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Mural Painting Project of the New Countryside Laboratory
by Edward Sanderson
Posted
7/24/12
(Editor's Note: Art in the street can be found in every corner of human habitation: not only urban spaces, but even in the far reaches of rural China. Unlike most street art and graffiti this particular public art project was conducted not only with permission, but with the total cooperation of the community. In this local effort in China, perhaps we find something even more subversive--a collective vision realized in togetherness, in a simple, yet affirmative gesture of opposition against gove... [more]
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Death for Show
by Edward Sanderson
guest at Hemuse Gallery
July 17th, 2012 - August 4th, 2012
Posted
7/23/12
In some ways there’s really not a lot to say about this show. The elements of the show are seemingly simple, based around a short video loop showing a woman in a hospital bed speaking the words “Good Luck,” and the execution of the show is restrained, with just some medical notes, a contract and a wall text.
The woman in the bed is in fact dying. For the exhibition the artists paid this woman’s family 2000RMB (US$314) to purchase her announcement of the phrase “Good Luck” (or, more li... [more]
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Things Lost and Found
by Edward Sanderson
Yang Jian at Where Where Art Space
June 16th, 2012 - July 15th, 2012
Posted
7/9/12
In the exhibition text for Unclaimed Objects, artist Yang Jian recounts the story of a parasitic fungus which lives in the stomach of a cow, and spreads by passing out of the cow via its dung, which in turn infects ants in the vicinity. The fungus then implants an urge in the ants to present themselves to be eaten by the next cow, thus passing into the new cow’s system. This life-cycle is presented very specifically as a “story” by the artist and—while there are reports of such occurrence... [more]
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The “Ah” (ha) Moment
by Edward Sanderson
Zhao Yao at Beijing Commune
June 12th, 2012 - August 12th, 2012
Posted
6/25/12
Last year’s solo show of the work of Zhao Yao, his first with Beijing Commune, left me with a less than positive feeling. To then have that (rather strong) feeling overturned by this new presentation of what is ostensibly the same work is surprising.
The development of Zhao’s two solo shows with Beijing Commune are important starting points for an analysis of this change of heart. In 2011 Zhao’s first solo show, entitled I Am Your Night, collected together a set of works that I disliked for... [more]
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What, Then, Can Art Be?
by Edward Sanderson
at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal
May 12th, 2012 - August 31st, 2012
Posted
6/11/12
Following their Little Movements exhibition in the same venue last year (which I reviewed on ArtSlant at the time), the curatorial group of Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Su Wei return to Shenzhen’s OCT Contemporary Art Terminal to undertake the broader task of a biennale. Despite retaining the moniker of “Sculpture,” this seventh iteration of the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale has less to do with sculpture as a distinct discipline, than with what amounts to a renewed opportunity for the curat... [more]
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Eliasson's Essentials
by Edward Sanderson
Olafur Eliasson at The Pavilion
May 10th, 2012 - June 10th, 2012
Posted
5/28/12
Reflecting Vitamin Creative Space’s approach to the artwork as a “daily activity,” the four pieces by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson currently installed in their Beijing space (The Pavilion) are not quite an exhibition – there was no formal opening and no general announcement made, and there is no official end date to the show. Such an arrangement is part of Vitamin’s way of leaving space for the public to discover the works in conditions that strengthen their place in the worl... [more]
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Hong Kong Goes Baselistic
by Sophia Powers
at Hong Kong International Art Fair
May 17th, 2012 - May 20th, 2012
Posted
5/15/12
Can going global make a razzle-dazzle art fair more local? We are set to see with this year's upcoming Hong Kong Art Fair, kicking off May 17th. Just a little over a year ago, the MCH Group, the owners of Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach, purchased a 60% stake in the company that runs the Hong Kong fair, giving them a formidable monopoly over the global art fair circuit.
Will this takeover lead to the McDonalds-ization of the circuit? Perhaps just the opposite. As Art Basel co-director Marc Spieg... [more]
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Photography's Phantom
by Edward Sanderson
Liu Chuang, Zhang Liaoyuan, Liu Wei, Su Wenxiang, XuChongbao, Wang Yuyang, ZhengGuogu at Taikang Space
April 7th, 2012 - June 2nd, 2012
Posted
5/14/12
With an abrupt reference in its title to a book by Roland Barthes (which appeared in English as Camera Lucida), this show gets underway, presenting works by five Chinese artists each with a relationship to the “phantom” of photography.
The artists’ particular approaches to the medium of photography are varied. In this show, Liu Wei is the only artist to include actual photographs, with several examples from his series As Long As I See It, from 2006, on display. These works demonstrate a certai... [more]
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Rites of Spring
by Robin Peckham
Liu Chuang, Zheng Guogu, Alfian bin Sa’at, Florin Tudor, Mona Vatamanu at Para/Site Art Space
April 13th, 2012 - April 29th, 2012
Posted
5/7/12
Part of curator Cosmin Costinas’s drive to revitalize the institution that is Para/Site involves negotiating its diminutive physical space; his first exhibition, “Two thousand eleven,” actually compressed the floor plan, at least partially in an effort to demonstrate that exhibitions do not require expansive real estate. The second project in the program and the first of 2012, by contrast, seems to prove that exhibitions per se may not be all that the current situation in Hong Kong requires... [more]
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All in the Family
by Edward Sanderson
Irrelevant Commission at Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
March 24th, 2012 - April 29th, 2012
Posted
4/16/12
Two weeks ago I reviewed Wang Du’s aircraft carrier, sitting in Tang Contemporary’s main spaces, and this week I am returning the same gallery but moving my attention to the group show running alongside: the group show of Irrelevant Commission, on the occasion of their second Beijing show.
I was lucky to catch the first appearance of Irrelevant Commission in their self-organised show ‘We Are Irrelevant Commission’ (curated by Gu Jing) at the Miao Pu Art District, but I remember at the t... [more]
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Battleship Museum
by Edward Sanderson
Wang Du at Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
March 24th, 2012 - May 30th, 2012
Posted
4/2/12
Wang Du thinks big, and his new piece, a model of a split and rusting aircraft carrier hulk, purportedly presents his proposal for a suitably grandiose Chinese Museum of Contemporary Art. Wang’s installation could be taken for a monument to a megalomaniac architect’s visionary plans, or—as he suggests—a country’s obsessive statecraft through the building of overpowering structures.
But I see this installation not as a model that looks beyond itself to a completed form. For me the stress re... [more]
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Dancing Frog Legs
by Edward Sanderson
Ren Hang, Yan Heng, Zang Kunkun, Cheng Ran, Li Wei, Yan Xing, Lu Yang, Yuan Yuan at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art
March 3rd, 2012 - March 25th, 2012
Posted
3/19/12
In the first of what the organisers promise will be a long-term project with regular presentations (although “…to be held once or twice a year in different ways…” is perhaps a little vague), Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in 798 has brought together a patchy, but (perhaps for that reason) representative selection of young Chinese artists to show the state of art production in China at this time.
This show is ostensibly based on the truism that the works and the artists’ sensibili... [more]
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Mountain Climbing
by Edward Sanderson
Li Ran at Magician Space
February 25th, 2012 - March 25th, 2012
Posted
3/6/12
There are plenty of art exhibitions that are obscure and difficult to fathom – this is usually a cover for a lack of thought and depth that becomes painfully apparent when they are placed under the least analysis. So I’m very happy when a show comes along which, while flirting with obscurity and confusion, manages to hold my attention with the possibilities for meaning that it urges the viewer to explore, and productively uses a certain level of obscurity to sustain the interest in delving... [more]
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Conceptual Worms at Work
by Robin Peckham
Liu Xiaohui at Hemuse Gallery
February 25th, 2012 - April 2nd, 2012
Posted
2/29/12
Hemuse, one of the most promising new galleries to hit the Beijing scene in years—and located downtown, outside of any of the major art districts, at that—opens the spring season with an understated solo exhibition of small paintings from an artist whose name will be familiar and yet somehow indistinct: Liu Xiaohui, an instructor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a track record of exhibitions at officially sanctioned local institutions and international venues, just slightly off the... [more]
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Pleasure in Losing One's Way
by Edward Sanderson
Hong Lei at CHAMBERS FINE ART BEIJING
February 18th, 2012 - March 25th, 2012
Posted
2/26/12
Hong Lei’s particular form of mythicized, fetishized work would usually not attract me. In other artists I have found the saturated content and symbolism seen in Hong Lei’s myriad works too heavy-handed and oppressive, leading me to feel the work held itself—and the audience—too far apart from a reality.
This is something that I’ve recently experienced in the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, for instance–an urge to create a critical mass of meaning at the expense of a connection with the aud... [more]
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Place as Performance
by Edward Sanderson
Hu Xiangqian at Taikang Space
December 17th, 2011 - February 17th, 2012
Posted
2/19/12
A projection on one side of the room shows the artist Hu Xiangqian, dressed smartly in white shirt and black trousers, stepping in front of a lone microphone on the raised metal walkway in front of the Guangzhou Times Museum. In the process, he inaugurates the opening of the Xiangqian Art Museum, which had previously “opened” as part of the Asia Triennial Manchester 2011 in the UK, and in its first outing, as part of Taikang Space’s excellent series of solo shows under the umbrella title... [more]
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