The harsh realities of an industrializing country with one-fifth of the world’s population create a fertile climate for a unique and diverse cultural discourse. Beijing is a backdrop for real cultural exchange: western theory is debunked over dumpling dinners as Chinese philosophy is integrated, collaborations are conceived as artists walk from one café to another…

Yuko Mohri is an installation artist. Her installations are strange. Under her spell, the exhibition space becomes a self-operating, animatronic stomping ground: chirps, bursts, flashes, and dashes of…

It’s been 20 years since Beijing-born artist Wang Gongxin returned to China after a decade in Williamsburg, bringing with him fresh ideas about new media and video art. He first responded to his repat…

The Beijing art world likes talking to itself and about itself. When the word “Beijing” is part of a seminar title, it does not describe a geographical area, but implies a certain grandnes…

“The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest of control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), and insurmountable …

Through “Moving Images,” the latest in a series of exhibitions that precede the construction of Hong Kong’s M+ museum of visual culture, curator Yung Ma attempts to reconstruct the phenomenon of immigration, providing a systematic survey of the institution’s collection of work in the moving image. It is especially appropriate to examine immigration in the…

Artist Timur Si-Qin unveils his first solo exhibition in China, “Biogenic Mineral,” at Magician Space in April 2015. For this exhibition, the artist presents the brand Truth by Peace (TBP) in sculpture and photography. LEAP talks to Si-Qin about attractors and their varying forms in his work. LEAP Your work frequently makes use of commercial…

WEB EXCLUSIVE A mannequin, already victim to an axe attack and subjected to a simulated sex scene, bursts into flames. A man in a business suit throws another one, wrapped in some sort of diaper-harness, to the ground. Behind a table, a band plays a cacophonous rush of semi-rhythmic noise, the keyboardist slamming his instrument…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Gregor Hildebrandt (born 1974) is a German contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin. Although Hildebrandt makes installations, sculptures, and works on canvas, his materials not…

Dutch artist Guido van der Werve’s 2012 film Nummer Veertien, home, a requiem in three parts, weaves together autobiography, history, music, and endurance sports. The tripartite framework simultaneously echoes the journeys of three “characters”—Frédéric Chopin, Alexander the Great, and van der Werve himself—and the structure of the triathlon. The decidedly cerebral but concise film (less…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Denmark’s DJ HVAD pulls a nearly universal reaction out of people experiencing his work for the first time: “What…?” On the streets of his hometown, Albertslund; in the more cosmopolitan dance clubs and noise dens of nearby Copenhagen; in Punjab, his father’s ancestral home; and, most recently, in Beijing’s underground live music dives:…

TATE BRITAIN 2014.09.30~2015.01.04 Disparate imagery, associative connections, and distinct emotional distance define a network of rooms organized for the visitor to carve an unhindered and fairly unchallenging path through this year’s Turner Prize exhibition. The attitude that once popularized the event, or at least made it infamous, has shrunk away over the past decade. Selected…

PLATFORM CHINA CONTEMPORARY ART INSTITUTE, BEIJING 2014.11.08~2014.12.30 Working on a regular schedule of one large-scale exhibition every two years, each with some dozen works of considerable size, Q…

WEB EXCLUSIVE In a Hong Kong hotel room in June 2013, American computer analyst Edward Snowden revealed classified information from the US National Security Agency (NSA). Described as the largest intelligence leak in history, revelations included proofs of the government’s illegal wiretappings on phone and Internet communications of hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The…

LEO XU PROJECTS, SHANGHAI 2014.11.23~2015.01.04 Cui Jie’s solo exhibition “The Proposals for Old and New Urbanism” surveys paintings of urban architecture produced over the last two years, among which the figure of the overpass marks one of the major scenes. The right half of the new work Vision underneath the Overpass is filled with metal…

TRANSLATION / David East Truth is the first casualty of the news industry. Kao Chung-Li’s 1983 solo exhibition, held in Taipei at the American Institute in Taiwan—the only way to enter the art world a…

ANTENNA SPACE, SHANGHAI 2014.11.08~2015.01.15 Yu Honglei belongs to a group of young artists making an impression based on their interest in cultural spaces beyond the art world. Although their work does not always stylistically diverge from the admittedly louder and brasher emerging artists focusing on the mechanics of the art world itself, their break is…

TRANSLATION / Yvette Zhu Before the system for the dissemination and interpretation of artistic discourse was fully developed, it was often enough to simply put forth a concept and realize it. For young artist Zhao Yao, today’s artists need to autonomously and proactively influence the dissemination of this discourse. Above all, he stresses the importance…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Ang Song Nian’s latest solo exhibition at DECK seems particularly appropriate within the context of Singapore, the self-styled Garden City, whose extensive greenery was born not of some respectful consideration for nature, but rather political and economic considerations of greater immediacy. Of course, control and influence don’t just flow in one direction—hence the…

Within the current Shanghai Biennale, an artist by the name of Robbie Williams puts on a striking “Solo Show.” According to the official information available, Williams is an artist of Egyptian and Ta…