This year, red and black flags were raised outside the main site of the 4th Athens Biennale (AB4): the former Athens Stock Exchange building, which closed its doors in 2007. The colors invoked associa…

Critics of Qiu Zhijie’s new solo exhibition have most frequently referred to it as “burdensome” and “cluttered.” How is it that an artist who has been practicing for over 20 years, so known for his cerebral approach, can fall victim to overindulgence? If we attempt to understand the subjective impressions that guide Qiu’s value judgements,…

The Hugo Boss Prize was founded in 1996. For its first two instances, in a move to better showcase the event, a group show of the nominees was organized at the Guggenheim; it wasn’t until the third that only the winning artist’s work was exhibited. The organizers of the Hugo Boss Asia Art award are…

THOUGH SHANG YANG enjoyed great success with his series “The Dong Qichang Project,” he has far from rested on his laurels in the decade since. In his latest solo exhibition at the Suzhou Museum, “Shan…

Hsu Chia-Wei’s films are often characterized by “low temperature,” or a calm treatment of composition and objects. The viewer quietly listens to their narrations, which unfold with a slow and patient attitude. This kind of contained maturity is unusual for an artist only 30 years of age. Hsu is among a young generation of Taiwanese…

Yan Xing’s new solo exhibition “Recent Works” is his most ambitious to date. It consists of four interrelated mixed-media projects: Dirty Art; Lenin in 1918; Two videos, three photographs, several related masterpieces, and American art; and The Collectress. Together these create a consistent atmosphere of quality, repeatedly reminding visitors of the artist’s exquisite control over…

IT WAS IN the final days of preparation for our October issue that I received an email from a one Li Yuxin. Just having edited a heavy ream of articles on labor and the culture it may produce, I sighe…

Lu Yang’s “Uterusman,” a semi-open-source work featuring the eponymous genderless superhero warrior, takes the inspiration for its protagonist’s physique from the shape of a female uterus, itself rese…

According to historian Philip A. Kuhn, China’s “modern” emigration began in the early sixteenth century, the start of what he labels as the four eras of Chinese emigration: the early colonial age (six…

Is there such a thing as public space today? Given the decisive battles over public space that have taken place in the twenty-first century alone, this was a timely question posed by the heavily criti…

I’m A. Zombie and I just keep coming back. No one is sure where I originate from but everyone knows I’m going to be around forever. I have my own theories; some proof even. I’ve commissioned research,…

A couple of things suggest that the 12th Biennale de Lyon is an attempt to sidestep the sober seriousness of many large-scale exhibitions. The first is the visual identity of the biennial, which is ba…

Upon wining this year’s Emdash Award, a prize presented in conjunction with the Frieze Foundation celebrating emerging artists, Pilvi Takala decided to give the majority of the GBP 10,000 prize money …

“Roppongi Crossing 2013” is the fourth triennial survey of trends in contemporary Japanese art at the Mori Art Museum. The curatorial team of Mami Kataoka, Reuben Keehan, and Gabriel Ritter have maint…

In the last thirty-some years, most exhibitions of contemporary art in China have been spontaneous, community events, although such events have not yet been entirely accepted by society as part of mai…

SHOES This is a personal experience of a friend who studied abroad. When he was interning at an art center, he often guarded art exhibitions by himself. One time, he was guarding a video installation….

As the financial hub of Southeast Asia, Singapore has clear cultural ambitions within the region. With the fourth Singapore Biennale, the primary aim is the study and display of Southeast Asian curato…

Ink is ancient Oriental culture’s great contribution to the world. Compared to artistic media such as oil painting and miniature painting, ink painting is a result of the free and spontaneous flow of water and ink on paper, and the dilemma between the controllability and uncontrollability of the four materials—brush, ink, water, and paper— constitutes…

A defining property of music is its ordered relationship to time. The experience of sound, on the other hand, is one of disorder. Sound can ring out abruptly, and it can vanish at random. Human understanding has been suppressed by the weight of visual experience. Sometimes, our hearing is a victim of dependence, or even…

For her first solo exhibition in China, Pipilotti Rist created several new works for the Times Museum in Guangzhou and the surrounding community. These included a series of lanterns made of recycled materials from the residential complex below, the 30-meter-long video installation Mercy Mercy, a humorous chandelier made of underwear, and brightly colored videos that…