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…

Zhang Ding’s work conveys objects and phenomena that are impossible to describe through language alone. Perhaps the essence of these things is too primal, to the extent that language—artificial and pretentious—cannot touch them. Perhaps the system of these things is too complex, and language cannot communicate their complexity. Substances overcome their physical properties, removing the…

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was a fan of painter Nicolas Poussin. He analyzes Poussin’s use of light and composition in painting Echo and Narcissus, and expands on its subject matter. The concept of the echo holds different meanings in different cultures. To the Greeks and Romans, the echo was an impediment to communication; to Native Americans, the…

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…

LEAP Forum is an initiative of Modern Art, Modern Media Group’s art platform. It is a virtually distributed conference in which speakers and guests meet not at a certain point in space and time but ra…

Artists in many parts of the world spent the 1990s caught up in the historic moment that was the end of the Cold War—what would be claimed as the end of history. Some, like those in the Chinese mainland, were under a prevailing spell as economic as political, which lasted almost to the end of…

LEAP Forum is an initiative of Modern Art, Modern Media Group’s art platform. It is a virtually distributed conference in which speakers and guests meet not at a certain point in space and time but ra…

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…

Gauzy and alluring maidens sparkle across the screen in Yang Fudong’s new film; The Colored Sky: New Women II begs the question of what happened to the old women. It’s already part of a series, like Lacan’s understanding of male sexuality structured as an infinite series of individual encounters that never feels repetitive but appears…

“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)…

In the ubiquitous three-dimensional modeling and rendering software 3ds Max, the humble teapot is among about a dozen built-in objects, standing out rather awkwardly among other geometrical shapes due…

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…

When you turn on the television in China and flick through some channels, chances are you’ll happen upon several TV series set in Republican-era China. This is nothing new; Republican Fever, as it is …

Shanzhai is neither an Instagram geotag nor a city in China hosting a biennial— despite our multiple efforts to make this the case. As co-president of the Shanzhai Biennial (with Avena Gallagher and B…

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…

Considering social media her sketchbook and GIFs a material, Jeanette Hayes has a particular penchant for Sailor Moon, whose image she superimposes onto her own recreations of high Modernist works, as in her “DeMooning” series and the stand-alone painting Les Demoiselles de’Animeme. Stating that “all portraiture is fan art,” Hayes also sends her work to…

In a brightly decorated bedroom, a man and a woman are having intercourse on a narrow single bed. The woman is bent over and the man is half-kneeling behind her. Dressed in neon green stockings, both …