Hu Weiyi is known for modularity and unpredictability, but this exhibition is well-planned and strategized. The idea of the convoy was decided on first, then the route from Shanghai to Beijing. Apparently unplanned experiences along this route become the focal point of the project. In the exhibition, however, it seems Hu had no plans to…

Disappointment finally reaches a climax at the end of a journey through the eight cities—Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Marl, Mülheim, Recklinghausen—participating in the exhibition “CHINA 8.” Rather than an in-depth overview into the diversity of contemporary art in China, it offers only quantitative superlatives. Among painting, photography, calligraphy, installation, sculpture, and video from established…

Ping Pong (《乒乓》) is a new indie comics anthology featuring works from an up-and-coming generation of Hong Kong comics artists and illustrators. This new generation follows in the footsteps of alternat…

If Shanghai is a Vespa circling the former French Concession, Beijing is a tough-looking motorcycle built by an artist. Anticipating this need, Blackbridge, a studio in the artist village of Heiqiao, builds customized motorcycles for those feeling that particular need to roam. They recently held a moto-rally in Ordos; finally, the abandoned city has found…

What is there to be observed on the road? The concept of “roadway observation,” a localized set of the techniques of the f lâneur, can be traced to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Tokyo was dilapi…

Gauzy and alluring maidens sparkle across the screen in Yang Fudong’s new film; The Colored Sky: New Women II begs the question of what happened to the old women. It’s already part of a series, like Lacan’s understanding of male sexuality structured as an infinite series of individual encounters that never feels repetitive but appears…

“GENUINE FAKE” Hydra School Projects, Hydra, Greece This exhibition begins with a concise introduction to the theme at hand: the fake. It starts at the doorway to this former school on Hydra, taken over some 15 years ago by artist and curator Dimitrios Antonitsis, with a framed dinner receipt faxed to Antonitsis from Dash Snow…

IN THE POSTSCRIPT to Wang Min’an’s collection of theoretical essays, A Discourse on Household Electronics, he writes that one of his best students once asked him to explain their scholarly significanc…

In Japanese developer Konami ’s video game Contra, the player and his or her character, a special forces commando, are omnisciently aware of their surroundings, synchronized by motion and sense. Although settings are many, spanning thick forests, snow-covered mountains, military bases, and alien home bases, the game is no different from a side-scrolling shooter in…

adj. [word] foggy, with a sense of fear, isolated-Robin Burnett, formerly of INTERNET CLUB explains, “This music genre reminds me of a foggy ambience where everything is unclear and uncertain.” He add…

Streetwear marketing campaigns, speaking to the desire to glamorize everyday urban realities, can index subterranean social preoccupations in a way parallel to yet often more eloquent than contemporary art. See the role of Adidas sportswear in the iconography of the post-Soviet Russian mafia, for example, or Nike’s Air Jordan line, present in so much of…

In the beginning of June in New York, one could see Austrian artist Maria Petschnig’s work screened twice: on one evening as part of Anthology Film Archive’s Show and Tell series, and on another at a release party at the gallery On Stellar Rays for her new career-surveying book, Maria Petschnig: Nineteen Videos 2002-2014. Large(ish)…

More than ever, our bodily senses are affected by technology around us. As technology gets better and better at stimulating and simulating sensory experiences, our perceptions of the external world are increasingly mediated by and dependent on digital and mechanical devices. The two seemingly contrasting concepts of “techno” and “sensual” become one and the same…

More than once I have asked Xie Nanxing to explain the secret magic behind his painting. When we struggle to find some guiding principle behind the variations of his imagery in his work, are the materials he uses important? By way of response, Xie points out that my curiosity points to a false proposition. This…

In the ubiquitous three-dimensional modeling and rendering software 3ds Max, the humble teapot is among about a dozen built-in objects, standing out rather awkwardly among other geometrical shapes due…

When the Taipei Biennial and Shanghai Biennale announced that their present editions would be curated, respectively, by Nicolas Bourriaud and Anselm Franke, there were strong echoes of theoretical discourse and cultural internationalism shared between the two regions. Further east on the Pacific rim, the Yokohama Triennale boldly appointed artist Yasumasa Morimura artistic directer (the Triennale…

A small-scale exhibition, “Excessive Enthusiasm: Ha Bik Chuen and the Archive as Practice” showcases the initial results of Asia Art Archive’s research into the late artist’s life, work, and personal …

Taobao is China’s largest online shopping site. Similar to eBay, Taobao facilitates consumer-to-consumer retail, and is known for listing practically everything there is to buy. Launched just 12 years…

When you turn on the television in China and flick through some channels, chances are you’ll happen upon several TV series set in Republican-era China. This is nothing new; Republican Fever, as it is …

In 1915, the American Modernist magazine 291 published a collection of Francis Picabia’s portraits mécaniques, tongue-in-cheek drawings imagining the proto-Dadaist’s fellow artists as machinery. At the center of the spread was Portrait d’une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l’État de Nudité (“Portrait of a Young American Girl in a State of Nudity”), an exactingly rendered image…