For his newest project, Hu Qingtai purchased and executed several plans for artworks. The result is an exhibition of eight works, each made according to the ideas of a different artist. The artists are Hu’s older brother Hu Qingyan, Li Gang, Li Liao, Jiang Bo, Yang Jian, Yang Xinguang, Zeng Hong, and Zhan Rui. By…

FROM AT LEAST the time of Nixon’s visit in 1972, the United States has had a love-hate relationship with China. Opening relations with the People’s Republic did not stop Americans from calling it “Red China,” nor did it change their love for fortune cookies. This attitude—a combination of political paranoia, economic competitiveness and cultural nostalgia—spilled…

Within Chinese contemporary art discourse, there is often no distinction made between “female artist” and “feminist artist.” Thus, for Lin Tianmiao, escaping the mutual entanglement of these two concepts, both of which play a part in her practice, is simply impossible. The former generally places an essentialist emphasis on female identity, in her case focusing…

The Met, which has never before mounted a major exhibition of Chinese contemporary art, ambitiously frames this first attempt as an exploration of how contemporary works from a non-Western culture could be displayed in an encyclopedic art museum. Shown in the museum’s large galleries of Chinese art, “Ink Art” is the epitome of a missed…

ZHAO GANG JOINED the hutong-dwelling impressionists the “Stars Group” when he was only sixteen years old. He went on to win a scholarship to study abroad in 1983, and soon integrated seamlessly into t…

IMAGINE ENCOUNTERING A plastic duplicate of Canova’s neoclassical marble sculpture The Three Graces (1814-1817) in a lesbian pub. Three pale white female figures in the nude, their genitals covered by…

The Shenzhen Ink Art Biennale may well have been the first biennial founded specifically to show a traditional art form. Thus, its influence has been limited to the fields of ink painting and traditio…

Artist Cheng Ran is on a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where he has prepared a visual diary of his present work and life for LEAP. Amsterdam is smaller than I imagined. Travers…

WITH THE FUTURE of Woofer Ten still yet uncertain, several young yet experienced artist members of the space have created the Woofer Ten Continuous Working Team that will keep vigilance of the venue, buy time for further negotiation with the Council, and hold a series of discussions regarding community art resources and development. Whether Woofer…

Nine years ago, Zhai Liang called a selection of his works the “Decisions Collection.” They are small watercolors, mostly of scenes from daily life. Some include human figures and some are simple scenes. Titles such as Tian’anmen Square, Dancing to Sounds, The Ambush, and Massive Dust Particles emphasize the narrative force of the paintings. As…

JAPANESE ADULT VIDEO (AV) has a special significance in China. Less and less seen as a tool for masturbation, it has accrued cynical, subversive connotations. Sora Aoi became a model of morality overnight, leading netizens of social strata, including public intellectuals, to vie to be the first to express their fondness for these pornographic productions….

This year, red and black flags were raised outside the main site of the 4th Athens Biennale (AB4): the former Athens Stock Exchange building, which closed its doors in 2007. The colors invoked associa…

吴俊勇，《马上火》，2014年，纸本水墨，由《艺术界》委托创作 Wu Junyong, Horse on Fire, 2014, watercolor on paper, commissioned by LEAP…

Dear Editor, Thank you very much for sending the interview with Zheng Shengtian for the studio’s reference—the article offers a conscientious review of the experiences of many Chinese artists in America over the past decades. It bears a lot for domestic art circles to contemplate, and will most likely exert a long-term influence. However, while…

At its core, the exhibition “Animism” is a European export. Now, produced under circumstances of limited financial resources, it has been introduced into China and Asia for the first time. On the surface, German curator Anselm Franke works from aesthetic and anthropological perspectives to raise an anti-modernist proposal for the order of knowledge. From participating…

Critics of Qiu Zhijie’s new solo exhibition have most frequently referred to it as “burdensome” and “cluttered.” How is it that an artist who has been practicing for over 20 years, so known for his cerebral approach, can fall victim to overindulgence? If we attempt to understand the subjective impressions that guide Qiu’s value judgements,…

The Hugo Boss Prize was founded in 1996. For its first two instances, in a move to better showcase the event, a group show of the nominees was organized at the Guggenheim; it wasn’t until the third that only the winning artist’s work was exhibited. The organizers of the Hugo Boss Asia Art award are…

THOUGH SHANG YANG enjoyed great success with his series “The Dong Qichang Project,” he has far from rested on his laurels in the decade since. In his latest solo exhibition at the Suzhou Museum, “Shan…

Hsu Chia-Wei’s films are often characterized by “low temperature,” or a calm treatment of composition and objects. The viewer quietly listens to their narrations, which unfold with a slow and patient attitude. This kind of contained maturity is unusual for an artist only 30 years of age. Hsu is among a young generation of Taiwanese…

Yan Xing’s new solo exhibition “Recent Works” is his most ambitious to date. It consists of four interrelated mixed-media projects: Dirty Art; Lenin in 1918; Two videos, three photographs, several related masterpieces, and American art; and The Collectress. Together these create a consistent atmosphere of quality, repeatedly reminding visitors of the artist’s exquisite control over…