories they imply cannot be fully explained. There is a sinister air of mystery here that carries much of the same haunting and disturbing qualities as the works of David Lynch or Gregory Crewdson.The six artists showcased in “Selections from China”—Zhou Xiaohu, Zheng Liangjie, Wang Qingsong, Chen Wei, Dong Wensheng and Cheng Ran—exemplify the seriousness of purpose of a new generation that eschews voguish pop imagery for something deeper and more universal. A common thread between all of the work exhibited here is an underlying edge that seeps through the high production values. The superficial humour of Zhou Xiaohu, the theatricality of Wang Qingsong and the poignancy of Zheng Lianjie all mask a darker vision of contemporary life. The three younger artists, Dong Wensheng, Cheng Ran and Chen Wei, take a more head-on approach, where the tensions and fears of a society in transition are more palpable and much more ominous.