At its core, the exhibition “Animism” is a European export. Now, produced under circumstances of limited financial resources, it has been introduced into China and Asia for the first time. On the surface, German curator Anselm Franke works from aesthetic and anthropological perspectives to raise an anti-modernist proposal for the order of knowledge. From participating…

NICOLAS BOURRIAUD HAS drawn on botanical concepts in order to define aesthetic characteristics in a globalized context, as distinguished from the extreme modernist “radical” tradition. In their pure pursuits, their thirst for the establishment of a new order, and their infatuation with the roots of “l’essence,” practitioners of contemporary art frequently adopt a kind of…

On first encountering the works of Taiwanese artist Liu Han-Chih, few people fail to be amused by the sense of black humor around them. One, titled Collar Seizing Device, is a mechanical installation which sports a handle that connects directly to the viewer’s collar. When the handle is turned, the viewer is dragged upwards by…

The title of Wang Chung-kun’s “Series of Another Soundscape” seems to misadvertise the show as a sonic exploration of sound as environment. The exhibition, hosted by Nou Gallery, Taipei, features five kinetic sculptures that notate music: a lottery machine that decodes the winning number on digital screen; a fax machine that prints a continuous sheet…

A summer pavilion usually provides three basic amenities: seating, shade, and shelter. From a distance, it is unclear whether Sou Fujimoto’s Serpentine Pavilion, which seems to hover atop a clearing i…

BIRDMAN: CURE VERSUS CULTIVATION The film Birdman of Alcatraz was adapted from the true story of Robert Stroud. Wild, erratic, and irascible of temperament, Stroud was sentenced to 12 years in prison …

FROM THE 1950s through the 70s, propaganda art was valued as a crucial weapon for political struggle. It was an effective way to mobilize the people, in particular, peasants and workers who, at the co…

Authorship is a subject matter that has returned repeatedly throughout the history of avant-garde art practices in the twenty-first century. Ever since Marcel Duchamp mocked the artistic genius behind…

The oppressive heat of this Tokyo summer is a fitting setting for the second half of a two-part solo exhibition from Francis Alÿs at MOT in Tokyo, based on his recent work Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River. In the main exhibition hall a two-sided screen plays a video loop of…

My curiosity in Liao Guohe started from his CV. He was born in Calcutta in 1977, studied mechanical drawing in the United States, and now lives in Hunan. Before World War II, about 20,000 Chinese fled to Calcutta; by the end of the Sino-Indian War in 1962 this population was down to a cool 7,000…

AS A YOUNG artist heading towards and steadily exploring maturity, Li Binyuan brings, on at least two different levels, a degree of tension to the origins of his art: one is in the manufactured grammar that has emerged in modern poetry, and the other in the physical essence of the sculpting experience. As a former…

Let Panda Fly opens with an aerial shot—accompanied by emotional music—of four children on a mountain road, setting out into the morning sun. The powerful scene seems almost purposely to leave the audience in suspense. It is the beginning of the film, but the end of the story. All of the “pandas” have long since…