MUSEUM OF OLD AND NEW ART (MONA), HOBART, AUSTRALIA 2014.11.22~2015.04.13 “Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state.” ——Norman Mailer, Ancient Evenings (1983) In Matthew Barney’s epic, durational film, the American artist plays a mythical character, Ka, who passes silently between the living and the dead. Heavily bearded and drenched in feces, Barney appears in…

TRANSLATION / Yvette Zhu A new stage of institutional critique seeks to confront neoliberal market mechanisms. Because of fluctuations between global and regional systems, the circulation of capital around and within institutions is becoming less visible, resulting in critical clashes between artists and various components of the art system that are often more effective than…

IMA BRISBANE 2014.12.13~2015.03.22 Although Berlin-based writer and artist Hito Steyerl’s films are not often seen in the Asia-Pacific, her name was frequently invoked in Australia around the time of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney. In Is a Museum a Battlefield?, a performance-lecture at the 2013 Istanbul Biennial, she highlighted sponsors’ links to the militarized policing…

TRANSLATION / David East ILLUSTRATION / weiwei Zhang Huan has worked in a 100-person factory—almost a genuine enterprise—in the suburban Songjiang district of Shanghai since 2005. Cai Guo-Qiang’s stud…

TRANSLATION / Daniel Nieh THE PRODUCTIVE ENVIRONMENT “Consumption, as a necessity and as a need, is itself an intrinsic aspect of productive activity.” ——Karl Marx, Economic Manuscript of 1857-1858(1)…

L-ART GALLERY, CHENGDU 2014.12.20~2015.01.30 HUNSAND SPACE, BEIJING 2014.12.21~2015.02.28 “Boredom is the Beginning of Action” and “Omnipresent Concrete” do not particularly stand out among the exhibi…

GALLERIA CONTINUA, PACE BEIJING, AND TANG CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER 2014.12.13~2015.03.15 “Unlived by What is Seen” is an ambitious undertaking in its engagement with the mechanics of the art industry. …

TEXT / Wu Mo Translated / Vanessa Nolan BLINDSPOT GALLERY, HONG KONG 2014.11.15~2015.01.10 Taking on the explicit aim of promoting contemporary photography, as Blindspot Gallery does, implies a sense …

TEXT / Stephanie Bailey TRANSLATION / Connie Kang Lately it feels like all the world’s an art fair. —— Sarah Nicole Prickett（1） When we talk about art fairs, we’re never just talking about art f…

MULTIPLE VENUES IN KOCHI, KERALA, INDIA 2014.12.12~2015.03.29 As one of only two biennials in South Asia, the Kochi Muziris Biennale is inevitably discussed in terms of its lack of government funding,…

POWER STATION OF ART, SHANGHAI 2014.11.23~2015.03.31 CRITIQUE I TEXT / Lu Mingjun Translated by Daniel Nieh More than 70 artists participated in “Social Factory,” Anselm Franke’s Shanghai Biennale. Th…

Hong-gah Museum, Taipei 2014.11.01~2015.01.25 Curated by scholars Gong Jow-Jiun and Nobuo Takamori, the 4th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, “The Return of Ghosts,” features the work of more…

Pierre Huyghe’s latest film, Human Mask (2014), opens with drone footage of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, site of the 2011 meltdown, before settling in Kayabukiya Tavern, a modest establishment just outside the quarantine zone in Utsonomiya, Japan. Before the disaster, the tavern made headlines for its monkey waitstaff, dolled up in masks, wigs, and…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Our modern world is fast.  The connections we make are immediate yet superficial:  texting, social media, and mass media swirl past us to until we are left over-saturated by information, much of which is useless.  Amidst all of this, hiding in plain sight, are the evils of corruption, poverty, and the complacency we…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Edouard Malingue has made the long trek across Queen’s Road Central, down Pedder Road, and up Des Voeux Road Central. His new space—easily double the size of his old one, which boasted a clever OMA design by which office and auxiliary space surrounded a central, off-axis exhibition area—is designed by the young architectural…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka exhibit together for the first time at Gagosian Hong Kong; Wood is new to the Gagosian roster, a surprising move after a long allegiance to Los Angeles dealer David Kordansky, and both artists are new to Hong Kong, so the relationships are fresh all around. The one constant…

TRANSLATION / David East Look at my brother. He’s successful by mastering an effective style and embellishing it with so-called conceptual content. This is why he’s known as an “international Asian ar…

TRANSLATION / Xia Sheng Art historian Hal Foster’s extended review of German artist Isa Genzken’s MoMA exhibition in the February 2014 issue of Artforum begins with the statement that Genzken’s career has been wrongly contextualized by her relationships with more famous male artists. While this is probably true, Foster proceeds to draw an almost entirely…

TEXT / Shi Qing（1） TRANSLATION / Katy Pinke EDUCATION IS AN ancient profession. In China, the arts academy has a long history, dating back centuries. Since the dawn of the modern era, it has been the …

TEXT / Song Yi TRANSLATION / Sarah Stanton The art academy we propose here is not a place where everyone studies at the same fixed stage of life; rather, it is a process of self-directed maturation governed by a plethora of unknown factors, full of accidents, misunderstandings, accommodations, and any number of other unexpected mishaps….