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…

“Condition↔Reaction: Young Artists in China and Their Work” is a video-based project organized by LEAP magazine. Through a feature documentary, it offers a portrait of Chinese artists born after 1976. Alongside this is a selection of 15 video works from 11 young artists that reveal their creators’ individual responses to and rebellions against the status…

During Art Basel Hong Kong, LEAP magazine and the DSL Collection join hands for the video project “Not a Gallery.” At the Modern Media booth, number S9 near the VIP entrance, we have mounted an exhibition without a single tangible artwork: using their mobile devices instead, the audience may visit the DSL Collection’s virtual museum…

Modern Media X Culture Chanel special forum On January 18, LEAP magazine hosted “Encounters: Community” at the Guangdong Art Museum, part the exhibition “Culture Chanel.” The forum, chaired by LEAP executive publisher Ms. Cao Dan and featuring artists Wang Jian-wei, Cao Fei, and Artforum online editor Yang Beichen, opened with a discussion on Picasso’s Le…

Artists stand at the edge of society. Few ever dare to hope they might create an image or representation that actually affects or change society. This is because the task of artists, which is to pull …

TWO SEEDS WERE planted in Hong Kong back at the time of its inception: a seed of prosperity and a seed of subjectivity. The meaning of prosperity requires no elaboration here. Subjectivity, in this context, means self-awareness in culture and identity. Back in the late nineteenth century, Hong Kong’s prosperity endured fits and starts, but…

The LEAP + Art Basel Hong Kong special supplement is tailored to meet the demands of both art world insiders and outsiders during their visit to this year’s art fair. Beyond exhibition listings and recommendations, introductions to the local creative ecology, and interviews with collectors, the publication also brings with it the fashion-focused “Art Basel…

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,…

There is something about Hong Kong’s urban landscape that invokes the dystopian future envisioned in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?— a sci-fi tale of the android bounty hunter Rick Deckard and his chase for murderous, thinking robots set in a consumer-saturated city. Perhaps this is why curator Qinyi Lim chose…

HISTORY LESSONS: REFLECTIONS ON OCAT PUBLISHING ALTERNATIVES TO RITUAL: A CASE STUDY OF SHENZHEN OCT CONTEMPORARY ART TERMINAL On January 26, two exhibitions opened to mark OCAT’s eighth anniversary: “History Lessons: Reflections on OCAT Publishing,” curated by Fang Lihua and Li Rongwei, and “Alternatives to Ritual: A Case Study of Shenzhen OCT Contemporary Art Terminal,”…

In years past, the work of Liu Shiyuan (b. 1985) has allowed itself to wear many loose-fitting forms. She has held a bar of wet soap in her hands for a prolonged period (One Day With A Soap, 2011); “directed” a “play” (Secondhand Stabilization, 2011); filmed the interactions between actors she has prompted but who…

Taipei’s Hong-Gah Museum has long been the home of video art in Taiwan. The role that its modestly-sized biennial serves is akin to an observation tower. The first two editions, titled “Dwelling Place” and “Eattopia,” were jointly curated by Chen Yung-Hsien and Sean C. S. Hu, and chose as their starting points the material world…