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Edward Sanderson
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Interview with Li Ran
by Edward Sanderson
2013-05-19
Beijing, May, 2013: Li Ran is a Chinese artist working with performance and video to create “mockumentaries” around fictional (or part-fictional) characters. Over the last year Li has had solo shows at Beijing’s Magician Space and Shanghai’s Aike Dellarco Gallery, and was included in the Shenzhen and Gwangju Biennales. Li took part in curator Biljana Ciric’s “Alternatives to Ritual” exhibition at the Goethe Institute Open Space in Shanghai, and ON/OFF, a major survey of young Chinese artists i... [more]
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Rupture of Form and Meaning
by Edward Sanderson
Wang Yuyang at Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
March 23rd - April 30th
Posted
4/27/13
Wang Yuyang’s set of disparate sculptural constructions that make up “Liner,” at Tang Contemporary, betray their design by computer in their fantastically ornate, mathematical shapes, spurs and swoops of material. They seem to express an aesthetic typically seen in the virtual shapes produced by CAD software. In the gallery they become slightly unreal or impractical forms: large cubes of marble are juxtaposed with jointed lengths of the same material, inserted with lengths of gleaming aluminiu... [more]
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Interview with Liang Yuanwei
by Edward Sanderson
2013-04-08
Beijing, Apr. 2013: At first glance, Pomegranate, Liang Yuanwei’s solo show which opened recently at Beijing Commune, appears to be a rather radical departure from this artist’s previous solo show in the same space in 2010 (Golden Notes). Golden Notes amassed a group of paintings of a similar format – canvases with floral patterns picked out from an overall gradation of coloured paint. Pomegranate, however, seems to present a rather more experimental proposition, and rationalisation of Liang... [more]
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Whose Autonomy?
by Edward Sanderson
Rigo 23, Guy Ben-Ner, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Cao Fei, Claire Fontaine, Zheng Guogu, Yang Jiechang, Kimsooja, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machato, Xijing Men, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, HO TZU NYEN, Sriwhana Spong, Nasan Tur, Richard T. Walker, Lin Yilin at Times Museum
January 20th - March 17th
Posted
3/1/13
As one of the more visible providers of a critique of the centre/periphery model of cultural development in the early 2000’s, a new exhibition by curator Hou Hanru is highly anticipated. ZiZhiQu: Autonomous Regions at the Times Museum in Guangzhou can perhaps be seen to develop this model as it applies to the cultural self-formation of individuals and groups, placing that development in contrast to a globalised institutionalisation of culture. Autonomy, then, moves across all scales in its realisat... [more]
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Slippage of Meaning to Meaning
by Edward Sanderson
Guan Xiao at Magician Space
January 12th - March 24th
Posted
2/9/13
Five monumental structures are distributed around the gallery space, coated in slicks of pigment. These multi-coloured, yet muted, painted surfaces have taken on the turbulent patterns of weather systems, or of ink in water. Despite their geometric shapes, the surfaces have a plastic quality, giving an organic effect to the objects. On the floor on one side of each of these monuments stands a tripod, supporting a vertical, tubular arrangement of hard-edged gold or silver tubes, but with additions of... [more]
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Moving and Still
by Edward Sanderson
Yang Fudong at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) - Shanghai
September 30th, 2012 - January 3rd
Posted
1/21/13
Yang Fudong’s solo show in Shanghai shifts the balance of his work away from the video installations onto his photographs, in the process proving the intimate connections but also the disparities between his moving and still images.
The collection of prints that form the bulk of this exhibition include still shots from Yang Fudong’s films as well as his stand-alone photographs from across his whole career. Yang’s photographic work has always been a counterpart to his films, in that it als... [more]
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Strength in Numbers?
by Edward Sanderson
at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
November 20th, 2012 - December 30th, 2012
Posted
12/24/12
SEE/SAW is billed as the prelude to the show ON/OFF, which will open at UCCA in January 2013. ON/OFF promises to be a rather exciting group show of young Chinese artists over the whole of UCCA’s spaces. SEE/SAW though occupies just a small part of this institution’s gallery spaces, to address the recent phenomenon of artist groups in China. While groupings of artists have always existed, not least in China, this way of working has become a very visible feature of artists’ practice here over the... [more]
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A Meeting of Meetings
by Edward Sanderson
Elaine W. Ho, Rania Ho at Arrow Factory
November 8th, 2012 - December 31st, 2012
Posted
12/9/12
The Meeting Room is a project hosted within Beijing’s Arrow Factory space, and organised by artists Rania Ho, one of the founders of that space, and Elaine W. Ho (no relation), founder of the HomeShop, a small creative community sited a few streets away. With this new project, the concerns of the two artists previously expressed through their work on their particular institutions, have come together to form a very interesting and socially productive use of the space – converting it into bookabl... [more]
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The Artist is the Genius of Suffering: Interview with Pei Li
by Edward Sanderson
2012-11-25
Beijing, Nov. 2012: The pursuit of beauty and the artist’s commitment to her practice are parallel concerns for Pei Li, whose solo show closed recently at Beijing’s Platform China space. This young artist holds these pursuits to a high degree of scrutiny and suspicion, regarding beauty and fame as suspect notions that demand a certain cynicism. In a series of complex and sometimes audacious projects, she has grappled with the ideal of the artist and the relation that art has to the presentation o... [more]
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The Strangeness of Ritual
by Edward Sanderson
Fang Lu at Arrow Factory
September 8th, 2012 - October 24th, 2012
Posted
10/29/12
Peeking through the glazed and systematically inaccessible storefront of the Arrow Factory space (inaccessibility being a usual feature of this small non-profit space’s presentations), a scene reminiscent of a storage space or garage is visible. In amongst the detritus that litters the space—the construction tools, ladders, paint tins, sheets of wood, and bags of unidentifiable materials—a series of television monitors sit on chairs or boxes, and make up the deliberately make-shift presenta... [more]
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Be Floored
by Edward Sanderson
Wang Wei at Magician Space
September 13th, 2012 - October 31st, 2012
Posted
10/1/12
The two pieces by artist Wang Wei currently on show at Magician Space address two aspects of constructed space—the wall and the floor—in one succinct installation. As the title makes clear, the pieces are literally a wall and a floor, but their structure, placement, and relationship to each other, as well as their existence within the gallery space, mark them out as out of place. This suggests, and is backed up by the text for the exhibition, that these pieces are from other places, reproduc... [more]
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Form is the Most Political?
by Edward Sanderson
Liu Wei at Long March Space
September 1st, 2012 - October 7th, 2012
Posted
9/17/12
Long March Space presents a strong body of new works by Liu Wei, which seem to progressively build upon and develop various aspects of this artist’s works. The results suggest monumentality in their occupation of space while retaining an uncertainty in their inability to be defined and interpreted. This opacity of the pieces is apparently mirrored by the reticence of the artist to elaborate on them too specifically. The viewer is offered little aside from some general statements made by Liu a... [more]
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Food for Thought
by Edward Sanderson
Li Bo, Qiu Jingtong, Dai Liang, Liang Shuo, Chen Xinpeng, Ma Yongfeng, Xiao Yu at PIFO New Art Gallery
August 11th, 2012 - August 20th, 2012
Posted
9/3/12
Food Art Exhibition at PIFO New Art Gallery, organised by the international charity Oxfam as part of their global “GROW” campaign, aims to raise awareness of poverty in relation to production and access to food, but the art exhibition on show raises issues concerning the effectiveness of this form of presentation.
Although art shows undertaken to promote charitable issues have worthy intentions that should in most cases be supported, there is a troublesome tendency for the art to be the leas... [more]
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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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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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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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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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Beyond Shopping Poetic
by Edward Sanderson
Hexie Baroque, WAZA, Zheng Yuhan, Jiang Zhi at Pin Gallery
January 6th, 2012 - March 3rd, 2012
Posted
1/30/12
My disappointment with this show stems from the fact that it genuinely appears to be an interesting presentation, focusing on a well-selected group of mid-scale installations. The curator has avoided the temptation to simply place them together within the gallery space, instead creating appropriate, custom-built spaces that the works inhabit nicely. But it is unfortunate to have to say that Developing Phantom falls down on a conceptual level in its lack of coherent critical engagement with the a... [more]
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Lady Liberty and a Dragon
by Edward Sanderson
Wang Qingsong at Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
December 17th, 2011 - February 25th, 2012
Posted
1/23/12
Photography seems to be the perfect medium for Wang Qingsong’s monumentally theatrical set pieces. In his overblown symbolic constructions and groups of people, the artist addresses issues of both a general and personal nature. In the gallery, these are presented as lush, large-format photographs allowing the artist’s attention to detail in the settings to be held static in front of our eyes for detailed attention. In the spaces of Tang Contemporary the artist is now presenting two set piec... [more]
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Black-out Viewing at Center
by Edward Sanderson
Hamra Abbas, Adel Abdessemed, WONG Hoy Cheong, Pak Sheung Chuen, Thierry Fontaine, Shaun Gladwell, Tsang Kin-Wah, Dinh Q. Lê, Wangechi Mutu, Dan Perjovschi, Shahzia Sikander, Dimitar Solakov, Nedko Solakov, Sun Xun, Du Zhenjun, Jiang Zhi at Times Museum
December 30th, 2011 - February 6th, 2012
Posted
1/2/12
Doubt is a concept close to my heart (for all the right – and wrong reasons). It is a state of being separated from fixed ideas, moving into a region where certainties flicker out like an ageing fluorescent strip. I feel this movement into doubt is a primary activity of art: simulation, illusion, questioning, all the while leaving the audience open to new thoughts and ways of thinking. The artist does things and I ask: “Why are they doing this?” Doubt is a region of productivity, of inves... [more]
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In Deep Water
by Edward Sanderson
Xu Qu at Hemuse Gallery
December 10th, 2011 - February 10th, 2012
Posted
12/25/11
Entering the contested islands of the South China Sea, artist Xu Qu plays with the disjunction between the hopes and wishes that the territory embodies as well as the reality of the places and their constitutive activities.
Looking back over some recent presentations helps to give some background. One of Xu Qu’s contributions to Beijing’s Taikang Space and their 51m2 series, was Upstream (2010–2011) a project tracing the Liangma River from where it passed the artist’s home in the East... [more]
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