In the mannered world evoked in the best-known films and video installations of Yang Fudong, people don’t speak much, perhaps because they have nothing to say. Instead, they preen and posture, as if posing for the still photographs they also appear in. A moody, attractive bunch, they tend to dress up, get together, and mull things over in silence: nonetheless, one believes they have a lot on their minds. In their evening gowns and well-cut suits, they glide effortlessly through a contemporary world of penthouse apartments and cocktail parties and an imaginary, gilded era of interwar Shanghai. Yang’s first solo show in Beijing brings together two large-scale installations that form the exhibition’s core, as well as a selection of black-and-white photographs related to Yang’s five-part film cycle Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest (2003–2007). In doing so, the exhibition highlights Yang’s tendency to favor highly stylized atmospherics over conventional narrative structures, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach when applied to multi-channel video works. Visitors entering ARTMIA Gallery (located just opposite ShanghART’s Beijing space) first pass through a dim anteroom, empty except for a series of paragraphs decorating its dark walls at equidistant intervals. Bringing to mind a wayward …