Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2015 i ArtAsiaPacific

M is for March, money—and madness. The art world is in for a dizzying month of activity including the Sharjah Biennial, sandwiched in between the Armory Show and Asia Week in New York, TEFAF in Maastricht, followed by Art Basel and Art Central in Hong Kong, which close on the heels of Art Dubai and Art Fair Tokyo. Taking a moment to understand how the carnival circuit became so frenetic, this issue of ArtAsiaPacific looks at the personalities who nurture the market, as well as the local conditions that create and sustain dynamic art communities. The Features section presents a poignant tribute to the late Robert H. Ellsworth, penned by curator Alexandra Munroe of the Guggenheim Museum. Ellsworth, who passed away in August 2014, was a legendary self-taught art dealer,…

Just three days before tennis champ Roger Federer won the title at the Brisbane International in early January, the Swiss Maestro was seen relaxing and taking in works by Australian Indigenous artists and Japan’s “national treasury” [sic] Yayoi Kusama at the Queensland Art Gallery. Did those dotty canvases and installations— closely resembling bouncing tennis balls and nets—have a hypnotic effect that helped channel Rog’s energy into his 1,000th win? Mucking around Thailand was Andreas Gursky, known for his epically scaled photographs of things very large and very small, who was exploring the country with his 4 x 5 inch format camera in tow. Perhaps working on a new series on the murky waters of the Chao Phraya River or something less abstract, such as the country’s political topsy-turvy reality and…

“I bought this unit having only seen a small section—it used to be a storage facility and was completely filled with tea when I came to inspect it.” Despite these indeterminate beginnings, Alan Lau takes obvious pleasure in his space in the Wong Chuk Hang factory district, on the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. From where I stand, faint sounds from nearby machinery churn softly. “They make cakes next door,” he explains. Since purchasing the unit, the 40-yearold collector has given it a more homey atmosphere and renamed it “Yellow Bamboo,” after the literal translation of Wong Chuk Hang, meaning “yellow bamboo trench” in Cantonese. Working with a local architect, Lau has restored the original concrete walls, giving the room an air of Brutalist-chic. He is quick to point…

Australian David Walsh is a professional gambler, art collector, iconoclast and autodidact with an acute grasp of philosophy. He is also an eccentric who, in 2011, opened the AUD 171 million Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, capital city of Australia’s southern island state, Tasmania, and home to Walsh’s idiosyncratic collection of antiquities, Australian modern art and international contemporary art. Charming yet enigmatic, Walsh has an aging-hippy persona and a look to match: red shoes, jeans, paisley-print jacket and wiry gray hair that reaches his shoulders. Our meeting takes place 43 stories high in his Sydney penthouse with 360-degree views over the city and harbor, one of the fruits of many years of successful gambling. MONA is either a rich man’s toy or a rich man’s folly—it…

A AUSTRALIA 4A CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART 181–187 Hay Street, Haymarket, NSW 2000 » www.4a.com.au » info@4a.com.au » (tel)+61.02.9212.0380 » (fax)+61.02.9281.0873 » 11am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » Closed on Public Holidays We are a non-profit organisation. Our program of exhibitions, talks and lectures is dedicated to the contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific and Australian and Asian cultural dialogue. ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY 245 Wilson Street, Darlington, NSW 2008 » annaschwartzgallery.com » mail@annaschwartzgallery.com » (tel)+61.2.8580.7002 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Fri) » 11am–5pm (Sat) 185 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000 » (tel)+61.3.9654.6131 » 12pm–6pm (Tues–Fri) » 1pm–5pm (Sat) INSTITUTE OF MODERN ART 420 Brunswick Street, Brisbane, QLD 4006 » www.ima.org.au » ima@ima.org.au » (tel)+61.732.525.750 » (fax)+61.732.525.072 » 12pm–6pm (Tues, Wed, Fri and Sat) » 12pm–8pm (Thurs) Since its establishment in 1975, the Institute of Modern Art has…

DORYUN CHONG Doryun Chong is the inaugural chief curator at Hong Kong’s future museum of visual culture, M+. He is currently co-curating a solo exhibition of Tsang Kin-Wah for Hong Kong’s participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale. Previously, Chong was a curator at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. (see FEATURES) ANTONY DAPIRAN Antony Dapiran is a writer, photographer and partner of the international law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has lived between Hong Kong and Beijing for almost 20 years. In his legal practice, Dapiran advises on corporate and capital market transactions and consults with galleries, artists and dealers on art market issues. (see FINE PRINT) HO SIN TUNG Multidisciplinary artist Ho Sin Tung is…

AMRITA SHER-GIL UNTITLED (SELF-PORTRAIT) 1933 Oil on canvas, 45.8 x 33.2 cm. Courtesy Sotheby’s New York. The year 2014 ended with the major auction houses achieving record-breaking sales. Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale in New York on November 4 earned USD 422.1 million, marking the company’s highest total ever for the category. Similarly on November 12, Christie’s brought in a jaw-dropping USD 852.9 million at their Postwar and Contemporary Art sale, their largest grand total in history. In addition to the financial successes, other headlines captured attention when Sotheby’s CEO Bill Ruprecht was asked to step down on November 20 after 14 years on the job. In an even more surprising turn, just weeks after Ruprecht’s resignation, Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy also announced his departure after a four-year stint.…

1 Kazuyuki Takezaki JAPAN Japanese multimedia artist Kazuyuki Takezaki’s landscapes are deeply personal recollections. Featured in the exhibition “The Way of Painting” (2014) at Tokyo Opera City Gallery, the works combine paintings and drawings—the artist’s own personal interpretations of a given place— with found objects connected to each site, from fishing gear and umbrellas to windows and doors. This imaginative practice, Takezaki has said, is inspired by the limitless possibilities produced by a combination of the natural and the artificial. The resulting works defy classifications of medium and temporality; the three-dimensional pieces are not confined to a single moment, but many. In 67 V (2013), a used, worn-out door and window frame, which previously occupied specific locations and offered distinct passages and views, now frame neatly aligned strips of Takezaki’s…

Engineers are problem solvers in the broadest sense. And for Wiyu Wahono, a mechanical engineer by training, the desire to think about the how and why of things is a major impetus behind his collecting of art. It is likely that more people in the plastics industry have seen Wahono’s collection than those in the art world. Unlike most collectors, Wahono—who stands out in flashy, fashionobsessed Jakarta in his minimalist black trousers and white shirts—keeps most of his art in his office. He displays little work at home and keeps a minimum in deep storage. Instead, he proudly exhibits his diverse holdings, which encompass painting, kinetic sculpture, interactive new-media art, photography and video, throughout his company’s headquarters, which sells plastic-processing machines that produce a range of items from small tubes…

At 10 a.m. on a bright, cold January morning, it is eerily quiet among the cast-iron buildings and snow-covered cobblestone streets of New York’s SoHo. Six stories up, there is a different picture: Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner’s light-flooded, 375-square-meter loft is abuzz with frenzied activity. Packing tape flies off an industrial dispenser with a zip, the hammering of crates echoes through the high-ceilinged space and a crew of art handlers weaves purposefully throughout while Thea navigates the chaos asking who needs coffee. With fixed concentration, four handlers painstakingly lower into a crate a diptych by Danish-born, Berlin-based artist Henrik Oleson composed with parts from the artist’s personal computer mounted on Plexiglas. Spotted by the Wagners at a 2011 show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art organized by…

Zhong Ling Ling has written seven books—five of which are already out of print. One of the remaining two was published by Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des Lettres and included in an issue as a free add-on. The last can often be found in the “special discount” sections of Hong Kong book fairs. So cheap and so valuable at the same time: such states of sheer contradiction are Zhong’s domain, and also what serves as the basis for her writing. Zhong is an author who produces so little work that any creative activity is met with a flurry of attention. In 2014, she wrote Born to Be, and her novel before that, Rose Rosary, was written 17 years ago. Literary events that she attends are packed with anxious and…

In 2005, after almost 25 years of collecting art, my wife and I established Dslcollection after our first trip to China. For this project, we knew from the beginning that we did not want to just amass artworks. We wanted to embark on a “collecting project for the 21st century,” with a cultural perspective that reflects two tectonic changes that we are currently experiencing: the rise of China as a superpower, which is altering the face of the world, and the digital era that is transforming humanity as a whole. Today’s collectors have endless opportunities to show their collections to the public, from traditional methods such as museum loans to the post-internet model of sharing on social media or through virtual exhibitions. Yet most private collections are still in the…

The plaza around the 14th-century, Genoesebuilt Galata Tower teems with tourists, stray dogs, police officers and local merchants who still use the area’s many dilapidated buildings as workshops. Melancholic by night and touristic by day, the district is an unlikely location for the home of one of Turkey’s most prominent art-collecting couples—Istanbul’s wealthy tend to live far from the city center, along or overlooking the meandering Bosporus—but right across from the Galata Tower is the art-filled, six-story townhouse of Fusun and Faruk Eczacıbaşı. I recall from a previous visit to the Eczacıbaşıs’ home that behind the plazafronting doors is a double-height, marbleclad foyer, with a pile of Ai Weiwei’s porcelain crabs in the center, a Jake and Dinos Chapman diorama tucked in the corner and Pınar Yolacan’s photographs of women…

“I’ve become Ulysses. I can’t make my way back!” Chen Bo-Wen invokes the tragic plight of Homer’s hero with a swelling laugh, as he recounts his treacherous yet rewarding adventures in collecting. Born, raised and educated in Taiwan, Chen is a medical doctor by profession and runs his own family clinic. His early encounters with contemporary art stemmed from sheer curiosity. Taipei’s cultural offerings flourished in the 1990s with exhibitions, especially of European modern masters, and it was during the same time in the mid-1990s that Chen began frequenting galleries and museums. His initial forays into acquiring art were marred by mercenary gallerists and dealers, who spoke of artworks as mere commodities and investment opportunities. The lack of professionalism he encountered was so discouraging that, at one point, he even…

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito spoke to his Japanese subjects for the first time via radio broadcast. The shock of hearing the venerated emperor’s voice— high-pitched with stilted enunciation—relaying the news that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces, was enough to sear the moment on the memories of the war-exhausted populace. Two weeks later, General Douglas MacArthur, the strapping supreme commander of the Allied powers, landed at Atsugi Airfield with 350,000 United States military personnel in tow. His task was the punishment and “rehabilitation” of Japan: disarmament and demilitarization, economic and social reform, and the remaking of society on the model of American-style democracy, capped off with a formal peace treaty and alliance—in short, the total transformation of a country that had been in the throes of…

On January 20, Sotheby’s Hong Kong sold at auction an exact replica of a work by the French street artist known as Invader. Entitled Alias HK_58 (2014), the two-meter-wide ceramic-tile mosaic depicts cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey from a popular American animated series. It was originally installed by Invader on an exterior wall in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley neighborhood and later removed by local government authorities on unspecified “safety grounds.” The final price paid? HKD 1.96 million. Alias HK_58 is not the first notable work of art to be whitewashed from Hong Kong’s streets only to return later—and with a significant price tag—at auction. Hong Kong artist Tsang Tsouchoi, better known by his pseudonym, the “King of Kowloon,” covered walls, lampposts and utility boxes across Hong Kong with his unique…