The Chinese name for the material consists of the characters for “cliff” and “color.” The Japanese call this material iwae and the Taiwanese call it jiaocai. By any name, its is a compelling story of an ancient skill, its transmission out of and back to China, and its somewhat awkward attempt to find a place in art today.

Chen Xiaoyun’s enigmatic videos have defied critical interpretation for the better part of a decade, and inspired a younger generation of artists to veer experimental. A recent solo show at the Beijing branch of ShanghART Gallery showed him to be refining his concerns even further, externalizing an internal hysteria that runs just below the surface of Chinese society.

Characterized by a reflective architecture of glass and steel and culturally dominated by a visually rich cinematic tradition that merges seamlessly with tourism marketing, Hong Kong does not lack for specular images of its urban core. In the now-classic films of Wong Kar-Wai and John Woo, the surface of the city emerges primarily through textural definition: the sweaty glint of neon…

Zhang Ding produces intriguing art, which he then dismisses with a gentle smile as “having no meaning.” He does acknowledge that his work should induce a “strong feeling,” but never lets on exactly what sort. In China as elsewhere, artists often avoid explaining their works, affecting a simple nature in order to protect their ideas. Yet even against this background of…

The first thing Zhou Bin did after he had ended his sojourn in the Beijing artists’ villages of Yuanmingyuan and Songzhuang and settled in Chengdu in 1998 was stage a performance. For this work, titled Historical Watermark, he used river water to wash a human form (or perhaps that of the Buddha) onto a stretch of old city wall slated…

1 Almost every Fujianese family has a child who has left home to find work. In New York, only the Fujianese mafia competes with the Sicilian. In Europe, Fujianese farmers exploit Westerners’ worship of organic produce, substituting Oolong tea for red wine and selling shoes made in Jinjiang, Putian, and Fuzhou in the process. In the world of art, Fujianese…

The contemporary art world’s concept of the “Guangdong artist”—emerging from the haze of the growing Pearl River Delta cities of the mid-1990s, flourishing through the first years of the new century, and fading as the entire ecology of the art world grew, enticing many of those with whom the designation was initially associated to move north toward the end of the…

[portfolio_slideshow timeout=7000] History has abandoned time, we have lost our souls. Magicians This world lacks a clear concept of time; we live in emptiness. Right and wrong are confounded! There are no laws, no rules. Lies dominate! Here there are only the cheaters and the cheated. I am a formerly great prognosticator. These days, I practice as a magician, wearing a…

Polit-Sheer-Form, which marks its fifth birthday this fall, has been a steady presence on the Chinese art scene of these dramatic years. Coming together at regular intervals for debate and a trip or two to the bathhouse, Hong Hao, Leng Lin, Liu Jianhua, Song Dong, and Xiao Yu ponder what it means to belong to…

For me the creative process is nothing but the pursuit of perfection … Great emotional and physical effort, energy and persistence are required. However, if tapestry art becomes one’s destiny, it requires one’s whole existence. —Maryn Varbanov (1932-1989) Maryn Varbanov was one of the most influential figures in the history of Chinese and international contemporary…

Boulevard du Général de Gaulle, renamed Boulevard du Centenaire, is one of the best-kept stretches of road in metropolitan Dakar and arguably all of Senegal. Originating at the Place de l’Obélisque and extending with unobstructed sightlines into Centre Ville, the Boulevard and its surrounding neighborhood—collectively referred to as Centenaire—occupy a perfectly strategic sliver of urban space. It is here…