For a contemporary art exhibition of any scale, plans can change quickly. Whether it is achieving the potential of the concept through implementation or meeting local requirements for fire safety at the site, the audience remains unaware of the multitude of factors that influence the final outcome. So for artists, their artworks, and exhibition layout,…

Upon exiting the elevator, you come face to face with an installation by the Xijing Men, a large Xijing flag hanging on the wall opposite the elevator. In front of the entrance to the exhibition hall is a pile of carefully stacked, clean cardboard boxes partitioning off the “Exit and Entry Bureau.” But this affected…

In the state of Kerala in southern India, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale opened its doors on December 12, 2012. The picturesque old colonial town of Kochi, or as the locals call it, “God’s own country,” welcomed over 150,000 visitors in the first month of the exhibition. Many works of the 94 participating artists were made on…

Only a couple of years since the ZKM first fell for globalization, we step again onto the terrain of global reality as soon as we enter “Move on Asia,” an exhibition imported from Alternative Space LOOP in Seoul. Here, more than 140 works are gathered under the “Asian” label, with artists from China, Hong Kong,…

THE GUAN XIAO solo exhibition “Survivors’ Hunting” is divided into two parts to best suit the exhibition space. As one enters, one is met with deliberately manufactured chaos: installations, sculptures, and pictures with indeterminate relationships all set out together in a comparatively cramped space. Although the next space is relatively spacious, on view is only…

NOT VACANT, JUST INVISIBLE IN 2011, YUCHENG Chou held an exhibition in Taiwan’s Hong-Gah Museum titled “TOA Lighting” (1). When the exhibition first opened and the audience, stepping onto smooth floorboards, entered the exhibition space, they were greeted with bare walls and not a pedestal in sight. The whole space was devoid of anything that…

SIXTEEN YEARS HAVE passed since the Hong Kong handover in 1997. The writer Yesi, whose real name is Leung Pingkwan, was born in Guangdong in 1949 and grew up in Hong Kong. Over the past 16 years, he has mentioned his desire to “write about Hong Kong in earnest” on more than one occasion. This…

IN A BRIEF History of Curating, Hans-Ulrich Obrist speaks candidly with Lucy Lippard about the most significant motivation for the creation of his oral history: the lack of documentation in the history of exhibition and curation. Hence the term “Brief History” rather than “Interviews” appearing in the title. In this book, Obrist interviews 11 veteran…

ART STUDENTS ARE a familiar sight in Xiaozhou Village: as the bus conductor calls out “Xiaozhou Village Entrance,” the bus, which starts out empty from the university town, is met with an influx of students. As a rule, they are tourists, or art academy students who have gathered together to prepare for exams. Lugging backpacks,…

OFTEN REFERRED TO as the pioneer of conceptualism in the Philippines, Roberto Chabet (b. 1937, Manila) is known for his cerebral, elusive compositions of readymades and everyday materials to include mirrors, plywood, neon lights, drawings, rubber tires, indigenous wood, maps, strings, envelopes, paper, and so on. Chabet’s play on form and meaning, process-oriented, anti-monumental practices…

THE BODY, AS the most apparent symbol and object of all the various forms of conscious- ness and conceptual undertakings, along with the evolution of modern industrial society and contemporary consumerist culture, has itself become a prominent discursive object, which is continuously being redefined, rewritten, and disciplined. Of the artistic practices that correspond to or…