Illustration by Vanilla.Specially made for the latest issue's feature article "Accent Trilogy: Like Dew, or a Lightning".
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This exhibition reminded me of nothing so much as Akiko Busch’s book, Geography of Home. The garden, the hall, the courtyard and the other rooms of the interior all maintain the original structure of the building, yet override the blueprint’s vision for the space with postcolonial charms that offer a sense of traveling perspective (the gallery space is…

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The latest incarnation of Zhou Tiehai’s ongoing Desserts project is a gorgeous confection mocking authorship, politics, fashion and self-importance. Hundreds of small-scale canvases were hung in a sweeping ribbon up MoCA Shanghai’s Guggenheim-ramp pastiche. The paintings are lovingly clichéd, depicting extra-sweet bourgeois images, whether a dainty cupcake, a French pâtissier tasting a sauce, or a pair of lipstick-painted…

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The Chinese title of this show, literally “what thing,” was a bit of a tease. Without a subject, it was hard to know whether it was asking “What thing is this?” or “What thing are you?” Don’t think that the likelihood of the latter was greater than the former, unless you don’t know how clever…

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No matter how spotless the gallery’s white walls were, I preferred to imagine Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) standing amid a pile of rubble calling for love, sorrowful and passionate. The strong black and white contrast of her small etchings and woodcuts, the rough lives of the lower classes and overbearing sense of death and oppression can…

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Born in Suzhou, Yan Wenliang (1893-1988) was immersed in the southern city’s traditional culture, passed down through the generations, from an early age. In his childhood he learned Chinese flower-and-bird painting from his father, and later watercolors. Following the epochal changes of the early twentieth century—the advent of the ROC, the spread of Western influences,…

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Upon entering Yin Xiuzhen’s show “Second Skin” at Pace Beijing, the first thing one could smell was the scent of a woman, a scent borne by all variety of clothing. Textiles have been a persistent elem…

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As we were nearing press time a few days ago, it occurred to us to try and capture one specific example of China’s waxing presence in Africa, the Parc Culturel et ses Sept Merveilles de Dakar, near the Senegalese capital’s bustling seaport. There, Chinese laborers, backed by Chinese investment and in keeping with Chinese foreign…

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On our cover this month you’ll see an image that might not make sense at first. From a corner, our photographer captures the workshop in which sculptor Zhan Wang’s stainless steel scholar’s rocks come to life. Under Zhan’s direction, a team of highly skilled workers bring these unlikely objects into existence, first hammering out shapes…

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Zhang Huan’s solo show “Dawn of Time” opened at the Shanghai Art Museum in early February, showcasing five works: three installations and two ash paintings. Either because this was trumpeted as Zhang’…

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The Department of New Media Art at the China Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou has been very active since its inception, and the fifty artists participating in “Youth in Combustion” were mostly its cur…

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Things at Shenzhen’s OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) are gradually heating up. On January 28, the center’s fifth anniversary celebration, it launched the “Youth OCAT Programs” initiative featurin…

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As the title of his show suggests, Zhang Dali seeks to present a “second history” that differs from the official historical narrative. Zhang reveals the cracks in the “historical fact” to which the photographs he presents are meant to bear witness by juxtaposing different versions in a genealogy of the image. By doing this, he also pokes…

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This is in all respects a very low-carbon show. Besides its lighting and a few red projections (not necessarily turned on) on some pieces, the exhibition does not consume any energy, and the materials used in the installations are simply paper and cardboard boxes that can be turned back to pulp and reused. Any strangeness about the…

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Compared to the works on view in Yu Bogong’s 2007 show “Karma” at China Art Archives & Warehouse, those of his recent outing “Crossing the Riverbed” at Beijing’s Magician Space assume more complex forms. Yu has always been engaged in exploring connections between the internal spiritual world and religion, historical memory, psychoanalysis and cultural symbols. This exhibition confirmed…

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For the past decade or so, Qiu Shihua has been painting beige canvases. His paintings are mostly large, usually more than a meter in height and width and covered in several washes of a natural flax color so neutral that it absorbs the warmth and tone of whatever light is shone upon them. Sometimes swaths of white…

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The range of Xie Zhiliu’s talents, recognized even in his own day, seems particularly astounding when viewed from our age of hyper-specialization. Calligrapher, poet, painter, connoisseur, and art historian, Xie belonged to a group of polymaths who came of age as the classical Confucian educational system ended and the high-stakes game of redefining the literatus for a New…

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For Yun-Fei Ji, history is a spinning whirlwind that picks up people, objects and landscapes, throws them into the open air and catches them in an endless loop. It is a tangible, driving force in the artist’s ink and watercolor paintings, a threat and a promise that whatever humanity has created can be unceremoniously put…

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LEAP F/W 2023 Little Utopias

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