ONCE UPON A CLOUD: OUR 1980s ART SCHOOL LIVES It’s no coincidence that the elite produced by the art education system of the 1980s have become a galaxy of stars in today’s art world. The unique thirst for knowledge of that era allowed “universities” to transcend space and time. In the words of art critic…

            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…

CREATION MYTHS IN CHINESE ART academies, there is no clear divide between traditional art education and “contemporary” art education. There have always been teachers who imbue the curricula of the traditional departments of Chinese painting, oil painting, printmaking, and sculpture (collectively known as “COPS”) with ideas from contemporary art, holding experimental classes or even establishing…

PHOTOGRAPHY: HUANG RAN STYLIST: LUCIA LIU MAKE-UP: QIQI HAIR: CHEN FENG PRODUCER: AIMEE LIN PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: BIAN JIAOJIAO STYLIST ASSISTANT: GIGI PENG MODELS: KIKI KANG, EVAN

THESE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE made on and around US military bases in Japan, Korea and Guam, a part of the world designated by the Pentagon as “PACOM,” the U.S. Pacific Command. The Pentagon divides the world into six separate regional commands and PACOM is the largest, covering half the surface of the world. The military component…

Artist Li Yuan-chia (1929-1994) spoke little but saw far. Unknown in his native China and largely forgotten in his adoptive Taiwan, his journey took him to Italy and later to England where he worked tirelessly for over three decades. A little understood and remarkably subtle artistic innovator, he worked first to incorporate Eastern philosophy into…

THE FIRST TIME I encountered Luo Dan’s “Simple Songs” was in the small city of Lianzhou, in Guangdong’s mountainous north. He had just finished taking this group of photos, first driving from western Yunnan’s Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture back to Chengdu, then flying on to Guangzhou, then traveling by bus to Lianzhou, to serve as…

Just as the “happiness index” was becoming a hot topic leading up to this year’s National People’s Congress, Son Il Kwon’s solo exhibition, “On Happiness,” opened at Three Shadows. His own understanding of happiness is projected through the eyes and faces of his subjects, the juxtaposition of portrait and landscape. The works on display largely…

Ten years have gone by since we first caught a glimpse of Zhang Enli’s early still-lifes. Amidst the turbulent waves of the past decade, Zhang’s paintings have served as a kind of placid calm. At a time when more and more painters have become eager to penetrate the canvas with a social gaze, Zhang continues…

Zhang Quan is in constant pursuit of the possibility of agreement among ink painting, its contemporary context, and everyday experience. He is one in a long line of artists to pursue this path of reinventing the ink context. The theme of this solo exhibition is “Infinity in Mist”—a phrase that captures the mood and content…

The recent group exhibition at Pékin Fine Arts alludes to a bestselling book of the same title in the United States last year. The book identifies how “gadgets”—handheld electronic devices, particularly smartphones—have effectively hijacked our modes of socialization, constructing a virtual world that has made it difficult to locate the self in our current state…

American photographer Paul Strand once said, “The material of the artist lies not within himself nor in the fabrications of his imagination, but in the world around him…The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” Embracing Strand’s…

Venturing out under a gray sky to see Wilson Shieh’s new exhibition, “Mortal Coil,” I found similarly dark, muted hues upon arrival. The Twenty-Eight Hong Kong Governors sketches the formal portraits of former Hong Kong governors in shades of brown pencil. Catalogued in tiny print beneath each figure is the governor’s name and his dates…

Yang Fudong’s recent outing at Marian Goodman’s Paris outpost showcases two works: the multichannel video installation Fifth Night and the photographic series “International Hotel,” both of which were debuted in Shanghart Gallery’s “Useful Life” exhibition last year. But while “Useful Life” (named after an exhibition by Yang, Xu Zhen, and Yang Zhenzhong in 2000) looked…

In 2007, Xia Xing became a household name while working as a reporter for The Beijing News. At the time, perhaps he was unaware that he had already uncovered the theme that would drive his creative work over the next four years. However, he was likely appreciative of the newspaper’s broad influence—with nearly 450,000 copies…

“The Third Party” is divided by curator Beatrice Leanza into three parts, labeled, like a traditional theatrical production, according to the convention of “acts.” These three acts all have their own themes—“How to Be Alone,” “The Stranger,” and the final act, “(Long Live) The Third Party”—each separated by about a week. Owing to the format…

This may come as a shock to those in China, but in the United States some still dismiss Chinese contemporary art as a fad, comparable to the short-lived enthusiasm for Russian contemporary art in the 1980s. For many American collectors, China still can’t be taken seriously based on the handful of artists—Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun,…

The National Art Museum of China’s recent exhibition, “Five Decades of Donations (1961- 2011),” is an impressive display for the audience to behold. Any first rate museum is ultimately defined by its collection, and donated works generally make up the better part of a collection. Contributions are thus a museum’s good fortune and its core…

“Twelve Chinese Artists” is an annual show featuring the 2009 “Museum on Paper” project of Contemporary Art & Investment magazine. In 2009, the monthly magazine began a column featuring in-depth introductions and discussions of the work of individual artists featured on the magazine’s cover; now, these printed projects are finally being showcased in an exhibition…

At first glance, Liu Wei’s recent outing was more conceptual than painterly—an important development as evaluations of Liu’s work often center on the question of the painterly. But the signs of a conceptual turn are hard to ignore, starting with the frames in which the paintings hang, handcrafted by the artist and coarsely mimicking the…