At its core, the exhibition “Animism” is a European export. Now, produced under circumstances of limited financial resources, it has been introduced into China and Asia for the first time. On the surface, German curator Anselm Franke works from aesthetic and anthropological perspectives to raise an anti-modernist proposal for the order of knowledge. From participating…

Critics of Qiu Zhijie’s new solo exhibition have most frequently referred to it as “burdensome” and “cluttered.” How is it that an artist who has been practicing for over 20 years, so known for his cerebral approach, can fall victim to overindulgence? If we attempt to understand the subjective impressions that guide Qiu’s value judgements,…

The Hugo Boss Prize was founded in 1996. For its first two instances, in a move to better showcase the event, a group show of the nominees was organized at the Guggenheim; it wasn’t until the third that only the winning artist’s work was exhibited. The organizers of the Hugo Boss Asia Art award are…

Hsu Chia-Wei’s films are often characterized by “low temperature,” or a calm treatment of composition and objects. The viewer quietly listens to their narrations, which unfold with a slow and patient attitude. This kind of contained maturity is unusual for an artist only 30 years of age. Hsu is among a young generation of Taiwanese…

Yan Xing’s new solo exhibition “Recent Works” is his most ambitious to date. It consists of four interrelated mixed-media projects: Dirty Art; Lenin in 1918; Two videos, three photographs, several related masterpieces, and American art; and The Collectress. Together these create a consistent atmosphere of quality, repeatedly reminding visitors of the artist’s exquisite control over…

Lu Yang’s “Uterusman,” a semi-open-source work featuring the eponymous genderless superhero warrior, takes the inspiration for its protagonist’s physique from the shape of a female uterus, itself rese…

Is there such a thing as public space today? Given the decisive battles over public space that have taken place in the twenty-first century alone, this was a timely question posed by the heavily criti…

A couple of things suggest that the 12th Biennale de Lyon is an attempt to sidestep the sober seriousness of many large-scale exhibitions. The first is the visual identity of the biennial, which is ba…

“Roppongi Crossing 2013” is the fourth triennial survey of trends in contemporary Japanese art at the Mori Art Museum. The curatorial team of Mami Kataoka, Reuben Keehan, and Gabriel Ritter have maint…

In the last thirty-some years, most exhibitions of contemporary art in China have been spontaneous, community events, although such events have not yet been entirely accepted by society as part of mai…

As the financial hub of Southeast Asia, Singapore has clear cultural ambitions within the region. With the fourth Singapore Biennale, the primary aim is the study and display of Southeast Asian curato…

Ink is ancient Oriental culture’s great contribution to the world. Compared to artistic media such as oil painting and miniature painting, ink painting is a result of the free and spontaneous flow of water and ink on paper, and the dilemma between the controllability and uncontrollability of the four materials—brush, ink, water, and paper— constitutes…

NICOLAS BOURRIAUD HAS drawn on botanical concepts in order to define aesthetic characteristics in a globalized context, as distinguished from the extreme modernist “radical” tradition. In their pure pursuits, their thirst for the establishment of a new order, and their infatuation with the roots of “l’essence,” practitioners of contemporary art frequently adopt a kind of…

On first encountering the works of Taiwanese artist Liu Han-Chih, few people fail to be amused by the sense of black humor around them. One, titled Collar Seizing Device, is a mechanical installation which sports a handle that connects directly to the viewer’s collar. When the handle is turned, the viewer is dragged upwards by…

The title of Wang Chung-kun’s “Series of Another Soundscape” seems to misadvertise the show as a sonic exploration of sound as environment. The exhibition, hosted by Nou Gallery, Taipei, features five kinetic sculptures that notate music: a lottery machine that decodes the winning number on digital screen; a fax machine that prints a continuous sheet…

The division between Liberalism and the New Left that emerged in the mid-to-late 1990s polarized the Chinese intellectual world. Adherents of Liberalism, guided by the theories of free markets and constitutional democracy put forth by Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman, argue that China’s key challenges are returning power to the markets and combating…

BIRDMAN: CURE VERSUS CULTIVATION The film Birdman of Alcatraz was adapted from the true story of Robert Stroud. Wild, erratic, and irascible of temperament, Stroud was sentenced to 12 years in prison …

FROM THE 1950s through the 70s, propaganda art was valued as a crucial weapon for political struggle. It was an effective way to mobilize the people, in particular, peasants and workers who, at the co…

Authorship is a subject matter that has returned repeatedly throughout the history of avant-garde art practices in the twenty-first century. Ever since Marcel Duchamp mocked the artistic genius behind…

The oppressive heat of this Tokyo summer is a fitting setting for the second half of a two-part solo exhibition from Francis Alÿs at MOT in Tokyo, based on his recent work Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River. In the main exhibition hall a two-sided screen plays a video loop of…