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. After the narrative is fully formed, Qiu transfers each image by painting it onto a small canvas with acrylic, which can be quickly wiped away to prepare for the subsequent image or element to be painted on top. Such process distills an aesthetics of over-painting that drives narrative development through changing logical relationships between material and form rather than plot elements.
Qiu Anxiong creates paintings, sculpture, installation and animation. He is best known for his moving animations implementing the style of traditional Chinese ink painting. His merging of traditional painting into moving images has distinguished his practice at the forefront of contemporary experimental ink painting. He uses this interplay between the past and the present as a strategy to examine the relationship between man and nature, especially how today’s mass urbanization has compromised our values for tradition and the environment.
Study of History IV by Subas Tamang is an etching and aquatint print based on photographs taken by German photographer Volkmar Wentzel in 1949...
Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...
The Royal House of Allure is a name of a safe house on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding, due to various circumstances, live together...
At the halfway point along South Africa’s Highway N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg, sits the small town of Beaufort West...
Untitled (Celestial Motors) is a visual meditation on an icon of modern urban Philippine life—the jeepney...
Flag (Thames) 2016 depicts a small section of the Thames River—one that is adjacent to the Palace of Westminster in London—as an algorithmic representation on an LED panel...
8 Questions with Alan Oei | Arts Equator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Alfonse Chiu November 21, 2018 By Alfonse Chiu (1600 words, five-minute read) As part of ArtsEquator’s interview series profiling artistic directors across the region, we spoke with Alan Oei, AD of The Substation and co-founder and executive director of OH! Open House , on his hopes, his challenges, and how he balances different needs and roles between the two companies...
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace takes its title from a 1967 poem by American writer Richard Brautigan, which describes a utopian future where computers are in harmony with and protective of mankind and nature, performing all the necessary work while we retreat back towards nature...