Illustration by Vanilla.Specially made for the latest issue's feature article "Accent Trilogy: Like Dew, or a Lightning".
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IN THE QUICK red firmament of Chinese contemporary art history, names are fascinatingly ephemeral. The specter of the here-today-gone-tomorrow plagues even the most powerful-seeming artists, collectors, and galleries. And though the overall story of art in China has been one of unbridled growth, instances of decline and fall litter the shining path. And none more…

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“THIS MUSEUM must demonstrate the nation’s great riches,” wrote Jean-Marie Roland, the French Minister of the Interior in 1792. “France must extend its glory through the ages and to all peoples.” His letter to Enlightenment painter Jacques-Louis David concerned plans for the National Museum of France, better known today as the Louvre. More than two…

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SONART First of all, the idea of SONART is not at all limited to sound art or experimental music performance. The concept of a series of cutting-edge live performances and audio-visual publications was proposed by Gao Shiming, Executive Director of School of Intermedia Art, and I am the one responsible for its realization. SONART stands…

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Established after Taikang Space moved to Caochangdi and named after the total floor area in the gallery’s space it occupied, 51m² was especially dedicated to holding exhibitions of young artists on a rolling basis. From October 17, 2009 until January 8, 2011, 51m² spanned fifteen months and ultimately played first home to the new works…

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JOURNEY OF (NO) REDRESS Beijing Anyone who ever bemoaned the Beijing art world’s lack of a power lunch scene was more or less vindicated when Fennel opened in the Yi House, a boutique hotel in 798, last spring. One year later, on the first Saturday of April and the beginning of the Grave Sweeping Festival,…

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IF THERE IS ONE ARTIST apt to leave pundits chewing their pencils, it is Wang Jianwei. He is surely the first to have occupied a 2,500-square-meter exhibition hall— indeed any exhibition hall— with several thousand basketballs in the name of art. “He’s complicated,” remarked a curator on recent mention of his name; “Ah, yes” a…

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  WANG JIANWEI: MAN IN-BETWEEN If there is one artist apt to leave pundits chewing their pencils, it is Wang Jianwei. He is surely the first to have occupied a 2,500-square-meter exhibition hall— indeed any exhibition hall— with several thousand basketballs in the name of art. “He’s complicated,” remarked a curator on recent mention of…

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THE WINTER OF 1960 was freezing cold. It was a time when the Republic was solemnly suffering famine and hardship. In Anhui, the art world had just come out of the struggle against Anti-Revisionism and the Anti-Rightist Movement, and everybody was feeling unusually depressed. Our only thread of hope came from the Provincial Party Committee,…

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CREATION MYTHS IN CHINESE ART academies, there is no clear divide between traditional art education and “contemporary” art education. There have always been teachers who imbue the curricula of the traditional departments of Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, and sculpture (collectively known as “COPS”) with ideas from contemporary art, holding experimental classes or even establishing…

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THESE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE made on and around US military bases in Japan, Korea and Guam, a part of the world designated by the Pentagon as “PACOM,” the U.S. Pacific Command. The Pentagon divides the world into six separate regional commands and PACOM is the largest, covering half the surface of the world. The military component…

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Artist Li Yuan-chia (1929-1994) spoke little but saw far. Unknown in his native China and largely forgotten in his adoptive Taiwan, his journey took him to Italy and later to England where he worked tirelessly for over three decades. A little understood and remarkably subtle artistic innovator, he worked first to incorporate Eastern philosophy into…

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THE FIRST TIME I encountered Luo Dan’s “Simple Songs” was in the small city of Lianzhou, in Guangdong’s mountainous north. He had just finished taking this group of photos, first driving from western Yunnan’s Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture back to Chengdu, then flying on to Guangzhou, then traveling by bus to Lianzhou, to serve as…

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Just as the “happiness index” was becoming a hot topic leading up to this year’s National People’s Congress, Son Il Kwon’s solo exhibition, “On Happiness,” opened at Three Shadows. His own understanding of happiness is projected through the eyes and faces of his subjects, the juxtaposition of portrait and landscape. The works on display largely…

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Ten years have gone by since we first caught a glimpse of Zhang Enli’s early still-lifes. Amidst the turbulent waves of the past decade, Zhang’s paintings have served as a kind of placid calm. At a time when more and more painters have become eager to penetrate the canvas with a social gaze, Zhang continues…

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Zhang Quan is in constant pursuit of the possibility of agreement among ink painting, its contemporary context, and everyday experience. He is one in a long line of artists to pursue this path of reinventing the ink context. The theme of this solo exhibition is “Infinity in Mist”—a phrase that captures the mood and content…

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The recent group exhibition at Pékin Fine Arts alludes to a bestselling book of the same title in the United States last year. The book identifies how “gadgets”—handheld electronic devices, particularly smartphones—have effectively hijacked our modes of socialization, constructing a virtual world that has made it difficult to locate the self in our current state…

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