Cao Fei

In the last couple of years the Beijing-based artist Cao Fei has been building eerie simulacrums of modern Chinese society within virtual-reality games like Second Life. But in her latest show she works in real space, with all its complexities and restrictions, and engages older forms of entertainment and fantasy. Her photographs and videos are now populated by shadow puppets, skateboarders and children’s television characters instead of avatars.

The show centers on two short videos, both haunting. The three-part “Shadow Life” dramatizes folk tales, festivals and bits of political philosophy with silhouetted hand-puppetry. In the sequence called “Transmigration,” peasant figures move through a forest of raised forearms; in “Dictator,” animals are strangled and trees bulldozed. Western viewers may not catch all of Ms. Cao’s cultural references but will grasp the playful and sinister implications of her medium.