Tallur L.N.’s sculptures are depressive fantasies of systems beyond individual control; they depict humanity as commiserating victims of a world too large and too alien to do anything but become overwhelmed by. The artist’s recent outing at Arario Gallery’s Liquor Factory outpost, “Chromatophobia: The Fear of Money,” meaning a persistent fear of money, distills the…

In September of 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women was held in the Beijing suburb of Huairou, one of the landmark events of China’s 1990s. In addition to the official schedule, a large number of related activities were held by officials and members of the arts and cultural communities, including the Ministry of Culture and the China Women’s Federation’s organization…

The simplistic power of Ken Kitano’s photography originates from the persistence with which he attempts to renew and re-energize consciousness. From when he began photographing in 1989 until today, the artist has put together three series of works; by playing with an application of photography as basic as the adjustment of shutter speed, he has…

The Eastern Jin painter Gu Jun’s portrayal of a high-rising edifice entitled with the inscription, “Ascending Without a Ladder, No Point of Worldly Return” is a scene that embodies the pursuit of serenity and peace. Qiu Xiaofei’s new show at Boers-Li Gallery channels this classic, and is aptly named “Point of No Return.” Qiu’s title…

In comparison to the buzzing southern metropolis of Shenzhen where his exhibition is located, Jia Aili’s northeastern hometown of Dandong, a little city on the Sino-North Korean border, has long been referred to as a historical city. Dandong and Shenzhen, at opposite ends of the country, are two cities with completely different fates, fates that…

Taipei can be a beast in the day, a city roaring with the exhaust of a thousand scooters, the buzz of a thousand restaurants and street stalls, waves of pedestrians endlessly coming and going. For his solo outing at ShugoArts in Tokyo, artist Jun Yang chooses instead to focus instead on the night, when the…

Playing in a dark exhibition hall of about one hundred square meters is Fang Lu’s five-part signature work, for which she began recording in 2001. Her production process involves pre-installing a particular environment, taping a scene, and compiling the final product: a behavioral recording. Fang Lu’s completed work does not correspond to the actual time…

In the China Pavilion of the Shanghai Expo, the image of Qingming Festival—the twelfth-century work of Zhang Zeduan of the Northern Song—is projected onto the wall. By now, this famous painting has played itself out as a popular, massive, dynamic ink creation—throughout the course of Chinese art history, Zhang’s depiction of the Bianjing city marketplace…

If identity and personal memory maintain a certain degree of unity, then Yangjiang Group’s exhibition “The Garden of Pine—Also Fierce Than Tiger II” at Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing traps people in the dislocation between personal identity and historical memory. The first sight upon entering the exhibition hall is a scene cast entirely in paraffin…

As the name suggests, the word “past” in “Learning From the Past and Opening a New Age,” refers to traditional Chinese painting; “new age” refers to the style of modern Chinese painting championed by Huang Qiuyuan, and “learning from” here is more like “relying on.” The last and most important portion of the exhibition title…

Some exhibitions lie at once entirely within reason and completely beyond expectation. The National Art Museum’s special exhibitions memorializing the works of Hua Junwu (1915-2010) and Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), which opened concurrently in July, serve together as a perfect example of this possibility. These two painters both hold important positions in the history of art…

When the harvest moon comes out, we feel the pangs of place. American schools hold homecomings. Jews build booths. Chinese families reunite to stare into the sky. There is something fundamentally human in the autumn air, the feeling that things have turned, cyclically, but irrevocably all the same. The fruits of the bygone summer are…

[portfolio_slideshow timeout=7000 exclude=”5852″] In this issue, we ask ourselves a few questions: Is there any connection between the places artists come from and the art they make? Why do artists leave their homes, and how do they return? What does being from a particular place mean for an artist’s self-construction, artistic creation, and career development?…

Whenever the topic of “art youth” comes up, many are eager to throw cold water on it. Some keep quiet, reflecting on the now seemingly unfounded optimism and heedless idealism of earlier generations, while others, reacting more to a current situation, fear that the young can only become pawns in someone else’s chess match. This…