Inside a moon-like circle on the back cover of The Pillow Book is a list of things it is not: “Not a memoir. Not an epic. Not an essay. Not a spell. Not a shopping list. Not a nocturne. Not a dream book. Not a prayer. Not a novel. Not an apology. Not a…

Objectophilia is an attraction to inanimate objects, so Bloodzboi and Fotan’s collaboration on Dong Leng Cha is an objectphillia rap song: An ode to the refreshing delicacy, Lemon Ice Tea. It’s not so…

  For his recent paintings, presented by Ota Fine Arts at Condo Shanghai, Singaporean painter Guo-Liang Tan chose an aeronautical fabric as his canvas. A bizarre choice, given that the fabric is water-resistant and would therefore not absorb paint. In order to even begin painting, Tan had to first seal the fabric with acrylic. In…

  Curators of contemporary Chinese art abroad often face many challenges. The third installment of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative, the theme of One Hand Clapping is …

The figures and elements that populate Fu’s paintings are easily recognizable ones, but Fu renders them in a simplistic and at times unfinished manner—most are only silhouettes—which makes them nebulous and creates a dearth of information that can be gleaned.

These frontiers are critically investigated and presented in their complexity, and these aesthetic forms refuse to subjugate to existing and dominant apparatus of the sensible. It exemplifies what Vivian Ziherl raised as a frontier formalism: “frontier formalism is strongly invested in aesthetic tactics of representation through rebellious images; images that chafe against existing arrangements and that posit undeniable demands for another shape and sound of the global symphony.”

“Wetland” exists in the ambiguity between wet and dry states. Within the designated five-hour duration of the exhibition, its temporary state mirrors a constantly changing wetland; it can disappear at any time but contains the possibility to exist in other forms.

Jes Fan, Mother Is A Woman, 2018, video, sound, color, 4 min 44 sec. Videographer: Asa Westcott.   What is a body made of, and how does that impact the way it is perceived? Does an impression of a body reflect its constitution? Artist Jes Fan posits these queries by investigating how the material science of…

Wong Kit Yi, Uploading Consciousness to a Lotus Root, 2018, single channel HD Video, 20 min. I made a promise that expires in 99 years [1]. At the Golden Computer Centre [2], I transferred my body’s lease on life to the Emperor. Filled out the form: red hair, pale skin, female. Couldn’t remember my birthdate….

The original story of Yugongyishan (Moving Moutains), the legend of the old man who moved the mountain, is actually a rather romantic one. The story goes that an elderly man of over seventy, driven by…

“You Won’t Be Young Forever” serves as a distinct example of how to work collaboratively with youth. A small office building set to be demolished needs no renovations or any visual disguises, it simpl…

The first hint of something a little unusual afoot in this exhibition is the extrusion of a grid-like, metallic structure from the bounds of the gallery proper, an effect made doubly jarring in settin…

There seems to be a certain fetishization surrounding the concept of experimentation. Maybe the idea of experimentation is linked to the idea of creating something “alternative”—another deeply fetishi…

DADA CANNOT BE EASILY ACCEPTED, NOR EASILY REJECTED. IT RECALLS THE WORDS OF THE “DADA MANIFESTO”: “… THAT’S IT. BUT OF COURSE… IT’S A QUESTION OF CONNECTIONS, AND OF LOOSENING THEM UP A B…

Consider the travelogue. Some sensitive soul alights in a part of the world somehow different from their home, and they enact a traversal of this space, accruing images and relating experiences in a r…

The opening of “Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in December, 2013, was met with both cheers and disgust by the Chinese ink painting community. …

Dada is not at all modern; it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. —Tristan Tzara Conference in Weimar, Germany, 1922 As often pointed out by modern art historians, notably…

Without the aid of mirrors, artists seem to be incapable of self-reflection. Their images and works are constructed and processed in the face of the many peers surrounding them, one orbiting another l…

Taiwanese artist Yin-ju Chen often places herself in a position both perilous and challenging: by means of an approach based on mysticism, she deduces and infers narrative relations between mankind an…

In the past few years, there has been a move towards art and writing that abandons irony completely in favor of sincerity. “New sincerity” has been a buzzword for the art and literary world since the mid-1990s. It was the name of a literary movement sparked by David Foster Wallace’s essay “E Unibus Pluram,” where…