Throwing light on much ado about nothing

Aged 34, he has a string of solo shows in prestigious museums across the world to his name and an impressive consensus of critical admiration powering him forward.

However, as if parodying all that weighty, concentrated interest, his work is, literally, insubstantial: a deadpan vision of profound flatness. In The 7 Lights, Chan fills the Serpentine with six digital animated movies that are little more than shadow and light.

Projected at angles onto floors and walls, the films, most of them a quarter of an hour long, form awkward geometricshapes, within which black- and- white figures appear, silhouettes, created from paper cut-outs that Chan animatesn digitally.

Trees, people, iPods, phones, cars, a train: all appear within these windows of light, and begin to float upwards, freed from gravity and thus context within the world, as if to heaven.

The upward motion calls to mind the chosen few, ascendingin the period of Rapture that precedes the Second Coming of Christ - but here it is an arbitrary confusion of objects moving heavenwards, turning on its head the human self-importance that drives such dreams.

The apex of nothingness is reached with the final piece: not a film, but a musical score hung on the wall. Here, traditional notes play against a dense pattern of scraps of black paper in an abstract representation of noise or anti-music - just as the silhouette forms represent the absence of light. A subtle but powerful riff on the power of nothingness.

Until 1 July. Information: 020 7402 6075, www.serpentinegallery.org

Paul Chan: The 7 Lights
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA