The great Australian-born critic Robert Hughes noted in the documentary Mona Lisa Curse that the role of art is to “make us feel more clearly and intelligently” about the world we live in; to provide “a place outside ourselves that tells us that there’s more to life than our everyday concerns and needs.” Many artists…

The artist Wim Delvoye is notorious for his penchant for depraving the human experience with either subtle or otherwise extremely crude humor. In his 1999 work Anal Kisses, he used red lipstick on hotel stationery, producing the puckering of an anus; in another 2000-2001 series he used an X-ray to record sexual activity, and unabashedly…

I went to see this new installation by Yves Netzhammer with a lawyer friend. At one point he turned to me and asked, “What’s this guy actually trying to say?” This question has been asked numerous times in art galleries, and will surely continue to be. Always likely to draw a slightly patronizing smile, its…

Securing loans of key works Spring Winds Have Awoken and Youth from the National Art Museum of China sealed the predictable decision to organize a new solo exhibition for He Duoling in Shanghai. Harking back to the 1980s Chinese art scene, the two paintings are representative works of the broader “Scar Art” movement of the…

The phrase “I am your night” could essentially be interpreted as a blunt statement aimed at the audience, and especially at the artists, or socalled experts, who showed up to Zhao Yao’s latest solo show. And if this audience adopt this rather poetic phrase for their own rhetorical needs— by turning it into one of…

Upon entering Zhang Ding’s exhibition “Opening,” the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset’s piece The Mirror immediately springs to mind. Three years ago, as part of the installation series “Too Late,” The Mirror transformed London’s Victoria Miro Gallery into a “nightclub,” complete with sofas, dancefloor, discoball, DJ booth, cloak room and bathrooms. At “Opening,” one first…

Taking light as the starting point for an exhibition of contemporary art is a bit like choosing the passage of time as the theme for a film festival: initially obvious, effectively versatile, and ultimately, perhaps, inspired. At least some part of the painter’s craft has always been about depicting light, and light makes a neat…

Just what is it that makes today’s Berlin so different, so appealing? Klaus Wowereit, member of the German Social Democrat party and governing mayor of Berlin also doesn’t know exactly. But there is one thing he knows: “That many artists from Germany and around the world live in Berlin, developing their cutting-edge work here.” So,…

For Huang Kui, a serious accident was the beginning of an entirely new understanding of the concept of life, and what triggered a reconsideration of his relationship to the world. From Me to The World I See, Huang Kui has engaged in a series of reflections and creative works that make up his current exhibition,…

Ironically, for a show titled “Guanxi” after the Chinese word for “connection” or “relation,” each artist enjoys the benefit of an independent space, minimizing the possibility of mutual interference among the works. To give just one example, it appears that curator Jiang Jiehong had some problems showing the work of artist Xiang Jing: here her…

Biennales have largely become marketing events for nations and cities, used to show off an idealized image to outsiders. This edition of the Singapore Biennale, taking place in venues such as the National Museum of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, Old Kallang Airport, and Marina Bay, continues to demonstrate the cultural strata of the country by…

Following artist Rong Rong’s lead, people have flocked into the little village of Caochangdi from all corners of the photography world. Right after the conclusion of the opening ceremony, the recipients of three much-anticipated awards were finally announced. Twenty-two year old female photographer Zhe Chen was awarded the Three Shadows Photography Award; Luo Dan (see…

The title of MadeIn Company’s latest exhibition at Long March Space is something of an awkward phrase— after all, how can consciousness be physical? But the phrase is deceiving: the four character Chinese phrase for “Physique of Consciousness” is just one character different from the Chinese for “ideology,” suggesting that through minor manipulation, ideology can…

“Nineteen Solo Shows About Painting” is in many ways a sort of classroom exercise— one through which featured artists can express their individual revelations with regard to painting, art, and existence. Coincidence or not, the majority of these paintings— derived from scenes of daily life— depict similar and universal experiences. The words of Jia Aili…

To recognize and identify artworks by Zhao Zhao (b. 1982) in terms of a certain style or medium is virtually impossible. Without prior knowledge, one might assume that Zhao’s current solo show at Alexander Ochs Galleries was in fact a group show of various artists. The pluralism on display is part of the artist’s critical…

The customarily stark ambience of art galleries took on a warmer if still largely minimal feel in Lee Kit’s first solo show in the United States. Gauzy cerulean cotton sheets hung over the gallery’s floor-to-ceiling front windows, while cardboard pieces lined the walls, featuring layers of paint half-obscuring the logotypes of various drugstore products, from…

A distinctively Chinese designation, “academic experimental art (xueyuan shiyan yishu) refers not to experimental art within the academy in general, but to the work produced in academic programs on experimental art, particularly those at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the China Academy of Art. Unlike the more canonical “COPS” (Chinese painting, Oil painting,…

The collective creation of a group of sculptors from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1965, Rent Collection Courtyard was first displayed in Beijing forty-five years ago. Making a return to Beijing, the current exhibition displays copper-plated fiberglass replicas of the original clay sculptures, produced from 1974 to 1978. Compared to its first grand opening…

It’s an easy mistake, for those of us who came to contemporary art by way of China, to think that a big face painting is a big face painting. From Luo Zhongli’s coining of the genre with his penwielding peasant Father, to Geng Jianyi’s analytical innovation on the form in 1988 with his monotone “Second…

For the performance of Man on The Chairs, a group of trained dancers, following instructions and exerting great effort, clambered back and forth across the gallery space. Admiring this scene, and trying to figure out the narrative of the performance, spectators soon realize that its crux lies in an emphasis of the new “surface” created…