Combing the aisles of the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Center we glimpse a new reality. At large-scale shows in Asia we had gotten used to a certain décalage, that whiff of the passé intimated through exhibition design, curatorial framing, or the works themselves. But even those unaware of this art fair’s dizzying rise (as…

South Africa – New York – South Africa LEAP: So, what got you into making art? Kendell Geers: Well, it’s very simple. In South Africa during apartheid, every white male was supposed to go into the military. Conscription was mandatory and involuntary. I was against apartheid and therefore against the military. And the only way…

The ongoing curricularization of contemporary art from Asia continues with this anthology, edited by the husband-and-wife, museum-director-and-magazine-editor duo of Chiu & Genocchio. They take 2008 as their starting point, noting that the year of the financial crisis was also the year “Asian artists stormed the citadel of the New York art world.” Stormed? Or were…

LATE IN MARCH, China’s wandering tribe of independent documentary filmmakers converged on the city of Kunming for the fifth edition of the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival (Yunfest). Since the founding of the documentary biennale in 2003, Yunfest has become a mecca for alternative film culture in China, a voice for an emerging generation of…

            1. TOBIAS MADISON Twenty-five year-old Swiss artist Tobias Madison’s recipe for artmaking combines minimalist sculpture with slick 80’s design and a touch of branding and glitch aesthetics. The artist, who was recently the subject of solo exhibitions at New York’s Swiss Institute and Kunstverein München, has been known to…

Roughly translated, the Chinese name for Cheng Ran’s new solo show is “day becomes night.” He chose its English name, “Circadian Rhythm,” with the help of translation software. Although the core of the show is his newest video work, WHAT WHY HOW, the entire show is laid out in such a way that the relationship…

IN THE QUICK red firmament of Chinese contemporary art history, names are fascinatingly ephemeral. The specter of the here-today-gone-tomorrow plagues even the most powerful-seeming artists, collectors, and galleries. And though the overall story of art in China has been one of unbridled growth, instances of decline and fall litter the shining path. And none more…

“THIS MUSEUM must demonstrate the nation’s great riches,” wrote Jean-Marie Roland, the French Minister of the Interior in 1792. “France must extend its glory through the ages and to all peoples.” His letter to Enlightenment painter Jacques-Louis David concerned plans for the National Museum of France, better known today as the Louvre. More than two…

Established after Taikang Space moved to Caochangdi and named after the total floor area in the gallery’s space it occupied, 51m² was especially dedicated to holding exhibitions of young artists on a rolling basis. From October 17, 2009 until January 8, 2011, 51m² spanned fifteen months and ultimately played first home to the new works…

JOURNEY OF (NO) REDRESS Beijing Anyone who ever bemoaned the Beijing art world’s lack of a power lunch scene was more or less vindicated when Fennel opened in the Yi House, a boutique hotel in 798, last spring. One year later, on the first Saturday of April and the beginning of the Grave Sweeping Festival,…

THE WINTER OF 1960 was freezing cold. It was a time when the Republic was solemnly suffering famine and hardship. In Anhui, the art world had just come out of the struggle against Anti-Revisionism and the Anti-Rightist Movement, and everybody was feeling unusually depressed. Our only thread of hope came from the Provincial Party Committee,…

An important member of the “Post-Sense Sensibility” group of the 1990s, Zhang Hui has worked in media including installation, theater, and performance art. And then, five or six years ago, he turned the larger part of his attention to painting. Zhang shares some thoughts with LEAP about this shift in his practice. I’ve told this…

Set against the distinct uproar of modern Chinese history, Hoo Mojong’s works betray a unified, unadorned quiet. Many of her paintings are still-lifes, usually depicting everyday objects such as trees, bananas, bread, vegetables, and the like, crudely composed in rough lines. Her figures also seem cumbersome, with simplistic or omitted facial features and unusually robust…

Like a white lotus in full bloom on a pond’s surface, the ArtScience Museum glitters under the clear Singaporean skies. Situated in front of the three towers of Marina Bay Sands and next to the winding silvery strands of the Helix Bridge, the museum adds to an already striking skyline in the new waterfront area…

Hong Kong-based art historian Frank Vigneron titles his highly personal account of contemporary art in the city after the infamous song “Kowloon, Hong Kong,” written and performed by a 1960s English-language local pop group called the Reynettes; juxtaposed on the cover of the book over a sketch of the bauhinia blossom that graces the Hong…

With four daily non-stops from Beijing to Taipei, twenty-four hour border crossings between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and steady jetfoil service between Macau and cities along the Pearl River Delta, we find constant movement throughout “Greater China” today. Yet while the idea of “Greater China” carries with it a set series of associations— commercial, cultural,…

Ruan Qianrui transports the visual and sonic landscapes of Beijing’s experimental music scene to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This January, I heard that Ruan Qianrui was coming to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for a collaborative exhibition with Experimenter En Couleur, a member of the London-based Audio Architecture collective. In…

In Beijing’s 798 Art District, abutting Originality Square and just across from the Danish-owned Galleri Faurschou and New York powerhouse Pace Beijing, there sits a beige pedestal. Thick and wide, th…

LEAP: Art Beijing is already in its sixth edition, which is hard to believe. Seems like just yesterday you were preparing the inaugural version. DMY: When it all got started, there wasn’t much else for me to do. I couldn’t find other jobs, you know, I was too old. So I had to make something…

Since 2006, Beijing has been blessed— or cursed, depending on your perspective— with two art fairs, opening within ten days of one another. In the leadup to the dueling expos in late April and early May, LEAP sat down with Wang Yihan, Director of the China International Gallery Exposition. LEAP: This must be the busiest…