“Film Directors in Correspondence” is a series of film-related exhibition events, each of which explores the work of an outstanding director from different perspectives, and also features the work of another in order to establish a dialogue. The solo exhibition of Chinese director Wang Bing is one of such exhibition, and Wang chose his longtime…

In trade and economics, the term “positive” is perhaps even more undesirable than its antonym—within the art industry, constantly high on “positivism” (which is essentially no different to fetishism),…

Light, sound, space, and time effectuate four dimensions inseparable from the fulfilled human sensory experience. The quotidian, however, tends to overlook their existence. Art tends to emphasize it; herein lies art’s ontological value. The more illuminating an artist’s delineations of the contours of these dimensions, the more lauded the artist. Zhang Peili is a very…

2007 was a busy year for Chinese contemporary art. Looking back, many events of that year resonate today. It was the year that Forbes published an analysis of the five hottest collectible commodities;…

It is perhaps more appropriate to discuss Hao Liang’s practice within the context of traditional Chinese painting than within ink discourse. Of course, the term “traditional Chinese painting” suggests a national identity that itself originates in cultural anxiety. This anxiety, in both the present globalized context and the history of China’s modernist path as a nation-state, in fact exists…

When I first mentioned the idea of making a queer cover feature to friends and colleagues, their most common reaction was “you’re going to write about that beverage?” The beverage in question is Qoo, a Coca-Cola product aimed at kids and teenagers originally from Japan and introduced to the Chinese market in the early 2000s….

Danish artist Danh Vo is currently presenting his first solo exhibition in China, “Danh Vo: We the People,” at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing. On this occasion, LEAP conducted an exclusive interview with the artist that resulted in an in-depth dialogue revolving around Vo’s working methods, the relationship between his personal identity and his practice, the…

I There are places we end up when we don’t really belong anywhere else. This sense of not-belonging, it is naturally felt by those existing on the fringes of society. There of course is no “outside” o…

THE FIRST TIME you saw this installation was at the opening of his studio. It was in the back of the factory, where few guests ventured. You walked toward this corner and turned, arriving in a dark, low-ceilinged room. At first glance, the installation looked like a countertop in some bar, but with an air…

Yang Fudong’s New Women premiered at a special exhibition during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Shown in black and white on five screens arranged in a row on one gallery wall, New Women stood in contrast to its surroundings, an intense installation by Christopher Doyle called Away with Words. One of the most important…

DRAWING CONTOURS ON PAPER, Wen Ling takes his time as he creates frame after frame of images from his daily life. With no strict storyboard, Wen draws what he sees and experiences in quivering traces of ink on paper. Say life is like one extended take. Wen Ling is aware that the memorable scenes are…

The paintings of Zhang Hui offer neither fulfilling content nor aestheticism, and despite depicting concrete objects and scenes with clear brushstrokes, do not make reference to the real world in any clear way. Instead, his paintings move unhurriedly towards the image as the outcome of the duty stipulated by the act of painting, and stop…

LI SHURUI’S series of paintings “Lights” has found a relatively reasoned form of visual expression, to the point where the paintings look almost too proficient. It has been nearly ten years since she …