In rhetoric, things come in threes, and Liu Wei is above all a rhetor. Thus his largest exhibition to date was divided, like Caesar’s Gaul— unevenly by size, but evenly by impact— into three parts. To the right of the entrance, the installation Golden Section offered a space divided into several by the lurking furniture…

The Sharjah Biennial was hardly the biggest thing afoot in the Arab world this spring, even if the halo effect of the concurrent Art Dubai seems to have tipped it over into critical mass. (The 2011 iteration of both shows were the largest in their respective histories). Of course, any historic change is inseparable from…

Just as the “happiness index” was becoming a hot topic leading up to this year’s National People’s Congress, Son Il Kwon’s solo exhibition, “On Happiness,” opened at Three Shadows. His own understanding of happiness is projected through the eyes and faces of his subjects, the juxtaposition of portrait and landscape. The works on display largely…

Ten years have gone by since we first caught a glimpse of Zhang Enli’s early still-lifes. Amidst the turbulent waves of the past decade, Zhang’s paintings have served as a kind of placid calm. At a time when more and more painters have become eager to penetrate the canvas with a social gaze, Zhang continues…

Zhang Quan is in constant pursuit of the possibility of agreement among ink painting, its contemporary context, and everyday experience. He is one in a long line of artists to pursue this path of reinventing the ink context. The theme of this solo exhibition is “Infinity in Mist”—a phrase that captures the mood and content…

The recent group exhibition at Pékin Fine Arts alludes to a bestselling book of the same title in the United States last year. The book identifies how “gadgets”—handheld electronic devices, particularly smartphones—have effectively hijacked our modes of socialization, constructing a virtual world that has made it difficult to locate the self in our current state…

American photographer Paul Strand once said, “The material of the artist lies not within himself nor in the fabrications of his imagination, but in the world around him…The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” Embracing Strand’s…

Venturing out under a gray sky to see Wilson Shieh’s new exhibition, “Mortal Coil,” I found similarly dark, muted hues upon arrival. The Twenty-Eight Hong Kong Governors sketches the formal portraits of former Hong Kong governors in shades of brown pencil. Catalogued in tiny print beneath each figure is the governor’s name and his dates…

Yang Fudong’s recent outing at Marian Goodman’s Paris outpost showcases two works: the multichannel video installation Fifth Night and the photographic series “International Hotel,” both of which were debuted in Shanghart Gallery’s “Useful Life” exhibition last year. But while “Useful Life” (named after an exhibition by Yang, Xu Zhen, and Yang Zhenzhong in 2000) looked…

In 2007, Xia Xing became a household name while working as a reporter for The Beijing News. At the time, perhaps he was unaware that he had already uncovered the theme that would drive his creative work over the next four years. However, he was likely appreciative of the newspaper’s broad influence—with nearly 450,000 copies…

“The Third Party” is divided by curator Beatrice Leanza into three parts, labeled, like a traditional theatrical production, according to the convention of “acts.” These three acts all have their own themes—“How to Be Alone,” “The Stranger,” and the final act, “(Long Live) The Third Party”—each separated by about a week. Owing to the format…

This may come as a shock to those in China, but in the United States some still dismiss Chinese contemporary art as a fad, comparable to the short-lived enthusiasm for Russian contemporary art in the 1980s. For many American collectors, China still can’t be taken seriously based on the handful of artists—Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun,…

The National Art Museum of China’s recent exhibition, “Five Decades of Donations (1961- 2011),” is an impressive display for the audience to behold. Any first rate museum is ultimately defined by its collection, and donated works generally make up the better part of a collection. Contributions are thus a museum’s good fortune and its core…

“Twelve Chinese Artists” is an annual show featuring the 2009 “Museum on Paper” project of Contemporary Art & Investment magazine. In 2009, the monthly magazine began a column featuring in-depth introductions and discussions of the work of individual artists featured on the magazine’s cover; now, these printed projects are finally being showcased in an exhibition…

At first glance, Liu Wei’s recent outing was more conceptual than painterly—an important development as evaluations of Liu’s work often center on the question of the painterly. But the signs of a conceptual turn are hard to ignore, starting with the frames in which the paintings hang, handcrafted by the artist and coarsely mimicking the…

Summarizing Xu Tan’s “Keywords” project in a few sentences is an extremely difficult task, and even the artist himself has trouble describing it clearly. In fact, his 2005 solo exhibition “Loose” contained something similar in “100 Daily Words,” which extracted relatively popular words from daily life. Soon afterward, he self-consciously expanded his scope to include…

Two bulky television sets atop a second-hand writing desk greet visitors to this highly staged exhibition of historic video art, backs turned toward each other. On the first runs a 1985 loop of performance clips from Shanghai’s M Group, in which artists Song Haidong and Qian Weikang do things like burn self-portraits and turn a…

“Against Easy Listening” is New York-based curator Steven Lam’s second of two exhibitions for 1a Space as part of his curatorial residency with the nonprofit organization. The title of the show, which includes artists from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, lays out the premise clearly: it’s an opposition to simple or passive…

Jin Shan’s solo exhibition at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute is a live demonstration of a long-term plan. “One Man’s Island” is comprised of two component parts: fifty video “diaries” shot by Jin Shan in his studio, and a manuscript containing tens of thousands of words written during the same period. The project played out,…

For their Beijing debut, the Indian duo of Thukral & Tagra transformed the UCCA’s middle hall into a spectacle in their signature style of “Punjabi Baroque.” With white retro furniture, warm family photos, glass crystal ornaments, and cheap kitschy artificial flowers meticulously arranged; red safflowers blooming against a blue wall-paper background; Kabbadi (a form of…