WITH 2012 BEHIND us, it is necessary to organize our thoughts on our industry and on the work that we have done. THE YEAR OF BUILDING TUMULTUOUS MUSEUMS In May of 2012 during Art HK, it was announced that the giant “Yinchuan Museum” would soon be erected in the northwest of China. The news caused…

It was a series of very fortunate events that led Boris Groys to his discovery of the photographs and postcards that became “After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer.” It could be said that Kojève is partially responsible for popularizing the concept of “post-history,” or what happens after history ends. It remains his greatest contribution…

OVER THE PAST 30 years, Xia Xiaowan has painted countless images that are better described as deities, devils, or souls than as people. These images seem like those of gods in temples, vivid and lifelike, but nothing like in the natural world. In fact, in the 1980s and 90s, Xia studied the colors and brushwork…

THIS JANUARY, AN exhibition of Damien Hirst’s “spin paintings” opened in Istanbul. Naturally, the news did not come lacking in controversy. The first solo show of one of contemporary art’s greatest heavyweights in Turkey was held not in a museum, but in the exhibition space of a local auction house— these were secondary works up…

Visitors to this year’s inaugural “Future” exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, should they have ascended the rampway between the third and fourth floors, could not have missed a several meter long array of hand drawings haphazardly strewn along the wall: a detailed outline of all employees of a southern Guangdong municipal…

ONE COULD SAY that Li Songsong’s The One is a major work, one that seeks purity by way of refining the understanding of the language of oil painting, or by way of the conceptual. The work itself, roughly speaking, is a cylindrical silver tunnel, the inner walls of which are covered with 91 monochromatic paintings…

THE ART WORLD in 2012 witnessed a paradox. On the one hand, the value of contemporary art as an investment continued to rise. Despite a worldwide financial downturn since 2008, the fall 2012 contemporary auctions at the Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York together brought in close to USD 1 billion. The figure is staggering:…

THE 1966-1976 Major Events Pavilion, located in Anren, Dayi County, Sichuan, is built across a river and thus serves as a footbridge— hence it being called the “Museum-Bridge.” The museum houses relics from the Cultural Revolution collected by Mr. Fan Jianchuan. Everything about this building, from its shape to its name, hints at a sense…

The DSL Collection, founded by Sylvain and Dominique Levy, ranks among the most comprehensive holdings of Chinese contemporary art in the world. Sylvain sat down with LEAP to discuss the art of collection and the digital channels through which they have chosen to display their findings. LEAP How did you start collecting Chinese contemporary art?…

AT A VERY young age, Chen Zhe has already widely been touted as one of the most compelling Chinese photographers practicing today. In 2011 alone, she was the recipient of the Inga Morath Award, the Three Shadows Photography Award, and the Lianzhou Photographer of the Year award. These accolades are due, not in small part,…

WHY RETHINK RELATIONALITY now? The recent surge of relational practice and community-oriented art in China seems to be finally subsiding even as critical interest in such work is transferred into the scope of nouveau institutional critique. Indeed, editor of this volume and curator of the attendant exhibition Bea Leanza notes early on in her introductory…

Director of Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain is the largest non-profit institutional collector of contemporary art in France. Its mission is to promote contemporary art and discover outstanding works from around the world. Chinese artists such as Huang Yong ping, Cai Guo-Qiang, Liang Yue, and the three Luo brot

KANG WANHUA—THIS name draws a big blank for most people in China’s contemporary art scene. From 1976 to 1979, he served as a political prisoner of the Chinese government. During those four years, he secretly painted more than 400 richly colored and vibrant works. Even though these paintings are, for the most part, only the…

THE FUTURE IS Now: Art, Technology, and Consciousness is a collection of essays and lectures by British media art pioneer Roy Ascott. The book contains his writings from 1964 to 2011, presented in chronological order. What is odd is that writings from each period are all grouped under the same subject heading— as though over…

ART BASEL MIAMI Beach is the winter destination for the art world’s global players, who descend on the city for what is essentially a high-end popup shop the scale of the Burj Khalifa. It is a place where the art world can come together in one place for a short length of time with the…

TEN YEARS AGO, when Frieze magazine’s Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp first floated the idea for a fair, London was still dominated by the same scene that had earmarked “young” as an attribute for those aging all-too-quickly, while casually dismissing East End upstarts as good time galleries, too messy to be taken seriously. The inaugural…

WHAT IS COMMONLY accepted within the industry as independent Chinese animation has only been in existence for about seven or eight years. If we include the earlier days of Flash animation, it would maybe grow to a dozen or so years. I had a conversation with a young independent animation director once. He said that…

JANA EULER Although the Brussels-based German artist Jana Euler could be said to take inspiration from social networks— her practice suggests a cyber-punk aesthetic— she actually works through the decidedly historical genre of painting of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). A series of paintings completed largely in 2009, the year after she completed graduate school, takes…

The wall text for Chen Shaoxiong and Liu Ding’s “Project Without Space” characterizes it as an “iteration,” suggesting a serial repetition— one instance on top of the last, in a process of refinement. Now that it has reached its sixth version, what lessons can we draw from these critical installations? Spread over three rooms, “Project…

  EMILY WARDILL British artist Emily Wardill revives the genre of the melodrama in her feature-length video works. In Fulll Firearms, 2011, Wardill introduces us to the life of Imelda, a protagonist convinced that the ghosts of people killed by guns produced by her father’s arms manufacturing company will haunt her for life. Inspired by…