In Wang Jianwei’s concept of the “dirty substance,” we find something extremely contradictory: it is a ridge of jagged rock, a reef he happens upon in the mining of his universal thought process—an ob…

Some 60 pieces of work created or collected by Douglas Coupland are displayed in this exhibition, alongside relevant texts from his most recent book of the same title. The book discuss contemporary human circumstances: among other things, Coupland imagines Workr and Yoo, two apps that collect personal data so as to reshape individual identity. Through…

In 1967, Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan published The Medium is the Massage, a slim paperback that quickly became an icon of pop-culture criticism and cemented his reputation as its high priest. A collaboration with the designer Quentin Fiore “coordinated” by Jerome Agel, the book uses bold layouts, striking graphics, and eclectic samples from art…

Conceived as a response to changes to what might be called the unsympathetically hyper-kinetic city par excellence, the group show “Lost City 3” picks up some seven years after its previous edition, the series as a whole spanning just over ten years. During this period, Singapore’s built environment has seen startlingly rapid changes, with whole…

A search for the conditions which construct our reality lies at the center of Alicja Kwade’s work as a sculptor. With consistency, yet a great variety of methods and often traditional materials such as metal, stone, wood, copper, aluminum, glass and everyday objects like clocks, mirrors, lamps, or doors she creates fascinating artworks about the…

Artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff’s New Theater originates from, amongst other things, the desire to reimagine relational art in the particular context of a niche American art world in Berlin, whose ecosystem is already under the gentrifying influence of the city’s increasing popularity as a destination for creative transplants. The twenty-something Cooper Union graduates’…

The 2015 martial arts film The Assassin, by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, has generated debate in China over how to reach a correct understanding of its plot, background, dialogue, costumes, pro…

Singaporean curator Qinyi Lim’s exhibition “A Luxury We Cannot Afford” begins by citing the attitude of Lee Kuan Yew towards art and culture: a frivolous waste of energy and resources better spent on industrialization and militarization. If this approach persisted until the creative industries were recognized as a cornerstone of first-world status in the 1990s,…

Tucked away in the serene creative space of Pure Collective on Yuqing Road in Shanghai, Chi Peng’s solo exhibition “I am a Little Nervous Towards a World that is Hidden” is sensitively explicated by the show’s curator Enrico Polato. The objects ensconced in their pristine curio cabinets, as well as the black and white pencil…

A single substance connecting all continents, saltwater has a habit of sustaining certain life forms while desiccating others. Its rising levels may threaten life as we know it, but, on shore, it drie…

Blazin’ up in of the Seoul Museum of Art, the mammoth exhibition PEACEMINUSONE offers a glittering addition to the canon of swag-as-art. While the group exhibition features work by such international artists as James Clar and Fabien Verschare and a broad range of contemporary South Korean artists, PEACEMINUSONE is for, by, and about one man:…

“Venice Dansaekhwa” (technically just “Dansaekhwa,” but there is a limit to the conveniences of minimalism) is a simple and beautifully hung exhibition in the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac along the Grand Canal. Organized by the Boghossian Foundation along with the galleries Kukje and Tina Kim, and curated by Yongwoo Lee of the Gwangju Biennial, it’s arguably one…

Hu Weiyi is known for modularity and unpredictability, but this exhibition is well-planned and strategized. The idea of the convoy was decided on first, then the route from Shanghai to Beijing. Apparently unplanned experiences along this route become the focal point of the project. In the exhibition, however, it seems Hu had no plans to…

Disappointment finally reaches a climax at the end of a journey through the eight cities—Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Marl, Mülheim, Recklinghausen—participating in the exhibition “CHINA 8.” Rather than an in-depth overview into the diversity of contemporary art in China, it offers only quantitative superlatives. Among painting, photography, calligraphy, installation, sculpture, and video from established…

“GENUINE FAKE” Hydra School Projects, Hydra, Greece This exhibition begins with a concise introduction to the theme at hand: the fake. It starts at the doorway to this former school on Hydra, taken over some 15 years ago by artist and curator Dimitrios Antonitsis, with a framed dinner receipt faxed to Antonitsis from Dash Snow…

In the beginning of June in New York, one could see Austrian artist Maria Petschnig’s work screened twice: on one evening as part of Anthology Film Archive’s Show and Tell series, and on another at a release party at the gallery On Stellar Rays for her new career-surveying book, Maria Petschnig: Nineteen Videos 2002-2014. Large(ish)…

When the Taipei Biennial and Shanghai Biennale announced that their present editions would be curated, respectively, by Nicolas Bourriaud and Anselm Franke, there were strong echoes of theoretical discourse and cultural internationalism shared between the two regions. Further east on the Pacific rim, the Yokohama Triennale boldly appointed artist Yasumasa Morimura artistic directer (the Triennale…

Koki Tanaka is Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year, an award that favors artists “who connect their aesthetic concerns to social issues,” a fitting description of Tanaka’s work. “A Vulnerable Narrator” includes numerous realized, failed, and unrealized projects from the past decade. Each project starts with writing, and the texts on craft paper pasted on…

With “South by Southeast,” Filipino curator Patrick Flores and Romanian curator Anca Mihuleţ propose the new interpretive dimension of “southeasternness” by looking at generalized geographic concepts …

Hong Kong artists Leung Chi Wo and Sara Wong’s “Museum of the Lost” features an ongoing archive of anonymous figures drawn from various mass media sources. Wong and Leung isolate individuals found in photographs with their backs turned or faces obscured and write stories about them, imagining what they might have been doing at the…