Artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s New Theater originates from, amongst other things, the desire to reimagine relational art in the particular context of a niche American art world in Berlin, whose ecosystem is already under the gentrifying influence of the city’s increasing popularity as a destination for creative transplants. The twenty-something Cooper Union graduates’…

October 31 through November 1, 2015 marked the beginning of the tenth annual New York Asian Contemporary Art Week. With it came the three-day “FIELD MEETING Take 3: Thinking Performance,” a series of performances, lecture-performance, artist talks, and symposia. Central to these meetings was an attempt to look at how artists in Asia have used…

The 2015 martial arts film The Assassin, by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, has generated debate in China over how to reach a correct understanding of its plot, background, dialogue, costumes, pro…

Oct, 2015 – Modern Media Group, together with its premier international art publication The Art Newspaper China, are honoured to announce that the TANC ASIA PRIZE 2015 will be held in November, 2015 i…

Under a large emblem of Black Mountain College we read the list of well-known names who lectured there: Josef and Anni Albers, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham, Albe…

Singaporean curator Qinyi Lim’s exhibition “A Luxury We Cannot Afford” begins by citing the attitude of Lee Kuan Yew towards art and culture: a frivolous waste of energy and resources better spent on industrialization and militarization. If this approach persisted until the creative industries were recognized as a cornerstone of first-world status in the 1990s,…

The title “Twin Tracks,” originating in a Chinese proverb, usually refers to the difficulty of reaching a goal when one is heading in the wrong direction. Yang Fudong’s exhibition guides the audience …

Chen Tong’s practice is anti-realist in attitude. He believes that an artist should separate the making of art from considerations of personal livelihood. Under conditions of separation, the artist can then work on the basis of detachment from reality, even if he chooses to adopt representational or other apparently realist means of expression. Ideas of…

Traditional Chinese painting, known colloquially as a “tasteful debt,” has become an increasingly important part of the economy of gifting. Its role as an unspoken tender allows ink to become a mirror that reflects the true complexities of the interpersonal relationships arising from man’s unquenchable thirst for power and ability or willingness to navigate this…

Tucked away in the serene creative space of Pure Collective on Yuqing Road in Shanghai, Chi Peng’s solo exhibition “I am a Little Nervous Towards a World that is Hidden” is sensitively explicated by the show’s curator Enrico Polato. The objects ensconced in their pristine curio cabinets, as well as the black and white pencil…

It is difficult to talk about Maria Taniguchi’s work. Like an archaeologist piecing together artifacts, she unpacks knowledge and experience connecting material culture, technology and natural evolution. Beyond her objects, we are asked to look at their context. Who sees an object? How are we seeing this object? What associations can we make? A lesser-known…

What if life was nothing but a flux of images? What if life could only be retained as such a flux of images? Chen Tong loves every facet of life. Chen Tong paints images. Chen Tong’s images capture life in every detail, fastidiously, abundantly, unceasingly, erotically. His paintings fascinate through the precision of expression and…

A single substance connecting all continents, saltwater has a habit of sustaining certain life forms while desiccating others. Its rising levels may threaten life as we know it, but, on shore, it drie…

Zhang Ding’s work conveys objects and phenomena that are impossible to describe through language alone. Perhaps the essence of these things is too primal, to the extent that language—artificial and pretentious—cannot touch them. Perhaps the system of these things is too complex, and language cannot communicate their complexity. Substances overcome their physical properties, removing the…

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was a fan of painter Nicolas Poussin. He analyzes Poussin’s use of light and composition in painting Echo and Narcissus, and expands on its subject matter. The concept of the echo holds different meanings in different cultures. To the Greeks and Romans, the echo was an impediment to communication; to Native Americans, the…

Blazin’ up in of the Seoul Museum of Art, the mammoth exhibition PEACEMINUSONE offers a glittering addition to the canon of swag-as-art. While the group exhibition features work by such international artists as James Clar and Fabien Verschare and a broad range of contemporary South Korean artists, PEACEMINUSONE is for, by, and about one man:…

“Venice Dansaekhwa” (technically just “Dansaekhwa,” but there is a limit to the conveniences of minimalism) is a simple and beautifully hung exhibition in the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac along the Grand Canal. Organized by the Boghossian Foundation along with the galleries Kukje and Tina Kim, and curated by Yongwoo Lee of the Gwangju Biennial, it’s arguably one…

LEAP Forum is an initiative of Modern Art, Modern Media Group’s art platform. It is a virtually distributed conference in which speakers and guests meet not at a certain point in space and time but ra…

Artists in many parts of the world spent the 1990s caught up in the historic moment that was the end of the Cold War—what would be claimed as the end of history. Some, like those in the Chinese mainland, were under a prevailing spell as economic as political, which lasted almost to the end of…

LEAP Forum is an initiative of Modern Art, Modern Media Group’s art platform. It is a virtually distributed conference in which speakers and guests meet not at a certain point in space and time but ra…