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…

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…

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…

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…

COLONIAL HONG KONG spread along the steep shores of Hong Kong Island. Land was so sparse that the British Navy’s headquarters were originally housed ad hoc aboard a ship, the HMS Tamar, which docked a…

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)…

ILLUSTRATION / Wang Buke Some time ago, French philosopher (and venerable Maoist) Alain Badiou traveled to China to speak to a Chinese philosopher. Though his or her name appears to have been lost in …

Translated / Xiaowei Wang UNLIKE THE WRITTEN word, where the battlefield lies between ink and paper, artists’ books serve as a delayed convergence of work and viewer. These works of art do not sit inside the white cube waiting for visitors, but instead seek their audiences in a wide marketplace. Yan Cong’s Collage, which was…

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…

AFTER A FEW YEARS of discursive waffling about cosmopolitanism and international visual culture, Chinese contemporary art—as a distinct object of research and scholarship—is back with a vengeance. This spring (or, perhaps more appropriately, semester) sees the arrival of two ambitious new historical narratives of the genre, both of which will find their primary homes in…

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 / Zian Chen “I have seen numerous paintings; they depict things from the beginning of the universe and foretell events to come.” Cao Zhi, Odes , A.D. 227 DESPITE HIS UNTIMELY death, the German ar…

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 …