Under the present conditions in China, if a more thorough analysis of the concept of abstraction is not carried out, then it will gain a kind of cognitive inertia and mutate into a new popular symbol. In fact, we are already witnessing this risk, particularly in this moment of large-scale marketing in the art world……

The root of the word “idiot” comes from the Greek idiotes, which originally described those incapable of shouldering communal responsibility. The definition certainly fits people in current popular culture who also shirk all responsibility, preferring to spend their time following absurd internet trends. To an extent, these modern idiots bear the shadow of the hippies,…

A sculptor by training, Wang Sishun has in recent years been creating conceptual art seemingly unrelated to sculpture. In these works, Wang takes a playful, Dadaist approach to transforming readymade products and everyday materials, dismantling their physical properties, function, and value to restructure our sensory experiences of once-familiar objects. For Uncertain Capital, Wang melted down…

“Chasing Sites” was a relatively sedate presentation for artist Weng Wei, focusing on her ink paintings on rectangles of paper and cutouts affixed to clearly delimited sections of the gallery walls. These new works and their installation in Pékin Fine Arts have calmed the spontaneity of her earlier appearances, and this aspect of spontaneity— instigated…

In the vast, far-stretching OCT gallery space, curved walls separated two works produced for this exhibition of Qiu Anxiong’s new work. The work A Study in Autopsy appeared to simulate the organs and circulatory system of a human body, while Surplus Value featured projected images of a running horse, accompanied by racing equipment. On a…

A comprehensive article by archaeologist and translator Bruce Doar portrays Aniwar as a refined traveler in the manner of a solitary, spiritual nomad. This uncommon aura is borne out by the paintings, drawings, and felt works shown recently at Platform China. Vivid yet earthy, they seemed attuned to the natural world and its moods, colors,…

WIND LIGHT AS A THIEF | Arrow Factory, Beijing 2011.07.03-2011.09.20 I AM CURIOUS YELLOW, I AM CURIOUS BLUE | Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing 2011.07.16-2011.08.16 A MOLE ON EACH BREAST AND ANOTHER ON THE SHOULDER | Magician Space, Beijing 2011.07.28-2011.08.21 Summertime is downtime for the gallery system. There are bound to be a few inconsequential group…

Elephants drop through the ceiling, dogs poke their heads through pipes, and parrots perch on upside-down human statuary. Gao Lei’s mixed-media installations draw on a bestiary to examine human ambition and human limits. His art is populated by a carnival of animals that appear in room-sized installations, photographs enclosed inside lightboxes, and mixed-media oil paintings,…

In the short period of time from 2008’s “Synthetic Times” exhibition to the recently opened “Translife” exhibition, the “International Triennial of New Media Art” has done much to reinvigorate the National Art Museum of China. “Translife” is divided into three sections: “Sensorium of the Extraordinary,” which investigates the human senses; “Sublime of the Liminal,” which…

The canonizing ramps of the Guggenheim rotunda played host to this five-decade retrospective of Korean-Japanese artist Lee Ufan (b. 1936), tracing his prolific career in a chronological and thematic upward spiral curated by Alexandra Munroe. Series of gestural, postminimalist paintings punctuated the hike, while sculptures informed by inherent and enlivened “encounters” among things of different…

In 1967, Sony released the Portapak portable camcorder in New York. This household camcorder, with its playback function and lightweight, easy-to-use design, would rescue moving images from exclusive use by professionals and deliver them into the hands of individuals for their own memories and imaginations to manipulate. Twenty years later, China reached a similar turning…

To get an idea of what this exhibition is like, it is perhaps best to start with a description of Liang Shuo’s Fortified Colors (2011), an installation of multicolored affordable household items stuffed behind three pieces of glass to form an extremely soft and colorful screen. However, behind is an entirely different scene: chaotic furniture…

The founding aspiration of the local and regional “Cultural Assets and Equity Exchanges” now popping up around China was to create an adjoined service platform between culture and capital: providing cultural industries with a wider range of access to funding and implementing a system of convenient, standardized, and efficient service and support for investors. Set…

According to curator Nikita Choi’s introduction, a series of real experiences and encounters at the Times Museum were what inspired her to put together an exhibition reflecting on the concept of the museum. In her words, art couriers only see two sides to an art museum: the bank and the store. They unfortunately turn a…

Propaganda is a one-way affair. It is a device, a prop, controlled by the powerful to dictate to the weak. Do this. Believe that. For it to be successful, there can be no talk back. But what if propaganda were a tool of self-reflection? What shape would it take? What if, when you looked into…

It is an incontestable fact that, in contemporary China, the original social and critical nature of cartooning has diminished. An exhibition of work by Huang Yao (1917-1987) at the Shanghai Art Museum earlier this year, curated by the author, showed a cartoonist working in Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s who possessed a spirit of…

Under the current set of social circumstances, the need for monuments is as pressing as ever. In Wuhan, birthplace the Xinhai Revolution— the uprising, named for its year in the Chinese calendrical system, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911— architects and planners think about how to commemorate and look forward. IN AN AGE where…

Looking back, it is hard not to recognize the prescience of Shanghai’s early amusement parks. In the decades that followed, this festive mode of consumption rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming the anthem of entertainment for the urban middle classes. THE SETTING SUN spread over the broad, flat asphalt road. Flocks of cars and people…

Every periodic exhibition is ultimately, institutionally, about something. And just as Gwangju is a memorial to the Korean democratic movement and Singapore is a government creativity scheme, Yokohama is a remedy to a very specific national cultural situation, one that in suitably Japanese terms cannot be easily described but that has something to do with…

One can almost imagine Bishan in its heyday. On the evening of August 26, 2011 the village’s daytime enthusiasm gushes towards the Yi County Cinema. It’s the kind of movie theater almost every small town has had, but Bishan’s has somehow managed to hang on to a 1980s or 90s feel. Above both the exits,…