Innholdsfortegnelse for Sep/Oct 2015 i ArtAsiaPacific

For the September/October issue of ArtAsiaPacific, we look at artists who extend the vocabulary of their given practices—through the use of a specific material or by adopting a range of strategies and styles, both old and new—to communicate their ideas, often in novel, unexpected ways. We begin with New Delhi-based Bengali artist and poet Mithu Sen, whose graffiti-inspired painting I Cunt Imagine (2010) is featured on our cover. AAP contributing editor Jyoti Dhar considers the power behind Sen’s surrealistic imagery and text-based practice. Exploring universal notions of gender and beauty, Sen employs a variety of means, from watercolor paintings and collaged readymades to video and spoken-word performances. As Dhar notes, “Fearless, vulgar and antagonistic, Mithu Sen’s work has a way of stopping you in your tracks.” Similarly challenging expectations, although active…

A satirical graphic novel by a local illustrator has sparked the latest debate over censorship in Singapore, a city-state torn between aspirations for artistic-hub status and unyielding political and moral censorship laws. One day before the May 30 release of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Malaysian-born, Singapore-based comic artist Sonny Liew, the country’s National Art Council (NAC) retracted a SGD 8,000 (USD 5,800) grant on the grounds that the book “undermines the authority or legitimacy of the Government and its public institutions.” Due to what the NAC declared “sensitive content,” the publisher of the 316-page parody, independent Singapore-based Epigram Books, must return the financial aid it was awarded in January 2014. Last year, the council conferred upward of USD 4.1 million in awards to dozens of projects…

Each year, the ceaseless competitive cycle of topping last season’s sales records keeps auction houses hunting for bigger and better treasures. In the first half of 2015, auction results have already sent market observers spinning. In New York, at Christie’s evening sale on May 11, it was Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O’”) (1955) that made headlines with an astronomical going price of USD 179.3 million, making it the most expensive work ever sold at auction. Though neighboring Sotheby’s failed to reach such a lofty peak, it too scored records for artists such as Los Angeles-based painter Mark Bradford and Danish-Vietnamese sculptor Danh Vō during its May 12 evening sale. Christie’s was still on a high from New York—continuing to make record-smashing prices at its Hong Kong auctions late…

Three artists from Sydney, Beijing and Hong Kong reinterpret earthly, quotidian materials and objects to address the absurdities of sexuality, perception and the private space in art Trevor Yeung, HONG KONG In 2012, when Trevor Yeung handed out keys to his Hong Kong apartment allowing access to his exhibition “The Bedroom Show,” he elided private and public space. The show was crucial to understanding the core of Yeung’s creative ambition that seeks to dissolve an inside-outside dichotomy by stimulating the “ordinary.” A horticulture enthusiast, Yeung had decorated his personal living area with potted plants and organic experiments, including a mirror-glass aquarium filled to the brim with only water, cautiously titled I Am Fine but Please Don’t Disturb Me (2012). Looming over the other works was Artist Studio Party (2011), a…

Diasporic artists and curators in North America are using amateur photography to examine stories of migration and settlement In a practice specific to the diaspora in Canada, a Punjabi wedding reception usually starts with a photo presentation that visually narrates the family histories of the couple. The presentation begins with photographs of the couple’s grandparents in colonial India, followed by marriage photos of the couple’s parents set in Punjab, East Africa or Britain and then baby and coming-of-age photos of the couple growing up in Canada. Woven into this presentation is the history of migration, settlement and generational battles over assimilation into Canadian multiculturalism, while also preserving food, language and other cultural mores of the “homeland.” Family albums are private repositories of images that document lives, environments and journeys. These…

It’s been ten years since Lebanese-American artist George Awde began photographing Syrian migrant workers living in Lebanon, for an ongoing investigation that now stretches across five series. These projects, “The Calm Before” (2006), “Quiet Crossings” (2007–09), “Windows” (2011– ), “Shifting Grounds” (2011–13) and “His Passing Cover” (2013–14), form the spine of Awde’s work. As chapters with overlapping concerns, together they reveal his developing practice, as well as the shift in political position and agency his subjects have undergone during the region’s turmoil of the past decade. The five series, primarily shot with a large-format camera, document the precarious lives of migrant laborers. Syrian boys, teenagers and men are shown in tenement buildings, on rooftops, in shared rooms where they sleep, beneath underpasses, on a strip of coast between a highway…

Fahrelnissa Zeid Of all the curatorial gestures that shaped the retrospective of Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901–1991)’s works at this year’s Sharjah Biennial 12, perhaps none was more potent than positioning the late princess and painter’s self-portrait to stare out a window. At once domineering and circumspect, Zeid’s figure in Someone from the Past (Autoportrait) (1980) is syncopated by the saffron-colored cacophony of an abstract-patterned dress, echoing her own hectic, kaleidoscopic abstraction monopolizing the neighboring wall. Yet her gaze is steady, serene—as stately as her single arched eyebrow, as poised as the delicate, minimally drawn hand hovering over her chest showing off a ring. The title hints at a kind of visitation, perhaps by some atavistic version of the artist herself, reactivated and materialized in the 1980 studio in Amman,…

JAPAN, Various Locations The sixth edition of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale opened in late July. Spanning 200 sites in and around the Tokamachi area of Echigo-Tsumari, in the agricultural region of Japan’s Niigata Prefecture, the Triennale was established in 2000 in an effort to rejuvenate the aging local community and economy, as well as encourage people to evaluate their relationship with nature. For this edition, the Triennale had two main themes—“Art is how people engage with nature and civilization” and “Exchange between the region and the city”—that further emphasized its focus on the environment, humanity and communication. The Triennale featured several works commemorating the Tōhoku earthquake that devastated northeastern Japan in 2011. Fukushima-born Kaori Sato created Road to Atoms (2015), a mural on the ceiling of a stairwell in Tokamachi’s…

TAIPEI, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei In the 1990s and 2000s, as capitalism was tearing through Chinese society like never before, a populist wave welled up for the old days of Chairman Mao. For many, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) were suddenly washed over by a nostalgia for the egalitarianism and collectivism of communist life. In Chinese contemporary art circles, similar ideas were being explored by a group of friends—artists Song Dong, Xiao Yu, Liu Jianhua, Hong Hao and the critic and art dealer Leng Lin—who called their movement Polit-Sheer-Form. In practice, they appropriated the cultural structures of the Chinese Communist Party—its propaganda images, meeting rooms, emblems, social organization and collective actions—and applied them tongue-in-cheek to create installations, videos, performances and relational forms. The Polit-Sheer-Form Office (PSFO), as…

MACAU, Macao Museum of Art Mio Pang Fei has had a busy year. While the artist represented Macau at this year’s Venice Biennale with a retrospective exhibition entitled “Path and Adventure – Works by Mio Pang Fei,” a separate show of the artist’s recent calligraphy works was on view back home in the Special Administrative Region. The name of the exhibition, “Art of Ink,” organized by the Macao Museum of Art, suggested a graceful, aesthetic and sweeping view of Mio’s classical practice. Born in Shanghai in 1936, Mio is considered one of the most important painters in Macau. He attended the Fujian Normal University and received instruction in Western painting from dean and professor Xie Touba (1902–1995). During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), however, strict social regulations and the influence of…

DUBAI, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde A soft wind of nostalgia has been wafting over the United Arab Emirates of late. In the land known for projecting itself into the future, many in its art world have been casting their gaze back to the past. For the 56th Venice Biennale, curator Sheikha Hoor bint Sultan al-Qasimi’s National Pavilion—a survey of exhibitions that have been held in the UAE from 1980 to the present—unearthed older artistic practices unknown even to local initiates. Meanwhile, at the Art Dubai fair in March, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde chose to highlight the historic work of Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem, a student and acolyte of Hassan Sharif, whose own roots were simultaneously showcased in the cunningly titled exhibition “Images” at the gallery’s Dubai space. Side-stepping…

LONDON, The Mosaic Rooms Upon entering the group show “I Spy With My Little Eye” at London’s Mosaic Rooms, visitors were greeted by a close-up of Mirna Bamieh yawning in slow-motion in her video A Brief Commentary on Almost Everything? (2012). In a transparent box opposite, Pascal Hachem’s Non-Essentialism (2014) featured a piece of Lebanese bread positioned above a mirror, the reflection revealing the words “MADE IN CHINA” printed on its underside. In a nearby corridor was a photograph by George Awde of three Syrian boys leaning against each other and a concrete wall, looking both dejected and nonchalant. At first glance, the curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath put together a cohesive exhibition that featured works by 13 artists. Issues arose, however, when one looked further into the curatorial…

SAN FRANCISCO, Asian Art Museum In 1959, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) held “Sixteen Americans,” meant as a definitive exhibition of leading contemporary American artists of the time—albeit all white and all male. Nearly 50 years later, the Rubell Family Collection (RFC) in Miami, founded by Don and Mera Rubell, held “30 Americans,” a showcase of iconic African-American artists from the last three decades, which challenged the MoMA show’s cultural definition of the “American artist.” Then, in 2013, the RFC held “28 Chinese”—a loose sequel of sorts to “30 Americans”—featuring works by a diverse group of Chinese artists that the Rubells collected during a decade’s worth of research trips across China. In June, “28 Chinese” traveled to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, where the show featured paintings, photographs,…

The cavalier approach in the art market to signing contracts is a matter that causes constant dismay to lawyers who observe the industry. Most people would never dream of purchasing a piece of real estate for a seven-figure sum without a written contract. They would invariably appoint lawyers, undertake a title search and other detailed due-diligence steps, and ensure their rights are protected through a detailed sale contract. Yet, when it comes to purchasing a piece of artwork for a similar seven-figure sum, the same person is often content to rely on a handshake or, at most, a one-page invoice. The importance of comprehensive written contracts between art dealers and collectors for the purchase of high-value works of art was highlighted by a recent New York case involving the world’s…

In the tumultuous era surrounding the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition, an artist tuned in to his love for humanity In 2011, I was invited to Mumbai for a solo exhibition curated by Veerangana Solanki at the Guild. It was my first trip to India and I was fortunate enough to be hosted by Veerangana and her loving family. At their home in Bansda, in the western state of Gujarat, I came upon a series of paintings of the Hindu god Lord Krishna hanging in her grandfather’s room. I was immediately drawn to the ethereal blue figure portrayed on these canvases. Krishna’s otherworldly gaze is engaged yet detached and his gestures are playful yet sacred—the gentleness and tender expressions of these portraits were unlike any I had seen before. In one painting,…

How the world has changed since Seditionart.com was founded three years ago! When I first started thinking about the company in the 1990s, the idea of a digital, limited-edition artwork was seen as bizarre; “digital edition” seemed a contradiction in terms. Today, digital is a medium no less commonplace than oil-on-canvas, and for the pioneering artists of this category, a burgeoning new infrastructure is opening up to support them. That’s where Sedition comes in. One original motivation to create this company was our awareness of a growing number of artists utilizing digital elements in their practice. It seemed natural to try to provide a platform for artists to present those works to the world—or at least to the online world. The traditional routes for showing and selling artworks were not…

On the heels of record auction sales in New York and with concerns over a possible “Grexit” still weeks away, in mid-June the upper echelons of the international art market were still buying away. Collectors remained fixated on acquiring big-ticket modernist works and snapping up the latest productions coming off the assembly lines of brand-name contemporary figures. Meanwhile, over in East and Southeast Asia, midyear fairs appear to be struggling to gain momentum and to break away from the limitations of regional taste. Basel As the clock ticked down to the midmorning opening of the 46th edition of Art Basel in Basel (June 16–21), “First Choice” super-VIP collectors—global oligarchs, 0.01-percenters, their advisors and courtiers—were penned into the central courtyard of Hall 2, their anticipation hardly allayed by circulating trays of…

The third and final part of a series on the UAE arts ecosystem looks at the collectors who have evolved with the maturing scene Any reader of lifestyle-oriented art magazines is familiar with the topos of the collector interview. Proudly posed amid a smattering of treasures, the collector tells tales of provenance and pedigree, impulse and addiction, sudden chance and shrewd pursuit through art world haunts dotted with cameos by complicit dealers, affable advisors and artists who have become fast friends. The collector by nature spins an international yarn, scooping up young talents here or being outbid on old masters there. The photogenic artistic trophies are beauty-shot under their owner’s gaze, the multipage spread contributing at once to current visibility and future significance of collection and collector alike. This third and…

Drones are powerful instruments in the hands of artists. How should they be regulated? Flight, voyeurism and “playing God” are common, related human fantasies. All three are embodied in the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, which are defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization as “aircraft without a human pilot onboard.” The flying machines have rapidly become controversial yet integral parts of everyday life in such diverse industries as agriculture, environmental and geospatial studies, real estate, entertainment, leisure, logistics, the military and surveillance. Drones are also increasingly being used by artists, raising new art-law questions, ranging from copyright and privacy issues to regulation and enforcement surrounding the new technology and its use. Artists from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries have…

April in Paris—the air is still crisp in the late afternoon. People mill around the Trocadéro with its view of the Eiffel Tower. A woman, wearing a floor-length red chador covered with sequins, shimmers with each step as she moves near an assembly protesting Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. At first the demonstrators do not notice her, but as she passes them, a few of them suddenly break away to approach her. They talk excitedly at her and take photos. She bows deeply. The next day, the red-chador woman sits in the elegant hall of the Palais de Tokyo, with a basketful of baguettes. Holding a piece aloft, she announces the imminent beheading of the bread in one hour. She states her demand for its ransom, and repeats this ritual…

Mithu Sen Spray-painted in pink and dark brown capital letters are the words, “I can imagine myself as an artist, but I cunt imagine my paintings are done by a woman.” Crudely written, and covered in delicate floral details, the words are compressed together, making them difficult to distinguish except in the cases of “artist,” “cunt,” “b” and “woman,” which are distinct in pink. Fearless, vulgar and antagonistic, Mithu Sen’s work has a way of stopping you in your tracks. Titled I Cunt Imagine (2010), the graffiti work takes its name from a line in a sound piece by Sen, a New Delhi-based multimedia artist and poet, for her 2010 solo exhibition “Black Candy (iforgotmypenisathome)” at Chemould Prescott Road gallery in Mumbai. Using a provocative, psychosexual and poetic form of…

SYDNEY, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation In 2007, Gene Sherman closed her longtime Sydney gallery and started the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF), which commissions and exhibits artworks by Asian artists, as well as visual practitioners from Australia and the Pacific Rim. Some of these works, and those she championed as a gallerist, have become part of her and her husband Brian’s private collection. In May, a small fraction of their holdings were displayed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) and SCAF, in “Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection,” curated by Suhanya Raffel, AGNSW’s deputy director. Unlike that of many regional group exhibitions that focus on the “East,” Raffel’s curatorial vision did not resort to simplistic…

BEIJING, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art “Colors,” Liu Wei’s solo exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, and his largest institutional show to date, spanned multiple mediums including painting, sculpture and video. Colossal in size and volume, this new body of work took up the entirety of the museum’s massive Great Hall. Situated near the exhibition’s entrance was the maze-like Enigma (2014), in which steel armatures and geometric objects were fenced off by military-green canvas panels, evoking an otherworldly, futuristic landscape. Yet the visual composition of the installation’s components is varied, and resulted in a sense of disorientation as one walked through it. Meanwhile, a black projection on an adjacent wall seemingly rejected any specific interpretations of the work.  Enigma, like Liu’s many other works, has evolved…

SINGAPORE, Mizuma Gallery If Mizuma Gallery Singapore’s recent exhibition, “The Collective Young: From South East Asia,” was anything to go by, it seems that today’s young artists do a lot of self-reflection and social critique. It is important to note that the exhibition—featuring 16 works by 12 participants from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines—did not represent the full range of concerns and approaches of young artists in Southeast Asia today. Instead, it showed works of varying degrees of interest and depth, with the more innovative and insightful pieces being understated and open-ended. Though the exhibition was not about collaborative art per se, the two Singaporean participants, Zero and Antz, were in sync regarding their respective work’s subject: the role of the artist in society. In Zero’s painting, Keluar Baris!…

MILAN, Fondazione Mudima Mono-ha, literally meaning “School of Things” in Japanese, was an avant-garde movement at the forefront of radical, experimental art in Japan during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Its name is in reference to the group’s use of mostly unprocessed industrial and natural materials as mediums in their work. The art of Mono-ha brought together widely different materials such as metal bars, light bulbs, concrete blocks, stones, rope, dirt and wood beams, which were often installed on the floor, hung from ceilings or leaned against walls, and arranged in seemingly casual configurations. While sharing aspects with other anti-formalist art trends of the time, such as process art, land art and Arte Povera, Mono-ha’s artistic practice was steeped in Japanese culture and influenced by the Taoist idea that…

CAMBRIDGE, MIT List Visual Arts Center In the near decade since the MIT List Visual Arts Center presented “Sensorium” (2006), an artistic exploration of aesthetics, technology and the senses, the institution has championed art that engages the body as well as the eye. It was thus fitting that Anicka Yi—a Korean-born, California-raised and New York-based installation artist, known for her use of such unexpected perishables as animal hearts, fried flowers and bacteria—was an MIT artist-in-residence for 2014–15. A selection of works completed during her residency were featured in “Anicka Yi: 6,070,430K of Digital Spit,” held at the List in May. Visitors to “6,070,430K of Digital Spit” first heard the exhibition before seeing (and smelling) it. As part of the introductory installation, synth-heavy Euro-Pop could be heard fading in and out,…

Two recent artist monographs chronicle the trailblazing oeuvres of a pioneering Indian feminist and a quixotic Hong Kong legend Paris in the early 1970s and Hong Kong in the late 1990s each brought about a historic transformations in societal structure. In the French capital, in the aftermath of the failed (but nonetheless influential) May 1968 movement—a volatile civilian uprising that involved thousands of students and laborers going on strike, protesting against capitalism and political bureaucracy—many idealistic Parisians were carrying on the spirit of social revolution. Flash forward nearly 30 years, citizens in Hong Kong were grappling to find their identity amid a different kind of revolutionary change that had entered their lives—the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China from British colonial rule. In both periods, people were struggling to…

In The Sketch, we get a glimpse of the methods of an artist who will be featured in our next issue Incubated through clandestine gatherings during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), the Wuming Huahui (“No Name Painting Society”) lies outside of mainstream modern and contemporary Chinese art historiography. Lacking an overt engagement with politics, the work of the group’s members has, for decades, evaded in-depth scholarship and formal analysis. The paintings of Li Shan (b. 1957), the group’s youngest member, embody the apolitical ethos of Wuming. Scenes of Beijing during the 1970s and ’80s were the subject of her gaze. An adept colorist, Li composes quiet pictures that offer an alternate visual documentation of modern China. Li never sketches nor drafts. She dives straight into her paper…

Bringing the world to Dhaka and Dhaka to the world Throughout much of the world, Bangladesh is associated with poverty, floods, famines, civil war and perilous labor conditions. Bangladeshi contemporary art has largely evaded international attention. In recent years, however, the nation is catching up with its South Asian neighbors and taking a seat at the table of global contemporary art. Dhaka, the national capital and the 10th largest city on the planet with 18 million people, is the center of an emerging Bangladeshi contemporary art scene. In 1948, father of Bangladeshi art Zainul Abedin (1914–1976) founded the Faculty of Fine Arts (locally known as Charukola) at Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s oldest and most influential art college. Also an important cultural site, Charukola was a meeting place prior to and during…

As the second half of the art-world calendar gets underway, many art professionals will find themselves staring at a clean slate. In the cutthroat auction industry, Christie’s—believed to be the fairest of them all—is witnessing a number of key rainmakers tendering their resignations. Hong Kong’s dashing young Edward Tang, who had been heading the auction house’s edgy First Open sales of contemporary art from New York, was poached by former Christie’s chairwoman Amy Cappellazzo to join her year-old independent outfit, Art Agency, Partners. This metamorphosis was followed by the flight of highly respected longtime Asian contemporary art specialist Ingrid Dudek, who bid farewell to Christie’s main headquarters in Rockefeller Center. But the mightiest departmental departure is Robert Manley, the former homerun-hitting deputy chairman of postwar and contemporary art, who after…

NYU GREY ART GALLERY; JAPAN SOCIETY GALLERY, NEW YORK, For a New World to Come, 9/11–12/5; 10/9–1/10/16 “For a New World to Come” argues that the Japanese avant-garde did not end in the 1960s. Focusing on the period of social upheaval after the Vietnam War and the American occupation of Japan, the exhibition explores how 29 artists turned from traditional mediums to experiment with camera-based expression. The traveling show will feature 250 works between the NYU Grey Art Gallery and the Japan Society in New York, including Daido Moriyama’s shots of everyday imagery, the time-based photography of Hitoshi Nomura and a re-creation of Keiji Uematsu’s Cutting (1971–81) installation that will be shown alongside diptychs documenting the artist’s 1973 performance. NATIONAL TAIWAN MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, TAICHUNG, Asian Art Biennial 2015,…

An art project auctioned off the rights to name a section of a landfill in the Philippines Last November, Japanese artist Yoshinori Niwa initiated the art project Selling the Right to Name a Pile of Garbage (2014–15) as part of the exhibition “Holdings,” which ran from early December 2014 through late January 2015 at the Vargas Museum at the University of the Philippines. Known for social interventions realized as performances, videos and installations, Niwa was essentially selling the right to put signs up in a landfill to the north of Manila, letting a buyer choose a name for a particular area of trash. The auction was advertised in Metro Manila through newspaper ads, flyers and an information kiosk, and bidding was conducted via email, Facebook, telephone and text message. The…

On the warm March afternoon I met Dinh Q. Lê, he was completing the installation of his solo show at Hong Kong’s 10 Chancery Lane, scheduled to open two days later. He had plastered the gallery walls with alluring backdrops of Vietnam’s balmy Da Nang beach, while along the rear wall potted and brightly painted coconuts sprouting young palms sat haphazardly on the ground. At that moment, Lê was attending to a glass-fronted refrigeration case, inside of which stood a white polymer sculpture of Vietnam’s Communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) wearing a lei around his neck. The exhibition, titled “Tropicana Migration,” marked the first time Lê had deliberately used irony in a body of work, although he confided that the ideas were nearly ten years in the making.…

Mercurial Consistency Without question one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most remarkable artists, Billy Apple is nearing 80. His lengthy, and still ongoing, career has encompassed direct involvement in some of the most crucial phenomena of postwar and contemporary art, from Pop to Conceptualism, body art to institutional critique—sometimes all together. While the artist could be considered mercurial in terms of the sheer number of shifts in direction evidenced within his art practice, he has also exhibited a clear and specific intensity to his singular vision, and there remains a discernible, rigorous internal consistency when his oeuvre is viewed as a whole. Apple has been an early and avid investigator of the significance of mass media, as well as an exceptional problem solver, and while these qualities were evident in his…

In preparation of my previous project, Deep Gold (2013–14), I engaged with feminist positions in art history, which involved reading feminist manifestos. That in turn led to an intensive research of artists’ manifestos. With the exception of the one quoted sentence fragment, “All that is solid melts into air,” from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 (together with the Ten Commandments and Martin Luther’s Ninety Five Theses of 1517, which may be considered by some the mother of all manifestos), my selection starts at the beginning of the 20th century with the legendary 1909 Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and ends at the beginning of this millennium; the latest manifesto used is by the film director Jim Jarmusch. By using excerpts and combining original texts from various…

Seoul, One and J. Gallery Korean conceptual artist Seung Yul Oh’s recent solo exhibition “Left, Right,” held at One and J. Gallery in Seoul, began at the venue’s reception desk. Long strands of elastic rubber strings crisscrossed from one wall to another, parallel to the ceiling, resembling electrical wires that are often strung between low-rise buildings in Seoul. It was clear that the gallery walls had no problem standing upright on their own; yet at the same time, one’s mind flickered between this obvious certainty and the slight possibility that the rubber strings were keeping the walls from falling apart. As with Oh’s earlier series of works—such as “Huggong,” which means “air” or “void” in Korean, and “Periphery” (both 2013)—the titles of his installations are at once suggestive and definitive,…

HONG KONG, Para Site For nearly 25 years, Sheela Gowda has been lauded for her use of agrarian materials, such as cow dung and jute, sourced from her native India, as well as thread and human hair. After completing her formal art education in the late 1980s, Gowda began questioning her approach toward painting, partly in response to the political upheavals occurring in India at the time. This prompted her search for a new visual vocabulary that would resonate with the sociopolitical issues of India, particularly labor, industrialization and the female experience. Recently, Gowda’s various explorations into materiality and form were featured at Hong Kong’s Para Site art space, which showcased both her new and early works. Two early untitled pieces from 1992, both created from cow dung, were displayed…

NEW DELHI, Vadehra Art Gallery Susanta Mandal favors the language of installations and creates low-tech mechanisms that combine movement, light and photographed imagery. Since attracting attention in the early 2000s, Mandal has exhibited widely, including at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and New Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. In his solo exhibition “Hard Copy,” at New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, Mandal displayed installations and drawings that expand on his examination of images and the fragility inherent in both their creation and perception. The installations developed from Mandal’s recent experiments with the Laterna Magica (“magic lantern”), a 17th-century projection device by which light shone through a concave mirror onto a painting or photograph printed on a glass sheet magnifies and projects the image outward. In Hard Copy I (all…

ESSEN, Museum Folkwang The major exhibition project “China 8,” which showcased Chinese contemporary art in various locations within Germany, stirred up regional and international attention after its launch in mid-May. Spread thematically over nine museums in eight cities throughout the Ruhr region, it was the most comprehensive museum program on new art from China to be exhibited in the country. As part of “China 8,” the Museum Folkwang in Essen held “Works in Progress: Photography from China.” Featuring 24 participants, including a number from Hong Kong, the exhibition showcased works that look at China’s relationship with today’s international world and its artists’ latest experiments with the photographic medium. Viewers first encountered art collective MA DAHA’s site-specific installation Everything That Exists Is a Thought in Mind of MA DAHA (2015). In…

NEW YORK, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Unrepresentable here in print (and in speech), a spiral insignia accompanied “Silence,” the title of On Kawara’s retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The enigmatic shape is suggestive of the Frank Lloyd Wright- designed rotunda, which Kawara admired because it echoed his own Buddhist-inflected conception of time as a cycle, and on many days the voices of a man and a woman reading off the dates of the past and the next million years filled the museum as part of an onsite performance. The spiral’s inclusion in the title signaled that curator Jeffrey Weiss’s exhibition of Kawara (1932–2014) was to be a very different survey than any before, providing significant insights into the man behind some of the late 20th…

A tour around the Beijing studio of the renowned artist morphs into a riveting lesson on the ongoing chapters of contemporary Chinese art history It’s graduation season and spirits are high on the campus of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). It is during this time in June that Xu Bing, the institution’s former vice president and current head of its academic committee, meets with me at the CAFA museum café. There, academy staff and students waltz in and out, all of them stopping to greet Xu, a revered artist, beloved teacher and one of CAFA’s most renowned alumni. One such encounter happens to be a cheerful male colleague dropping off a gift basket of zongzi (sticky rice dumplings), to be eaten on the occasion of the upcoming Dragon…