In Action no. 1 Yang Guangnan reflects on the interiority and exteriority of human-technological experience with mechanical gestures that are semi-human and semi-machine. A hanged shirt mounted upon the artist’s machine rhythmically bounces and rotates in a way that suggests a skeletal interior.
Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills. Divided into three versions, the video first shows a number of Japanese ten-thousand-yen bills being counted without in an orderly, efficient manner. In Two Million , a similar counting of one-thousand-dollar bills from Hong Kong follows.
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text. The performance begins with two broad-knife-wielding characters circling each other in conventional operatic steps. Oblivious to the presence of these two on stage, additional characters, in a mix of period costume and contemporary dress, enter the stage in increasing droves to consume a various of foods laid out on a table until they collapse and pile on top of each other.
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections. Each video depicts a portrait with features changing continuously and quickly into different persons, animals and symbols. Driven by the evolving contents of the screen itself, this piece showcases the form and material of Qiu Anxiong’s working method, which relies on precisely planned storyboard sketches drawn in pen on A4 paper.
In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique. His ultimate goal is to reveal the ways in which social image is constructed and to cast doubt on the ephemeral vision of a middle-class utopia offered by mass media.
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction. Chen emphasizes the direct sensational impact of his work to allow his viewer to question the boundary between reality and art. The image of nails as food harks at a visceral relationship with the title, which cries the tone of a manifesto.
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment. Chen Xiaoyun has added a written narrative and a poetic quality to his works. Image fragments containing different pieces of information are linked together by the text, their interplay producing a synesthesia effect.
The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image. Near his studio, Chen often walks over fallen branches in late autumn and sense their existence. Thus, his placing them in diverse contexts builds a “narrative Ariadne’s thread” where the branches become “the language of things” intertextually cohering his oeuvre.
Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004. In Cosplayers Cao Fei depicts the popularity among Asian youths of “cosplay” in which daily life is merged with images of video games and popular films. For many, this virtual reality is an outlet to “transcend” the paradox of a developing society in which the pleasures of consumption and depression of alienation go hand-in-hand.
Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water. Yet, ambiguous lights blink from buildings and yachts still sail on the water, and further observation reveals these structures to be miniatures manipulated by the artist through Photoshop and other postproduction image tools. The model city’s surroundings are themselves real abandoned spaces, perhaps an empty room, a wait-to-be demolished building, or a discarded bathtub.
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale. These photographs present a series of urban landscapes and assembled Foucauldian structures of the present. Du sees the Tower of Babel as a continually reinvented narrative that warns people of “dangerous tendencies in the present time.” Du’s Babylonian towers resurrect from fallen rubbles of religious history in grand scale to focus on modern crises of civilization.
5 is a three channel video about the dualities of death and resurrection, reminiscence and fantasy, chronological and retrospective narration. The main video features two dancers intertwining, caressing in trancelike movements, with intimacy eventually leading to scarring and bleeding. Towards the end, the trace of bodily movements and fluids crescendo in an image of a skull in a synthesis of performance, painting and theater.
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism. The title alludes to the Pre-Raphaelite notion of a brotherhood based on “truth to nature.” Censorship of the mouth and indigestion of freshly cut stalks, central to Chen’s language of tree branches, feeds back provocatively to the title’s suggestion of “state terrorism.” However, one must resist seeking symbolic meaning in the image as Chen’s focus is on the direct visual impact of the absurd act portrayed.
Cao Fei’s video La Town, 2014 depicts a mythical metropolis that has been destroyed by unknown forces. Although the damage is obvious, as the camera navigates across the elaborate, handmade dioramas, the inhabitants of La Town carry on with their activities and the normality of everyday life pervades. As the film progresses, the latent chaos and violence begin to emanate from every corner of the miniature city: a bloody briefcase left on the ground, a kidnapping scene, an axe murderer on the loose, a ferocious man-eating octopus—all rendering the darkness of this new post-apocalyptic world order.
Sun’s animated film 21 Ke (21 Grams) is based on the 1907 research by the American physician Dr. Duncan MacDougall who claimed the measured weight of the human soul to be twenty-one grams. Sun used this episode—which was not fully recognized by the scientific community—as a point of departure for his depiction of a dystopian world in which the narration of history and notion of time are interrupted. Because each frame was drawn by hand with crayon, it took Sun and his animation studio team a few years to complete this thirty-minute film of a surreal journey through mysterious cities, plagues of mosquitoes, broken statues, cawing ravens, waving flags, and flooded graveyards.
All his artworks utilize the use of body – the artist’s own body and that of others. The Result of 1000 Pieces typi?es an image of Lin: Lin is standing in an empty hole of a brick wall. By incorporating the brick wall for his work, Lin develops a speci?c strategy to question and negotiate with the relationship between people and the changing environments.
In the video work Drag, a man in a dark room pulls on the end of a rope. In midst of sounds of heavy breathing, the camera presents alternating scenes of a man and the shadow of a man wearing a long, pointed hat cast against a wall. Insinuating a sinister mood, the man and the shadow struggle to control the scene through alternating tugs and releases of a rope.
Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China. Throughout the course of the trip, they film themselves with their cell phones singing in a karaoke room, shopping at a hardware store, sitting at a park, hanging out in a hotel room and exploring a neighborhood looking at vacant apartment ads. Although their days may seem uneventful, the girls seemingly discover the ability to perform impossible “miracles,” including cooking a full pot of rice from three grains, summoning objects to appear and disappear, and turning off street lamps on command.
The four-channel video installation Same Old Crowd departs from the documentation of an unknown city and takes place in an ambiguous temporal and spatial frame. Twelve characters (amateur actors hired by the artist) appear in black-and-white in highly stylized surroundings wearing patterned cloths. The identities or time period of the characters, all deprived of languages, are impossible to determine.
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective. This “return to origin” reveals an interesting critical reflection on the interactive relation between outside change and internal reflection, and the possibility for more experimental approaches that revive “traditional media.” For Ink Diary , Chen recorded his daily life and impressions within a rapidly-changing urban setting in ink wash paintings which he then turned into an animated film. The complex result of this simple process is both highly innovative and reflective of modernization.
Since 2007, Cao Fei has radically focused her work on Second Life, an online space that virtually mimics “the real world” and includes everything from the expression of ideas to economic investment. Referring to China’s modernization and its capitalist and utopic visions, RMB City explores the ways in which global communication impacts imagination, values, and ways of life. By appropriating virtual reality, Cao Fei opens up a new frontier in the field of art production that surpasses conventional materiality and invites collaboration and exchanges with her public and clients.
Sexy shows Yan Xing unsuccessfully trying to reach orgasm in freezing temperatures among the falling rocks and howling winds of a precarious canyon. His erotic failure leaves the voyeur-viewer unfulfilled and disappointed. The work explores notions of identity, masculinity, sexuality, voyeurism, and cultural taboos.
Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world. Comprised of rudimentary planks of wood hammered together into a rectangular form, Yang’s work uses reclaimed materials from everyday life and seems deliberately in conversation with Arte Povera, the art movement that originated in Italy during the late 1960s where practitioners produced art from found and common materials as an act of resistance against the decided commercialization of the art world through market economies. Yang, by extension, pays close attention to his materials in attempt to release the forms within them rather than impose his own.
Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall. With its cushions removed to reveal its internal mechanisms, the chair’s programmed rubbing, kneading, patting, and vibrating motions create a strange sight and soundscape. The work explores the relationship between flesh and machine as they come together through technologically simulated social behaviors, challenging normative ideas about human interaction.
Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco. The photograph is a documentation of a Golden Gate Bridge performance that makes palpable the tensions between people and the military, the individual and the group, danger and ordinary life. Lin recalls: “Fighter planes repetitively flew over my head.
Lu has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations. The large-scale photograph I Want to Be a Gentleman depicts nine men standing like statues on display in a museum on tall plinths in front of a run-down industrial building. Lu’s brooding films and photographs are preoccupied with China’s industrial era and communist history.
Kwan Sheung Chi obtained a third honor B.A...
Fang Lu uses intimacy as a place for self-expression in her videos and draws out mundane moments from everyday life as a strategy to heighten one’s awareness of existence from the rest of the world...
Wang Taocheng is a Shanghai artist who lives and works in Amsterdam...
Jin Shan is an installation artist who uses humor, satire, and play to comment upon social and political power dynamics within contemporary China...
Happy Lunar New Year! 5 Things to Know About the Year of the Dragon | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer upper waypoint Arts & Culture Happy Lunar New Year! 5 Things to Know About the Year of the Dragon Rae Alexandra Feb 9 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Email The Year of the Dragon begins is upon us....
Taking a local, hometown look at the Chinese Spring Festival Shehuo, Zhang Xiao considers how the thousand-year-old tradition has transformed into a tourist-facing enterprise....
Those who stay: the Hong Kong artists fighting for a brighter future Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Hong Kong analysis Those who stay: the Hong Kong artists fighting for a brighter future Despite governmental intimidation of arts entities, the high cost of living and the lure of better opportunities abroad, many artists are choosing to remain in the city Lisa Movius 5 February 2024 Share The satirical cartoonist Wong Kei-kwan, who uses the pen name Zunzi, had his comic strip in the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao cancelled following government pressure, but he continues to live in the city Photo: Reuters/Tyrone Siu Some call it the great exodus: the family company owners, the bankers and the expatriate businesspeople departing Hong Kong in droves during and since the Covid-19 years...
Max Pinckers & Thomas Sauvin – The Future Without You – AMERICAN SUBURB X Skip to content The introduction of computers in the workplace well prefigures the advent of the internet...
Special programme: Taiwan's artists step out of China's shadow (part 1) - arts24 Skip to main content Special programme: Taiwan's artists step out of China's shadow (part 1) Issued on: 11/01/2024 - 15:18 Modified: 11/01/2024 - 15:27 12:51 FRANCE 24's Alison Sargent takes you to Taipei for a special programme on how the island's artists are stepping out of China's shadow...
The Jimei × Arles festival is a feast – will it boost Chinese photography for good? - 1854 Photography Subscribe latest Agenda Bookshelf Projects Industry Insights magazine Explore ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Explore Stories latest agenda bookshelf projects theme in focus industry insights magazine ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Operating room party (Grand), 2022, from the series Baby’s Baby © Wu MeiChi Now in its ninth year, the festival brings works from Les Rencontres d’Arles alongside its own cutting-edge programme...
Seven creatives from Hangzhou share their experiences living through a generational paradigm shift....
Art history meets Lego in two of Ai Weiwei’s latest works Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023 news Art history meets Lego in two of Ai Weiwei’s latest works Chinese artist recreates two famous historic paintings using the hundreds of thousands of Lego bricks Alexander Morrison 7 December 2023 Share Ai Weiwei’s version of Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus is at Galleria Continua Photo: © Liliana Mora Visitors to Art Basel in Miami Beach making their way past Galleria Continua’s stand this week may find themselves doing a double take, as they encounter what looks like the Renaissance painter Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus (1510) made supersize...
War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall - France 24 Skip to main content War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall Issued on: 09/08/2023 - 15:42 02:27 War of words over China breaks out on London graffiti wall (2023) © AFP / France 24 Video by: Juliette MONTILLY Follow Long renowned as a graffiti artist's heaven, Brick Lane in east London has found itself at the heart of a furious political debate overseas after a group of Chinese art students spray-painted Communist Party slogans over one of its walls...
(English) Will any large exhibition or art fair take place in September...
by Chris Moore The China art market faces its most difficult period since 2008...
Guggenheim Museum Collects China – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Sarah Cascone Plus Icon Sarah Cascone View All March 20, 2013 1:10pm New York’s Solomon R...
Turning Over a New Leaf – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Lilly Wei Plus Icon Lilly Wei author View All December 1, 2011 11:00am It doesn’t look like an exhibition about dissent, at least not to contemporary eyes accustomed to more rousing images...
A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...
603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique...
Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...
Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...
Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
Itch explores the relationship between technology and daily human experience with a motorized arm that extends from within the gallery’s wall, moving up and down while holding a projector that shows a desperately scratching pair of hands....
The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
Kwan Sheung Chi’s work One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills...
Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
Drawing & Print
The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...