For one artist to decide to create work in tandem with another always carries with it the risk of hit or miss. The meeting of uniquely subjective minds can be as dissonant and detrimental as it can harmonious and supplemental. Ideally, of course, the latter is achieved—two heads are better than one. In the case…

The American poet Emily Elizabeth Dickinson once wrote: “To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee. / And revery.” For Spencer Finch, making a glacier takes a few candles to burn and then fade out (Shanghai Glacier). Finch regularly refers to the poems of Emily Dickinson,…

Over the past 20 years, James M. Bradburne has sat at the helm of various cultural institutions. From the interactive science center New Metropolis in Amsterdam to Europe’s first wireless museum Museum for Applied Art in Frankfurt, each has been unique in its own right. Currently, he directs the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence’s laboratory for cultural…

For his newest project, Hu Qingtai purchased and executed several plans for artworks. The result is an exhibition of eight works, each made according to the ideas of a different artist. The artists are Hu’s older brother Hu Qingyan, Li Gang, Li Liao, Jiang Bo, Yang Jian, Yang Xinguang, Zeng Hong, and Zhan Rui. By…

FROM AT LEAST the time of Nixon’s visit in 1972, the United States has had a love-hate relationship with China. Opening relations with the People’s Republic did not stop Americans from calling it “Red China,” nor did it change their love for fortune cookies. This attitude—a combination of political paranoia, economic competitiveness and cultural nostalgia—spilled…

Within Chinese contemporary art discourse, there is often no distinction made between “female artist” and “feminist artist.” Thus, for Lin Tianmiao, escaping the mutual entanglement of these two concepts, both of which play a part in her practice, is simply impossible. The former generally places an essentialist emphasis on female identity, in her case focusing…

The Met, which has never before mounted a major exhibition of Chinese contemporary art, ambitiously frames this first attempt as an exploration of how contemporary works from a non-Western culture could be displayed in an encyclopedic art museum. Shown in the museum’s large galleries of Chinese art, “Ink Art” is the epitome of a missed…

ZHAO GANG JOINED the hutong-dwelling impressionists the “Stars Group” when he was only sixteen years old. He went on to win a scholarship to study abroad in 1983, and soon integrated seamlessly into t…

IMAGINE ENCOUNTERING A plastic duplicate of Canova’s neoclassical marble sculpture The Three Graces (1814-1817) in a lesbian pub. Three pale white female figures in the nude, their genitals covered by…

The Shenzhen Ink Art Biennale may well have been the first biennial founded specifically to show a traditional art form. Thus, its influence has been limited to the fields of ink painting and traditio…

Artist Cheng Ran is on a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, where he has prepared a visual diary of his present work and life for LEAP. Amsterdam is smaller than I imagined. Travers…

WITH THE FUTURE of Woofer Ten still yet uncertain, several young yet experienced artist members of the space have created the Woofer Ten Continuous Working Team that will keep vigilance of the venue, buy time for further negotiation with the Council, and hold a series of discussions regarding community art resources and development. Whether Woofer…

Nine years ago, Zhai Liang called a selection of his works the “Decisions Collection.” They are small watercolors, mostly of scenes from daily life. Some include human figures and some are simple scenes. Titles such as Tian’anmen Square, Dancing to Sounds, The Ambush, and Massive Dust Particles emphasize the narrative force of the paintings. As…