Xu Zhen The merry prankster of Shanghai, Xu Zhen makes slyly provocative art out of the foibles of the party state. When a team of Chinese mountaineers revised the official height of Mount Everest in 2005, lowering it by four meters, he produced an elaborate ‘‘documentary’’ of himself scaling the summit with a group of friends and then displayed the mountaineering paraphernalia from this Photoshopped expedition — along with a papier-mâché pyramid purported to be Everest’s missing peak. For the Shanghai Biennale in 2004, he sped up the clock atop the British Racing Club building (which now houses the Shanghai Art Museum) so that during the exhibition the hours passed in mere seconds. His piece ‘‘OKmyclub’’ (shown here) took the form of a widely forwarded e-mail message that solicited funding for him and a gang of thugs to travel around the world ‘‘beating up’’ celebrities and politicians. He now oversees a curatorial space in Shanghai’s Moganshan gallery district as well as an online community populated by young Chinese hipsters. (photo Song Chao) (courtesy www.nytimes.com)