For the performance of Man on The Chairs, a group of trained dancers, following instructions and exerting great effort, clambered back and forth across the gallery space. Admiring this scene, and trying to figure out the narrative of the performance, spectators soon realize that its crux lies in an emphasis of the new “surface” created…

PHOTOGRAPHY: Birdhead STYLIST: Clément Buyi Z. (CLÉMENT & CLÉMENT PRODUCTION) HAIR & MAKE-UP: Kevin Long (MANWOMAN_management) PRODUCER: Aimee Lin PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Zinn Zhou STYLIST ASSISTANT: Daqian Yongko Leslie MODELS: Lilac H(PARAS) LOCATION: KEE Shanghai

In rhetoric, things come in threes, and Liu Wei is above all a rhetor. Thus his largest exhibition to date was divided, like Caesar’s Gaul— unevenly by size, but evenly by impact— into three parts. To the right of the entrance, the installation Golden Section offered a space divided into several by the lurking furniture…

The Sharjah Biennial was hardly the biggest thing afoot in the Arab world this spring, even if the halo effect of the concurrent Art Dubai seems to have tipped it over into critical mass. (The 2011 iteration of both shows were the largest in their respective histories). Of course, any historic change is inseparable from…

Chinese ink and brush painting is in a strange place. On the one hand, quality works are in short supply, and a “lack of methodology” has rendered the field, as art critic Gao Minglu critiques it, “unsalvageable.” Yet on the other, strong attendance at recent exhibitions speaks to an uptick in interest in the genre,…

Song Dong first began working on his series of installations entitled “The Wisdom of the Poor” in 2005. One piece from this series, the large-scale installation Song Dong’s Parapavilion, is to be shown at the Venice Biennale this year. Apart from this upcoming show, none of the works from this series have previously been presented…

AUGUST 8, 2008, was a major day in world history. Coming at the end of a seven-year countdown, it marked the moment when Beijing revealed its ambitions and accomplishments to a watching world. Hours before the drums beat out the final ten seconds in the lead-up to the 8 p.m. opening of the Olympic Games,…

ONCE UPON A CLOUD: OUR 1980s ART SCHOOL LIVES It’s no coincidence that the elite produced by the art education system of the 1980s have become a galaxy of stars in today’s art world. The unique thirst for knowledge of that era allowed “universities” to transcend space and time. In the words of art critic…

SONART First of all, the idea of SONART is not at all limited to sound art or experimental music performance. The concept of a series of cutting-edge live performances and audio-visual publications was proposed by Gao Shiming, Executive Director of School of Intermedia Art, and I am the one responsible for its realization. SONART stands…

IF THERE IS ONE ARTIST apt to leave pundits chewing their pencils, it is Wang Jianwei. He is surely the first to have occupied a 2,500-square-meter exhibition hall— indeed any exhibition hall— with several thousand basketballs in the name of art. “He’s complicated,” remarked a curator on recent mention of his name; “Ah, yes” a…

  WANG JIANWEI: MAN IN-BETWEEN If there is one artist apt to leave pundits chewing their pencils, it is Wang Jianwei. He is surely the first to have occupied a 2,500-square-meter exhibition hall— indeed any exhibition hall— with several thousand basketballs in the name of art. “He’s complicated,” remarked a curator on recent mention of…

CREATION MYTHS IN CHINESE ART academies, there is no clear divide between traditional art education and “contemporary” art education. There have always been teachers who imbue the curricula of the traditional departments of Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, and sculpture (collectively known as “COPS”) with ideas from contemporary art, holding experimental classes or even establishing…

PHOTOGRAPHY: HUANG RAN STYLIST: LUCIA LIU MAKE-UP: QIQI HAIR: CHEN FENG PRODUCER: AIMEE LIN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: BIAN JIAOJIAO STYLIST ASSISTANT: GIGI PENG MODELS: KIKI KANG, EVAN

THESE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE made on and around US military bases in Japan, Korea and Guam, a part of the world designated by the Pentagon as “PACOM,” the U.S. Pacific Command. The Pentagon divides the world into six separate regional commands and PACOM is the largest, covering half the surface of the world. The military component…

Artist Li Yuan-chia (1929-1994) spoke little but saw far. Unknown in his native China and largely forgotten in his adoptive Taiwan, his journey took him to Italy and later to England where he worked tirelessly for over three decades. A little understood and remarkably subtle artistic innovator, he worked first to incorporate Eastern philosophy into…

THE FIRST TIME I encountered Luo Dan’s “Simple Songs” was in the small city of Lianzhou, in Guangdong’s mountainous north. He had just finished taking this group of photos, first driving from western Yunnan’s Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture back to Chengdu, then flying on to Guangzhou, then traveling by bus to Lianzhou, to serve as…

Just as the “happiness index” was becoming a hot topic leading up to this year’s National People’s Congress, Son Il Kwon’s solo exhibition, “On Happiness,” opened at Three Shadows. His own understanding of happiness is projected through the eyes and faces of his subjects, the juxtaposition of portrait and landscape. The works on display largely…

Ten years have gone by since we first caught a glimpse of Zhang Enli’s early still-lifes. Amidst the turbulent waves of the past decade, Zhang’s paintings have served as a kind of placid calm. At a time when more and more painters have become eager to penetrate the canvas with a social gaze, Zhang continues…

Zhang Quan is in constant pursuit of the possibility of agreement among ink painting, its contemporary context, and everyday experience. He is one in a long line of artists to pursue this path of reinventing the ink context. The theme of this solo exhibition is “Infinity in Mist”—a phrase that captures the mood and content…

The recent group exhibition at Pékin Fine Arts alludes to a bestselling book of the same title in the United States last year. The book identifies how “gadgets”—handheld electronic devices, particularly smartphones—have effectively hijacked our modes of socialization, constructing a virtual world that has made it difficult to locate the self in our current state…