Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ArtAsiaPacific - November 2018
ArtAsiaPacific - November 2018
Features
76 84
Ma Qiusha Anita Dube
96 106
Young & Emerging Then and Now
BY THE EDITORS BY THE EDITORS
artasiapacific.com 9
Departments
59
12 Essays
Editor’s Letter
16
Contributors 111
29 Inside Burger
Reports Collection
119
We Are Each One An Other
Reviews
61
Hopping on a Broken Bandwagon
63
Ladies and Gentlemen of Leisure
67
Profiles
29
One on One: 120-136
On Kawara Gwangju, TarraWarra, Tokyo, Busan,
30 Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Dispatch: Hanoi Metro Manila, Jakarta, Ramallah,
London, New York, New York,
33
Minneapolis, Los Angeles
News
138
37
Book Reviews:
The Point:
The Art of Place, the Place of Art
Gana (Hear, Think, Understand)
140
39
Art Directory
Whispering Gallery
147
41
Where I Work:
People
Izumi Kato
45
152
Auction Report
68 The Sketch:
49
Dale Harding Keiichi Tanaami
Art Fair Report
52 70
Previews Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang
55 72
New Currents Khvay Samnang
2018.11.07 – 2019.01.21
IN COLLABORATION WITH
Ӥၹ૱எ܄ὄᚸय़᭲ݩ
2555-5 LONG TENG AVENUE XUHUI DISTRICT, SHANGHAI
One on One
On Kawara
By Dane Mitchell
Reports artasiapacific.com 29
Dispatch
Hanoi
BY DO TUONG LINH
from foreign art foundations and artists and ofering a truly playful
institutions, or a financially viable space for experimentation.
art market. In December of last Although local, independent
year, the city saw the closure of art spaces are lowkey, some in
the temporary physical space of more deliberate ways than others,
Nha San Collective, one of the public government-funded
most prominent arts organizations projects are on the rise, aiming to
in Hanoi and a second-generation inject new life into the arts and
ofshoot of the historic Nha San cultural heritage of Hanoi and to
Studio, which opened in 1998 and foster cross-cultural relations. An
closed in 2011 due to government initiative supporting the creative
pressure over its staging of a nude industry, established this year by
performance piece. Nha San, the Vietnam National Institute of
which means “stilt house” in Culture and Arts Studies and the
View of Hanoi in 2014.
Copyright and courtesy Flickr user Guerretto. Hanoi prides itself on its 1,000- Vietnamese, was founded in the British Council, has launched a
year history and diverse mix of private home of artist Nguyen project focused on the revival of
Chinese, French and Soviet cultural Manh Duc, who had converted two the Vietnamese film archive and
influences. It is much like a living traditional wooden houses built traditional musical heritage. This
theater, with all aspects of life by the ethnic tribes of Northwest joins the eforts of two existing
played out in the streets, including Vietnam. The very first art exchange-program organizations:
eating, drinking, talking, singing, happenings there in the late 1990s Heritage Space, in Nam Tu Liem
driving, dancing and fighting. manifested out of the founding district, and Six Space, located
The city is full of national members’ personal desire to create in Hoan Kiem District. Heritage
museums, such as the Vietnam an alternative and open space for Space runs MAP – Month of Arts
National Fine Arts Museum, the young artists—eforts that helped Practice, an annual residency
Vietnamese Women’s Museum and pave the way for contemporary program that invites local and
the Vietnam National Museum practitioners today. international artists to collaborate
of History. However, these sites Other major nonprofit spaces on a group show over a period of
seem to only attract foreign include the alternative Manzi one month. Six Space collaborates
visitors. Internationally, there is café and art gallery, whose annual with Barim, an arts venue in
curiosity and demand for arts public art project “Into Thin Air,” Gwangju, to foster relationships
and culture from Vietnam and initiated in 2016 to encourage between South Korean and Hanoi
historical information around the interaction and intervention of artists, which resulted in a series of
Vietnam War, but the local people, public spaces, was presented for public events at this year’s Gwangju
especially the younger generations, the first time in September as a Biennale. And to highlight the
are generally more interested virtual exhibition, a move by the little-known connection between
in the latest Korean fashion organizers to avoid the burden of Hanoi and the Eastern Bloc, artist
trends or the next Hollywood having to deal with the authorities and curator Tran Luong (also a
blockbuster. The exception to this and censorship. The audience co-founder of Nha San Studio)
is the new, private Vincom Center can download an app and view recently invited a group of local
for Contemporary Art (VCCA), diferent locations as “occupied” performance artists, including
situated inside a huge luxury by various new artistic creations. the Appendix Group, for a series
shopping mall in the Royal City The nine-year-old independent of public performances across
residence complex, which since space for film and moving image, diferent Polish cities.
its debut last year has attracted DocLab, formerly funded by While international relations
massive crowds of young people. the Goethe-Institut, moved are strong, local organizations are
The popularity of the VCCA has from its enclave in the Goethe- struggling. Many artists from the
contributed to the mainstream Institut building and declared its capital, as well as from the nearby
appeal of contemporary art, which independence by relocating to city, Hue, are now moving to Ho Chi
was once considered underground a space in a less busy location. Minh City where they can connect
and alternative. Newer, smaller initiatives operate with international curators, gallerists
Despite this shift in perception, below the radar, like Puppets Café, and collectors, and be supported by
other nonprofit or independent founded in 2017 and run by a group local patrons and its burgeoning art
key players in the contemporary of young artists and curators, and market. Whether this is for better or
art scene remain quiet, possibly A Space, which opened in 2018 and worse, only time will tell.
due to the lack of commercial is run by artist Tuan Mami, who See our website for the Chinese version of this article.
galleries and external funding has been active in mentoring young
Awards
On September 30, a plane with a banner bearing SHAHIDUL ALAM’s portrait and the message “FREE OUR TEACHERS”
circled above New York in protest of Alam’s arrest and incarceration in Dhaka. Courtesy Wasfia Nazreen.
News artasiapacific.com 33
News
Controversy: Publicity Storms with sexual misconduct allegations. On July 19, Public Domain: Creation/Destruction
Throughout 2018, the polarization of public Choi Hyo-jun, director of the Seoul Museum On September 24, Do Ho Suh unveiled a public
opinion on the ongoing, worldwide refugee crisis of Art, was suspended from his position artwork titled Bridging Home, London (2018), a
has become increasingly apparent. In the United following a complaint filed by a female museum steel, timber and plywood replica of the artist’s
Kingdom, Banu Cennetoğlu’s contribution to employee, who reportedly claimed he had sent childhood home—a small house with a bamboo
the 2018 Liverpool Biennial, The List (2007– ), an inappropriate, albeit not sexually explicit, garden in a traditional Korean architectural
a public display of the names of 34,361 refugees video to her. Choi had previously been warned style—installed on a footbridge in the City of
who died while fleeing to Europe between 1993 by the museum’s union not to contact female London. The work was co-commissioned by
and mid-2018, was vandalized three times. colleagues at night via the Korean messaging public art initiatives Art Night and Sculpture
On July 28 and August 15, the list was ripped service KakaoTalk. in the City, and reflected on the multicultural,
from public hoardings, where it was installed, In Beijing, writer and curator Li Bowen migrant histories of the neighborhood where it
by yet-to-be identified perpetrators. On resigned from his position as associate editor was on display.
September 7, the remnants of the display were at Ocula on September 26 after an anonymous
graitied with “INVADERS NOT REFUGEES!” cultural worker with the internet pseudonym
prompting Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson to “qiaoqiao” accused him of “repeated patterns of
brand the vandals “fascist thugs,” while calling deceit, gaslighting and abuse” in a WeChat post,
on volunteers to protect the work. which was then corroborated by other women
As the UK grapples with rising xenophobia on social media. After AAP published the story
and racism, issues of racial representation came online, however, qiaoqiao sent a second, follow-
to a head on September 25, when members of up statement, explaining that “the case does not
the collective BBZ London held a sit-in at Tate involve typical abuse of power, direct physical
Britain to protest Luke Willis Thompson’s harm, sexual harassment or non-consensual
Turner Prize nomination for his video sexual conduct,” and that her intent was for
Autoportrait (2017). The 35mm film depicts an power structures to be more widely discussed
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Dune opened in Beidaihe in
African-American woman, Diamond Reynolds, in China. October. Photo by Ni Nan. Courtesy OPEN Architecture, Beijing.
as her chest rises and falls in measured
movements, presenting a deliberate contrast Career Moves: International Transfers Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
to Reynold’s Facebook livestream of the police On September 12, Bartomeu Marí announced (UCCA) opened UCCA Dune, its first permanent
shooting of her partner Philando Castile in that he will be stepping down from his post as exhibition space outside the Chinese capital,
2016, which perpetuated the aesthetic of terror director of the National Museum of Modern on October 13. Located in the coastal resort of
and victimhood, according to the artist. The and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul this Beidaihe in Hebei province, the new 930-square-
protesters claimed that Thompson—who is of December, when his three-year contract ends. meter space is the first major contemporary art
mixed white and Fijian ancestry—is profiting According to the Korea Herald, MMCA oicials institution in the district, and will hold two or
from “black pain” with the work. An essay by said that the South Korean Ministry of Culture, more exhibitions a year. The institution, which
BBZ member Rene Matić that was published in Sports and Tourism decided not to renew Marí’s was designed by OPEN Architecture, was named
May also decried Thompson’s frequent artistic term due to domestic pressure to steer the for the surrounding mounds of sand, in which
interrogations of the representation of black museum toward a more Korean focus. Marí parts of the museum’s cave-like structure are
identities due to his status as “a white-passing became the first non-Korean to helm a public submerged. The inaugural exhibition, titled
male.” Thompson previously stated that he cultural institution in South Korea when he joined “After Nature,” presents works by international
worked closely with Reynolds for Autoportrait, in 2015, and has been instrumental in expanding artists that engage with urbanization in China,
and that she approved the final piece. the MMCA’s program to include international art. and society’s shifting relationship with the
As the #MeToo movement continues to In London, Yasufumi Nakamori was natural environment.
gather steam, more women have come forward appointed Tate Modern’s new senior curator of *For more news, see our website: artasiapacific.com/news.
In Australia, the white colonial settler culture, community and Saltwater Country.
fantasy has historically positioned When I create work about my cultural
Aboriginal people at the lowest rung of identity as a Quandamooka woman, it is
society. The government maintained this critical that my Quandamooka community
stance until the 1967 referendum, in which also relates to these works, ideas and
Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend histories. Our Quandamooka cultural
the constitution in order to introduce laws identity is communal and collective.
protecting Aboriginal people and to include My practice is often centered around
them in the census. This change in the our relationship with our traditional
legislation saw a wave of community action language and concepts of ownership,
across the continent. Having finally been whether it be of our ancestral lands or
given the chance to oversee our own affairs, sovereign bodies, the role maps have
Aboriginal communities began to establish played in our dispossession or the effect
housing co-ops, legal services, health of mining in our economic systems.
centers and vital community organizations. These artworks and ideas move outward
Although we have managed to establish from Quandamooka Country and across
basic infrastructure for ourselves, art is one many nations through the contemporary
of the few spaces where Aboriginal people art world. The hegemonic process of
have a true sense of autonomy, can practice in those days, Aboriginal people were keen colonization and collective experiences
self-determined economic independence to support each other at every corner. endured by many Aboriginal people might
and feel secure in the knowledge that our Blackfullas were keen to connect and then translate into larger narratives and
work is respected. support each other in general. This support national concepts of Aboriginal identity.
The time of self-determination (post 1967 took place often within the organizations I like to think that my practice
referendum) is critical for understanding born in the time of self-determination. contributes and adds to the broader
the complexities of Aboriginal identity in My elders talk about this because there discourse and greater collection of visual
Australia. This year in May, as we laid an has finally been enough black critical literacy that was founded by important
important Elder to rest, we were reminded discourse and dialogue—enough for us to be artists such as Trevor Nickolls, Robert
of the dramatic changes our Aunty Margaret able to move away from the anthropological Campbell Jnr and Gordon Bennett in the
had experienced and the consequences gaze and definitions of our cultures, and 1980s and ’90s, whose works challenged
of government policies that she saw in into our own pedagogies. Australia’s construct of our individual and
her lifetime. I believe the role of art has absolutely shared identities as Aboriginal people in the
Aunty Margaret was born under informed Aboriginal pedagogy in this urban space.
“The Act” (Aboriginals Protection and country. Artists are often the first people in I have found that through constant
Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897), society to carefully articulate their position art-making, my work has informed me just
which allowed appointed authorities to in the world, in ways that not only expand as much as I have informed its materiality.
govern Aboriginal communities, often our visual literacy but also convey what it As this relationship grows, so does my
resulting in children being removed from feels like to be on the receiving end of legal ability to articulate the issues that the art
their families and forced to work. She injustice and racist prejudice. relates to.
lived in the Myora Mission and was in her With this in mind, I’m often conflicted Over the past decade, I have witnessed an
prime by the time the 1967 referendum about the notion of cultural identity being increasing awareness and desire for diversity
occurred. Within this context of newfound “discovered or explored” in art. I believe in the arts. I believe that curators have to
freedom, nothing was going to stop this artists who create in this context are start taking a greater responsibility for the
strong black woman from starting up every problematic as their works often display amount of cultural production that occurs
important piece of infrastructure and images and concepts that perpetuate white within institutions and practice rigor when
growing the organizations that a healthy and prescribed notions of otherness, thus it comes to ensuring that the fetishization
community needs. reinforcing the social barriers constructed of otherness that has always overshadowed
My elders often talk about their identity by the concept of race. our autonomy does not precede critically
as black people and a time where everyone My practice always starts with my engaged artists and artworks.
was united in poverty. They say that, back identity: one that is firmly rooted in family, ILLUSTRATION BY TENG YU
Reports artasiapacific.com 37
Whispering Gallery
As the autumn art season kicked Some speculated that the to chill and bubble at Paradise Kiran Nadar, art patroness and
of in the northern hemisphere, China-heavy gallerists who signed City Hotel’s new Paradise Art the wife of India’s sixth-richest
a cross section of the art world up for Beijing Contemporary Expo Space, and attached, foreigners- entrepreneur; London-based
ventured to the 2018 Gwangju were still licking their wounds only casino. Known for their love hedge fund manager Taimur
Biennale on their respective trains, after subjecting themselves to a of contemporary art, Elizabeth Hassan; and fashion designer for
planes and automobiles. In typical financially flat art fair. This left and Phillip Chun believe their Karachi’s well-heeled socialites,
biennial fashion, there was plenty them unwilling to travel to yet hotel—located one hour from Sonya Battla. Also turning heads
of chaos to navigate, especially Seoul, but only five minutes from with his golden Gandhi cap was
with the appearance of Korea’s Incheon Airport, is a winning bet the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s
first lady Kim Jung-sook and the for jetlagged blackjack and DJ’ed assistant curator for South Asian
US ambassador for the opening dance parties. The event was art, Shanay Jhaveri, who was
tt
ceremony, all while VIPs and press an extravaganza even by casino recently voted best-dressed by
crisscrossed the city looking for art h a n C ro c ke standards, with traditional Korean Vanity Fair for his elegant, Indian-
by hundreds of artists, the majority dance performances followed by tailored pajamas.
from Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia Emmanuel Perrotin, Phillips’s
nat
Kira
lack of the Three Cs from China Junior’s Siwon Choi. The guest
n Nadar
and South Asia—the curators, another “noncommercial” art of honor was American artist Jef
collectors and compradors. So event—even if there were major Koons, who unveiled one of his
where were these cliques and international museum trustees “Gazing Ball” sculptures at the
chattering classes during the crucial in attendance. Some participants site—a must-have for auction
first week of September? who had made it to Korea noted punters. Perhaps the Paradise
that the Beijing Contemporary owners felt they needed some good
VIP preview was thronged with
the press—not exactly VIPs by South Asia, and the whole
China standards—and that sales MENASA region, has found
slipped into debit territory. With collectors to be ever rarer,
a notable drop in spending by especially in the United Arab
China’s new collectors, let’s see Emirates, now that Arif Naqvi’s
Kim Ju
how the mega galleries from Europe private equity firm, the Abraaj
ons
Ko
ff
West Bund and Art021 art fairs a major sponsor of the Art Dubai
Je
Reports artasiapacific.com 39
People
Hong Kong
Clockwise from immediate left: artist Wang Yuyang at the opening of his solo exhibition
“The Moon” at Massimo De Carlo; independent curator Tan Vatey with Phnom Penh’s Sa
Sa Bassac gallery manager Chum Chanveasna, president and founder of the Cambodian
Association of Hong Kong Ngo Ravindra, contemporary dance artist Nget Rady and
Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang at the opening of the group exhibition “Constructing
Mythologies” at Edouard Malingue Gallery; Tai Kwun’s head of arts Tobias Berger with
multimedia artist Cao Fei and director of Beijing’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Philip Tinari at the opening of Cao’s solo exhibition “A Hollow in a World Too Full” at Tai
Kwun Contemporary; American artist Hank Willis Thomas with Ben Brown, owner of Ben
Brown Fine Arts, at the opening of Thomas’ solo exhibition “My Life is Ours” at the gallery;
director of de Sarthe gallery Willem Molesworth with Hong Kong artist Carla Chan at
the opening of the group show “Black: Recategorize” at Galerie Ora Ora; multimedia and
installation artist Mona Hatoum at the opening of her first exhibition in Asia, “Remains of
the Day,” at White Cube gallery.
Manila
ArtAsiaPacific’s 25th anniversary party at Belles Artes Project Outpost, sponsored by Engkanto Brewery, Cibo di M and Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar.
Front row (left to right): AAP’s editor at large HG Masters, Bellas Artes Projects (BAP) founder Jam Acuzar, collector Marcel Crespo, AAP’s editor and
publisher Elaine W. Ng, BAP’s artistic director Inti Guerrero, artist Judy Freya Sibayan, BAP’s deputy director Fatima Manalili, artist Patricia Perez
Eustaquio, artist Maria Taniguchi, and assistant to the director and manager of conservation at Lopez Museum and Library Marga Villanueva.
Middle row (left to right): BAP’s head of development Kaye Aboitiz, director and curator at Manila’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD)
Joselina Cruz, artist-in-residence Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, chairperson of the arts management program at Manila’s School of Design and Arts Geraldine B.
Araneta, artist and 2018 Manila Biennale executive producer Carlos Celdran, Silverlens gallerists Rachel Rillo and Isa Lorenzo, jewelry designer Macky Fah,
2018 Manila Biennale organizer Tesa Celdran, writer Mara Coson, curator of the Philippines Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale Tessa Guazon, Ateneo Art
Gallery curator Yael A. Buencamino.
Back row (left to right): Hacienda Macalauan’s head of marketing Sandra Soriano, BAP’s architect Teymour Benet and MCAD’s deputy director
Chris Green.
People artasiapacific.com 41
People
Korea
Clockwise from top right: artist Suki Seokyeong
Kang at the Gwangju Biennale; artist Byron Kim
with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s curator
of contemporary art Eungie Joo, Tate Modern’s
Daskalopoulos senior curator of international art
Clara Kim, chief curator of Mori Art Museum
Mami Kataoka, artist Zhu Jia and Tokyo-based artist
Taro Shinoda in Gwangju; the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art’s associate curator of contemporary
art Christine Y. Kim with LACMA’s curator and acting
contemporary art department head Rita Gonzales,
independent curator and art critic David Teh, Clara
Kim and artistic director of Bangkok’s Jim Thompson
Art Center Gridthiya Gaweewong (all of whom are also
curators of the 2018 Gwangju Biennale) at a Gwangju
Biennale party organized by Kukje Gallery in Seoul;
artists Kim Yong-ik, Minouk Lim and Chung Seoyong
at a makgeolli bar in Seoul; Dhaka-based photographer
Munem Wasif, artist Tom Nicholson, Amsterdam and
Chiang Mai-based artist Sawangwongse Yawnghwe
and Melbourne-based artist Rushdi Anwar with
artistic director of Ho Chi Minh City’s The Factory
Contemporary Arts Centre Zoe Butt at the Asia Cultural
Center in Gwangju; artist Seung Yul Oh at his solo
exhibition “View & Hide” at One and J. Gallery in Seoul.
Sydney
Left to right, all taken at the Sydney Contemporary art fair at
Carriageworks: Gallery directors Ursula Sullivan and Joanna
Strumpf pictured in front of a painting by Sydney Ball at the Sullivan
+ Strumpf booth; artist Patricia Piccinini in front of her multisensory
installation The Field (2018).
Reports artasiapacific.com 45
Juin-Octobre 1985 (1985). The USD 7 million high estimate to
monumental ten-meter-wide attain USD 8.8 million. Chinese
triptych, with a central sunset- modern master Wu Guanzhong’s
orange haze surrounded by deep pastoral oil painting Sunshine After
ultramarine and green, hammered Snow in the Mountain Village I (1964)
at USD 65 million, making it the also exceeded its USD 1.9 million
most expensive oil painting by an estimate, selling for USD 2.9 million.
Asian artist ever sold at auction. A dark-horse lot was Guan Liang’s
The piece was last put on the childlike oil-on-canvas portrayal
block at Christie’s Hong Kong of Beijing opera characters, Monk
20th Century Chinese Art & Asian Tang and Wukong (1978), which
Contemporary Art sale in 2005, hammered at USD 1.27 million,
finding takers at USD 2.3 million, over eight times its USD 153,150
which indicates a nearly 30-fold high estimate. Richard Lin, whose
increase in value over 13 years. The geometric, abstract compositions
same night, another work by Zao, are steadily finding favor in the
23.05.64 (1964), from his gestural secondary market, attained
“Hurricane” series, sold for USD 1.16 million with his mixed-
USD 11.5 million, although below a media work of white blocks, Painting
SERGE POLIAKOFF USD 15.3 million high estimate. In
line with the seemingly unending
Relief 12.12.63 (1963), above a
USD 740,225 high estimate.
ROUGE BLEU JAUNE
1954 hunger for Chinese-French modern Ofered at Sotheby’s
Oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm. painters, Chu Teh-Chun’s No. 268 contemporary art evening sale was
Courtesy Christie’s Shanghai.
(1967–68)—a three-meter-wide artist du jour Joan Mitchell, whose
snowy mountain landscape, gestural abstraction Syrtis (1961)
The two modern and contemporary and the largest single-canvas debuted at auction, and found
art sales made a combined total work in his oeuvre—sold for takers at USD 7.2 million, under a
of USD 17.9 million, up from USD 9.66 million, inching above USD 8.9 million high estimate. Jean-
USD 13.5 million in 2017 and its USD 8.93 high estimate, while Michel Basquiat’s oilstick, acrylic
USD 10.7 million in 2016. The Sanyu’s oil-on-masonite painting and silkscreen on canvas, Logo
top lot was Zao Wou-ki’s abstract of white peonies Pot de Pivoines (1984), featuring an appropriated
painting 13.02.92 (1992), evoking (c. 1940s–50s) shot past its Navy Cut tobacco logo within a
a cloudy mountain landscape,
which fetched USD 6.6 million,
exceeding its USD 3.8 million high
estimate. Lots by Western artists
were sold out, indicating their
continued popularity in China.
Salvador Dalí’s bronze sculpture
Piano Surréaliste (1954/84) sold
for USD 1.3 million against a
USD 510,000 estimate, while
Serge Poliakof’s abstract oil
painting Rouge Bleu Jaune (1954)
tripled its USD 349,400 estimate
to attain USD 1.1 million.
Hong Kong
It has been a good year for
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, which
netted a combined total of
USD 466.1 million over 20 auctions
from September 29 to October 3,
just shy of the USD 466.5 million
achieved in the spring series.
The modern and contemporary
art evening sales raked in WU GUANZHONG
USD 200 million—the highest FORGETFUL SNOW
1996
total for an evening sale in Hong Oil on canvas, 91 x 100 cm.
Kong—led by Zao Wou-ki’s Courtesy China Guardian Hong Kong.
Reports artasiapacific.com 47
Art Fair Report
Survival Strategies
Reports artasiapacific.com 49
the long run, but strong enough Cairo’s Gypsum Gallery sold two
sales provide reasons for optimism. untitled 1996 etchings by Ahmed
Morsi for USD 5,500–6,000; it also
London ofered an installation of bricks
Frieze London (October 4–7) and dried flowers from destroyed
returned to its usual Regent’s Park Palestinian villages by Basel Abbas
location for its 16th edition, which and Ruanne Abou-Rahme for
featured over 160 galleries. USD 16,000.
Participants by and large stuck to Of note was the curated
showcasing wall-based works in the section “Social Work,” dedicated
hopes of moving as many pieces as to trailblazing female artists who
possible. Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac responded to contemporary
(London/Paris/Salzburg) went sociopolitical challenges in the 1980s
with its usual strategy of bringing and ’90s. Galleries across the fair
blue-chip works to the show, noted good sales of works by female
selling Georg Baselitz’s oil painting artists. Kate MacGarry (London),
Schwarzes Pferd (Black Horse) (1986) for instance, sold Rana Begum’s
for USD 920,000—the highest colorful, geometric, mixed-media Installation view of RANA BEGUM’s No. 794 (2018) at Kate MacGarry’s booth,
reported transaction at Frieze compositions No. 794 and No. 800 Frieze London, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Kate MacGarry, London.
London. Pace (London/New York/ L Fold (both 2018) for USD 52,400
Beijing/Hong Kong/Palo Alto/Seoul/ and 37,000, respectively. Shanghai/Paris/New York), which
Geneva) sold two wall sculptures Frieze London 2018 established its Seoul outpost in
including a porcelain work from demonstrated the viability of two 2016, presented a solo booth of
Yin Xiuzhen’s “Wall Instrument” savvy strategies for recouping hefty Daniel Arsham’s cartoon character
series (2016– ) for USD 86,000, costs of fair participation: returning sculptures, finding buyers from
as well as a piece made of wooden to tried-and-tested market Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China.
window frames from Song Dong’s favorites, and capitalizing on the Of the Korean exhibitors,
“Usefulness of Uselessness” series feminist zeitgeist by spotlighting Seoul-based Gallery Hyundai’s
(2013–17) for USD 65,000. Lisson women artists. booth included 2018 acrylic-on-
Gallery (London/New York) found canvas gestural abstractions by
takers for Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Seoul Lee Kang-So. A highlight at Johyun
Crusades: Relief of the Siege of Antioch Sales at the 17th Korea International Gallery (Seoul/Busan) was Kim
1097–1098 (After Jean Colombe’s Art Fair (KIAF) (October 4–7) Chong Hak’s untitled, over-five-
‘After the Siege of Antioch’) (2018) for reportedly amounted to USD 24.7 meter-wide painted scroll from
USD 173,000, and placed Haroon million, up from USD 23.7 million 2018, depicting dense, verdant
Mirza’s kinetic installation last year. Among the 174 galleries foliage. The gallery sold several
Counterfeiting the Counter Fitters were 43 international participants, smaller untitled canvases by Kim,
(2018) in the collection of London’s including David Zwirner (New York/ priced at USD 54,000 each, as
Fortress Contemporary Art London/Hong Kong) and Pace. well as two untitled monochrome
Foundation for USD 59,000. Perrotin (Seoul/Hong Kong/Tokyo/ paintings by Lee Bae for
USD 40,000 and USD 85,000.
While the galleries that spoke
to ArtAsiaPacific were reportedly
pleased with sales, a common
remark was that KIAF remains a
homegrown afair, with exhibitors
and attendees mostly coming from
Korea, and that they would like to
see greater eforts on the part of
fair organizers to rope in art—and
buyers—from around the world.
Fair organizers and galleries
alike face the challenge of striking
the right balance between creative
and commercial interests; local and
global. As costs rise and markets
IMANTS TILLERS, Fiction of Place (2018), displayed at Arc One Gallery’s booth at Sydney Contemporary
wobble, these choices can have
2018. Courtesy the artist and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne. significant financial consequences.
QIU ZHIJIE, People Who Claimed to be Messiah Crowding History, 2015, ink on paper
(detail), 245 x 126 cm. Courtesy Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. NADIM ABBAS, Camoufleur, 2017, installation with durational performance,
dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Power Station of Art, Shanghai.
ULLENS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, BEIJING
POWER STATION OF ART, SHANGHAI
Qiu Zhijie: Mappa Mundi
11/24–3/3/19
Shanghai Biennale: Proregress – Art in
an Age of Historical Ambivalence
Politics, mythology and history come together in “Mappa Mundi” at
11/10–3/10/19
the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a presentation of the large-
scale calligraphic works of Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie. Taking its title “Nothing recedes like progress.” In this antithetical provocation of
from the Latin phrase meaning “chart of the world,” the exhibition modernist poet EE Cummings lies the crux of the 12th Shanghai
will foreground Qiu’s ongoing circular map series, which delineates Biennale, curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina. Centered on the paradox
and condenses disparate ideas, objects and historical incidents into of progress, “Proregress,” or Yubu (the Chinese title, referring to a
a playfully schematic representation of mountains, rivers, islands and Daoist dance technique in which the dancer appears to move forward
seas. Probing topics of politics, religion and folklore, these drawings while actually moving backward), presents a topical examination of
provide insight into the artist’s research over the past decade. A contemporary anxieties and uncertainties. Sampling the works of
highlight of the show will be the six-panel ink painting Map of “Art international artists—from Nadim Abbas to Amalia Pica, Yang Fudong
and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (2017), which traces the to Kader Attia—this biennial will examine subjective experiences of
sociopolitical events and movements that have shaped contemporary recent geopolitical tensions and social change, while also exploring
Chinese art in the last three decades. relationships to the past and fears for the future.
MONIRA AL-QADIRI, DIVER, 2018, still image of four-channel video projection with color and
sound: 4 min 3 sec. Courtesy the artist and Queensland Arts Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.
KHVAY SAMNANG, Rubber Man, 2014–15, still image of three-channel video installation
with color and sound: 4 min. Courtesy the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY | GALLERY OF
TAIPEI FINE ARTS MUSEUM, TAIPEI MODERN ART, BRISBANE
Taipei Biennial: Post-Nature – A The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of
Museum as an Ecosystem Contemporary Art
11/17–3/10/19 11/24–4/28/19
The 11th Taipei Biennial, “Post-Nature – A Museum as an Ecosystem,” The Asia Pacific Triennial returns for its ninth edition with a
will bring together 41 artists, architects, filmmakers, activists and NGOs remarkable range of works by 80 artists and collectives from more
from 19 countries and territories to explore the topic of ecosystems, than 30 countries, presented across the Queensland Art Gallery and
and how their dynamics can help us reassess the roles of museums in Gallery of Modern Art. Allowing for a broad view of contemporary
the 21st century. Curated by Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda, the art from the region, established figures such as Cao Fei, Roberto
show will consider the museum as a social model, tackling notions of Chabet and Shilpa Gupta will be showcased alongside rising stars
community and structural interdependence. Highlights include Khvay like Waqas Khan and Joyce Ho. Highlights include a retrospective of
Samnang’s Rubber Man (2014/15), which looks at the displacement Australian Indigenous filmmakers Karrabing Film Collective; a new
and destruction of indigenous communities and places of spiritual site-specific cartographic ink painting by Qiu Zhijie; and Kuwaiti
significance in northeast Cambodia, and Nicholas Mangan’s installation artist Monira al-Qadiri’s new film DIVER (2018), which examines a
Termite Economies (2018), which provides a sly critique on humankind’s speculative future where petroleum drilling becomes obsolete in the
exploitation of nature for financial profit. Middle East.
In Between
Three artists explore contemporary urban environments
and social interactions in their installation works
Xuan Ye
IN BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE, 2018, screenshot of website, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.
Zhang Ruyi
Installation view of Mount, 2018, concrete, ceramic tiles, glass and
floor drain, dimensions variable, in “Walking on the Fade Out Lines”
at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2018. Courtesy the artist.
Sam Samiee
Design for a Money Note #3, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 185 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reports artasiapacific.com 55
New Currents
1 Sam Samiee
2 AMSTERDAM / TEHRAN
Xuan Ye
TORONTO Zhang Ruyi Sam Samiee experiments with the thresholds
SHANGHAI
of painting. His treatment of two- and three-
Xuan Ye, born in 1989, is a Toronto-based dimensional forms directly correlates to his
artist, but she would like people to think of In Pause (2016), a site-specific work by research into the medium’s significance in our
“Xuan Ye” as a “prototype of many objects.” Zhang Ruyi, cement-cast electrical sockets evolving understanding of human culture. The
This distinction borrows from object-oriented inconspicuously dot tree trunks at Goodwood, idea of art-as-currency, for example, is the
programming, a software design paradigm in a woodland park near the southern coast of focus of Samiee’s series of painting-installations,
which code is organized into distinct objects England. Commissioned by Cass Sculpture “Design for a Money Note” (2018). In these
that can interact with one another. For Ye—one Foundation, the work is a perfect example of abstract paintings, which he drapes from walls,
of whose “objects” is the artistic persona also how Zhang juxtaposes industrialized and organic the Tehran-born artist simultaneously mocks,
known as A Pure Apparatus—this post-human, forms, shifting the familiar into the realm of the and attempts to revise, our crude, capitalist
pluralist approach to the many “dynamic, uncanny and commenting on human’s growing obsessions with object valuation, suggesting that
networked roles” brought together in her alienation in the sprawl of globalization. these canvases of fuzzy-edged, peach, blush
practice opens up possibilities for navigating As a post-1980s generation Chinese artist and cerulean markings on similarly pastel-hued
complexities in art as in life. and a witness to the meteoric reconstruction backgrounds—which are ultimately meaningless
Ye’s deployment of digital media technologies of China’s metropolitan spaces surrounding gestures—can be stand-ins for cold, hard cash.
to investigate instability in contemporary the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Zhang draws upon Based in Amsterdam, Samiee synthesizes
contexts is exemplified in the website work, IN the vocabulary of China’s urban environment Western and Persian art histories and cultures
BETWEEN () WE OSCILLATE (2018). The work to question the country’s hasty nation- in his paintings, installations, essays and poems,
presents the titular words in flickering neon building approach and to highlight the spatial reinventing traditions for the post-binary age.
yellow over antonym pairs such as “bad/good” consequences of such development. In her In his multipiece installation work Bedroom
and “bravery/cowardice,” which are presented in seemingly austere installations, comprising Posters (2015–16) Samiee aligned portraits of
color-changing font, scrolling horizontally across construction materials like concrete and steel, young men sleeping, sitting or standing in relaxed
a black background and alternating direction and square ceramic tiles, she explores the mind- postures—in the style of a teenage youth’s
at regular intervals. An accompanying looped numbing homogeneity and translocalization of chamber of crushes, or a hall of devotional
soundtrack was created by encoding the moving architecture that has grown alongside China’s imagery—alongside readymade objects such
pairs, visualized as a spectrogram, into audible explosive urban growth, sometimes transforming as a yellow couch that he painted on, as a way
frequencies, generating an undulating, tinny entire rooms or tunnels into an immersive to explore the versatility of the medium and its
whine. The programmed, continuous fluctuation Cartesian matrix that feels simultaneously art-historical use in religious representation,
of the antonym pairs from one end of the screen placeless and curiously familiar. symbolism and abstract expressionism. A similar
to the other invalidates the fixed dichotomies In Potted Plants (2016), a thick, waxy cactus display of installations and paintings, titled “The
that they represent, literalizing the inherent stands erect and immobile, sandwiched between Unfinished Copernican Revolution” (2018), at
mutability of language. The source of the words, two identical, nondescript architectural models the 10th Berlin Biennale, featured new prints
an English textbook for non-native speakers, cast in cement, and aixed to a wall of glossy of abstract, narrative-less iPad “paintings” as
additionally brings into sharp relief the power white tiles—a mundane and ubiquitous object an ironic, contemporary take on critic Clement
dynamics embedded in language, questioning identified by the artist as a significant agent Greenberg’s exultation of flatness in modern
another set of oppositions that have returned of urban transformation, and evoking local painting. As part of the same work, he re-created
with a vengeance in our post-globalization era: subjectivities of home. The cactus is recurrent a ceramic-tiled shower stall, inside of which he
native and foreign. in the artist’s practice, standing in as a self- tacked up A4-size printouts of psychoanalytic
Similarly focused on language is Ye’s portrait and a metaphor for a hard-boiled figure books, and images of a nude man posing in the
“EveryLetterCyborg” (2017– ), a series of stifled within the postindustrialized society; style of a classical sculpture in front of his own
web-application-based installations inspired by since 2011, Zhang has sketched these plant abstract paintings—perhaps a tongue-in-cheek
computer-generated poetry that explores how shapes on gridded graph paper, which she draws reference to closeted queer individuals as well as
people filter information, and, in the artist’s herself. Her latest floor-to-ceiling ceramic-tiled a further probing of art-historical tropes.
words, “how we perceive the topological textual installations, featuring door fragments cast from Samiee’s most recent exhibition at the
reality that is mediated by systematic generative cement and petrified cacti, is a continuation of Gemeentemuseum in The Hague rifs on the
algorithms.” V 1.2 (2017–18), an iteration of this these seemingly limitless gridlines. Shown at the philosophical question of love’s relationship
project that was recently shown at the Goethe- 2018 group exhibition “Walking on the Fade Out to intellect. By showing a mix of his early and
Institut in Beijing, involves a printer mounted Lines” at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum, new pieces alongside works from the museum’s
on a microphone stand that spews out texts the works encapsulate Zhang’s meditative and collection by three artists who have inspired his
generated by Ye’s @qletrcyborg Twitterbot. rational approach in organizing an undefined practice—Constant Nieuwenhuys, Paul Thek and
With such technological experiments, Ye is not ambiguous space, underscoring the artificiality Emo Verkerk—Samiee attempts to demonstrate
only developing unexpected tools with which to of constructed environments and providing a how contemporary painters are constantly
process contemporary life, but also investigating nuanced critique of the changing relationship contextualizing and recontextualizing past,
the multifaceted nature of creativity itself. between a city and its inhabitants. present and future art histories.
OPHELIA LAI JULEE WOO JIN CHUNG YSABELLE CHEUNG
SHEZAD DAWOOD, Towards the Possible Film, 2014, still of single-channel HD video: 19 min 29 sec. All images courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor, London/New York.
Rarely are artists as expansive as Shezad appropriation and mimicry—mainstays in in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United
Dawood, in their subject matter and Dawood’s strategy to this day—he created States and subsequent attacks in the United
methodology, and in probing the fault lines what Sara Raza called, in a 2005 article Kingdom, the series rejected the “clash of
in contemporary society. For nearly two for ArtAsiaPacific, “a new hybridized civilizations” cliché. This excavation of
decades, the London-based artist of Indo- vocabulary,” to expose how similarities can cultural convergence and empathy propels
Pakistani descent has grappled with themes exist between ostensibly opposing cultures, Dawood’s projects and is especially necessary
of cultural identity, migration, displacement, and to argue that the notion of otherness is a amid the current rise of right-wing populism
systems of power and structures of belief matter of perspective. fueling xenophobia, racism and separatist
through diverse contexts and histories using a Dawood favors juxtaposing different thinking in the Euro-American sphere.
spectrum of media. contexts to reveal unexpected commonalities. Tracing Dawood’s evolving interest
Given Dawood’s South Asian heritage This exploration of otherness through in deconstructing traditional readings of
and diasporic experience of growing up in multiple perspectives distinguishes his otherness, we can see that he has developed
Britain, exploring the idea of otherness has approach from conventional identity politics. upon early works stemming from his own
figured prominently in his work since the In a series of sculptures he produced starting cultural specificity to wider narratives.
start of his career. In his notable early project, in 2007, for instance, he considers Islam and Towards the Possible Film (2014) is a self-
Make It Big (2002–03), Dawood attempted early American frontier culture as ideologies proclaimed turning point for Dawood. The
to destabilize the binary of East and West that each sprang from desolate environments. 20-minute film follows two blue-skinned
by restaging film stills of Michelangelo The objects themselves merge aspects from aliens emerging from the sea who encounter
Antonioni’s classic mystery thriller both doctrines, such as The Judge (2007), violent indigenous land dwellers. While the
Blow-Up (1966) using Pakistani actresses, a tumbleweed-coiled neon sign that spells aliens appear futuristic in their spacesuits,
with himself as the director, and by hiring a out one of the 99 names attributed to Allah. their green- or blue-colored skin alludes to
Karachi billboard-painter to create variations Coming at a time when many Western ancient archetypes of deities or holy figures
on canvas of the original film poster. Through governments had declared a “War on Terror” such as the Egyptian god Osiris or Krishna
Essays artasiapacific.com 59
from Hindu mythology. In comparison, Moving beyond cultural specificity,
the indigenous people seem premodern, however, is not a renunciation of world
yet could also be postapocalyptic. The film’s affairs. Far from it—Dawood is embracing
nonlinear temporality and ambiguous the whole world as context. This is evident
Martian-esque landscape create a “context- in his latest, most ambitious project to date,
less context” that allows the narrative Leviathan. Debuted last year, the ten-
to become symbolic of alienation and part film cycle and related sculptures and
antagonism in our shared human condition, paintings are to be completed in 2020, and
as Dawood explained in a 2014 interview with the work’s unfolding chapters tackle pressing
Stephanie Bailey in Yishu. issues such as the European refugee crisis,
climate change, resource inequity, mental
health and their potential interconnections.
In his practice, Dawood has often created
projects through collaboration, whether with
other artists, academics or communities,
to make seemingly disparate discourses
speak to each other. In its four chapters
to date, Leviathan is his most extensive
collaboration yet, involving marine biologists,
SHEZAD DAWOOD, Life Jacket, 2017, mixed media on Fortuny
oceanographers, political scientists, textile, 195 x 146 cm.
neurologists and many more to come.
Equaling his collaborative spirit is to those living. Dawood’s end goal in his
his increasing community engagement. art practice, he told Bailey, is to move away
Just as Dawood’s postapocalyptic, from specificity to speak to humanity’s
quasi-documentary created in New York, “illusion of cultural difference and
It was a time that was a time (2015), was otherness.” Leviathan chronicles his leaps
cathartic for the victims of Hurricane Sandy toward this goal in an epic film cycle
whom he involved as actors, the textile pertinent to our times and prescient of
paintings that are also a part of the Leviathan our collective future.
SHEZAD DAWOOD, Fragment of a Carton of Cigarettes,
project depict actual personal items lost by *Visit our Digital Library at library.artasiapacific.com for more articles
2017, mixed media on Fortuny textile, 193 x 154 cm. refugees at sea, and project a hope for closure on Shezad Dawood.
Installation view of SHEZAD DAWOOD’s Leviathan, 2017– , ten-part film cycle, dimensions variable, at “Leviathan,” Palazzina Canonica / Fortuny Factory, Venice, 2017.
Image of Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Casino, taken from Merlion Park, Singapore, 2015. Photo by Sasin Tipchai.
Despite evidence to the contrary, a network fair in Singapore called Art SG, slated for come to Singapore have to factor all the costs
of fair organizers, galleries, so-called November 2019. These newcomers join a of shipping, booth rental, show building,
tastemakers, and even government bodies in landscape already filled with fairs that have etcetera . . . What sense does it make for an
Singapore continue to cultivate an art fair- tried to make their mark in Singapore over Indonesian gallery to come to Singapore
industrial complex under the assumption the last few years, with little to no success. to sell to their Indonesian collectors? They
that introducing more art fairs is a winning Art fairs in Singapore have struggled would rather go to an art fair where they can
strategy for the local economy and art scene since 2016 as the country’s art market has be assured they will recover their costs.”
alike. The individuals and organizations in floundered. In 2018, mainstay fair Art Stage Yet, almost everyone in the local scene
this network will do anything to impress Singapore shrank from 170 galleries in 2016 is supportive of the proliferation of art fairs
the cool kids of the art world—namely to just 84. This followed the surprise move in Singapore. These events are perceived as
mega galleries, mega fairs and mega-rich by Affordable Art Fair to revert to hosting its opportunities to draw new international and
buyers—social and financial consequences Singapore iteration just once per year after regional collectors, which could be beneficial
be damned. four years of biannual editions, while the to all involved in the Singapore arts scene.
Recently, it was announced that the Singapore Contemporary Art Show, after two Why does this mindset persist despite high
inaugural edition of SEA Focus, a commercial editions, quietly folded in early 2018. costs and shaky prospects?
showcase of around 30 galleries featuring And then there’s the issue of cost. One factor is the agenda of the Singapore
Southeast Asian art, will be held in the gallery According to Gil Schneider, consultant for state. The future Art SG is supported by
enclave Gillman Barracks, during Singapore a regional rival, Art Jakarta: “Singapore as the National Arts Council, Singapore
Art Week next January. Soon afterwards, it a fair venue is expensive. The Marina Bay Tourism Board and the Singapore Economic
was revealed that MCH Group, the owner of Sands venue is expensive. Show-building is Development Board, the same government
the Art Basel brand, will launch a new art expensive. The Southeast Asian galleries who agencies that have been supporting Gillman
Essays artasiapacific.com 61
Barracks and Art Stage Singapore since their Contemporary gallery, told AAP that art fairs countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia,
development. As Khairuddin Hori, newly are “trading grounds and offer the public Australia and India, citing Singapore as
appointed president of the Art Galleries a glimpse into the celebrity of art. They an accessible hotspot for them. As for the
Association Singapore, told ArtAsiaPacific, are not museums, art centers, biennales struggling fairs, Angus asserted that any
the explosion of art fairs in Singapore or similar events or institutions that are fair is susceptible to being judged by its
has been mainly driven by government- consequential to the essence of art and lowest-quality galleries. In his view, Art Stage
led ambitions to “industrialize” the arts, being of artists.” Singapore was successful until it allowed
presumably in the lofty hope that the sector So why do we continue this charade of these lesser-quality galleries in, causing the
will eventually sustain itself. blowout events that do not seem to bring initial support from collectors to plummet.
Whether the commercial arts scene in any real innovation, development and This is not a mistake Art SG intends to make.
Singapore is self-sustainable without these sustainable financial benefits to the scene? However, the idea of the wealthiest in the
ventures is debatable, but the economic Why do we keep returning to the same tired region making Singapore their playground
imperative behind the country’s ambitions format of showcasing art? for arts, shopping and entertainment
to become a regional and international art Saltz argued that the Basels of the art might be a tad whimsical. While the city-
powerhouse is quite obvious. Over the last world will continue because these events state is a destination for some members
decade, the government has channeled more benefit those at the very top—high-end of the global rich, most expats tend to use
money and support toward the visual arts galleries, big-name artists and their Singapore as a place to work and live while
with the SGD 532 million National Gallery clientele—more than anyone else. Art Stage traveling across the region and playing
Singapore, the ongoing SGD 90 million Singapore director Lorenzo Rudolf sees the elsewhere. Expats whom I’ve spoken to have
revamp of the Singapore Art Museum and arrival of Art SG as an attempt by MCH to described Singapore as “quiet” in terms
the SGD 10 million makeover of Gillman provide “direct and exclusive access to the of entertainment and nightlife. Tellingly,
Barracks. This is most likely because a single extremely potent economic elite of one of Marina Bay Sands, Singapore’s luxury
piece of art sold makes far more money than the world’s fastest-growing regions.” Gaining integrated resort and the venue for Art Stage
a book, cinema pass or theater-performance “total market control over the ever-more and Art SG, reported a four percent drop
ticket. The hope is that the global and professional and self-confident Southeast in convention, retail and other business as
regional ultra-rich coming to buy and sell Asian art world,” Rudolf says, is particularly well as a 4.2 percent drop in room revenue
art in Singapore could be a potential source pertinent given the emerging market in 2017, despite growing casino revenue at 16
of economic wealth via extended touristic competition in major Chinese cities like percent. Senior executives also “lamented”
activities as well as dining, shopping, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu, which have the fall in VIP turnover. One of the reasons
gambling and so on. been welcoming both a growing number of cited for this dip was competition from other
It would therefore be easy to mistake fairs and high-net-worth individuals looking places in the region, such as the Philippines,
the Singapore government’s push for to invest in art. While commending it as a Thailand and Macau.
art fairs as part of a national economic smart step from the perspective of a global So why is Singapore doubling down on
agenda, but that would ignore how the player aiming to dominate and control the an outmoded spectacle like the art fair to
art fair–industrial complex has become a international art market, he questioned attract a demographic that is not really into
global affliction. A growing international whether the global art market would benefit the locale? It smacks of the naive behavior of
backlash against art fairs is hardly news. In from diversity rather than the “complete a desperate trend-follower. Singapore could
a Vulture article published in May, art critic and comprehensive orientation of a global invigorate the art scene by shifting taste-
Jerry Saltz eviscerated today’s global mega luxury market.” making and art appreciation from cultural
fairs, characterizing them as “great malls Sandy Angus, chairman of Montgomery traders and dealers to local and regional
curated to lure people in without focusing Arts, which is also one of the organizers of artists, educators and cultural managers.
on business, employing a stagecraft of Art SG, spoke openly with AAP about the Instead, it chooses to keep up with the global
entertainments, fine foods, wine-tastings, new fair’s objective to reach out to the richest status quo and succumb to post modern
valet parking, VIP lounges . . . [and] panel collectors and highest-quality galleries. vulnerabilities currently faced across
discussions . . . with a rotating few of the Angus pointed out that there are a lot of affluent cities. Attracting the ultra-rich to our
same 55 movers-and-shakers providing self- high-net-worth individuals in Singapore shores could be a happy by-product rather
congratulatory, self-flagellating gravitas to who have yet to venture into art collecting; than a primary objective; originality and
the traveling caravan.” these individuals comprise the key target vision are bound to draw attention. But it
Earlier this year, New York gallerist Jose demographic for Art SG. Moreover, it intends looks like Singapore has some growing up to
Freire publicly announced that he would to tap major collectors in the region from do before it learns that lesson.
never participate in another fair again, after
a final showing at Art Basel Hong Kong,
stating that people would be better off
scrolling through Instagram to view works
of art on sale, rather than trudging through a
fair. In an interview with Artnet, he claimed
that he hadn’t met a single new person at
various editions of Frieze or Art Basel in the
past decade and that there is no longer a
curatorial presence at fairs. Most crucially,
his gallery suffered its biggest losses at art
fairs due to booth costs, exchange rates,
fabrication costs, and shipping. For Freire,
at least, fairs aren’t the moneymakers they
purport to be.
Back in Singapore, Khairuddin, who also
serves as curatorial director at Chan+Hori Installation view of Art Stage Singapore at Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, 2017. Courtesy Art Stage Singapore.
Installation view of “Art Patrons” at Qiao Space, Shanghai, 2018. Courtesy Qiao Collection, Shanghai .
Earlier this year, club owner and clearly on those who had acquired the art, fascinating progression which will allow
entrepreneur Qiao Zhibing invited 36 rather than those who had produced it. art patrons and artists alike to influence
fellow art collectors from the greater Qiao elaborated on his perspective in the and complete each other, and eventually,
China region to submit works from their press release: to shape the future of art.
private inventories for a group exhibition
in Shanghai. Out of these proposals, Qiao Aside from a collector, whose ultimate After I read such a blatantly self-serving
handpicked around 50 artworks—of which purpose is to promote contemporary statement, the resounding questions of
approximately 40 were by men and fewer art, they have gradually taken on more performance artist, educator and writer
than 10 by female artists—for the exhibition, roles and public responsibilities—not Andrea Fraser came to mind. In her 2011
entitled “Art Patrons,” which was on display content with merely collecting, but essay “L’1%, C’est Moi,” she asks: “How
at the two initiatives he founded in the also through establishing museums, do the world’s leading collectors earn
West Bund Culture Corridor: Qiao Space, alternative spaces, art foundations their money? How do their philanthropic
and the 60,000-square-meter cultural and fairs; in the meantime, actively activities relate to their economic
hub Tank Shanghai. The show opened in supporting the art education programs, operations? And what does collecting art
late March, catering to the international exhibitions and institutions. mean to them and how does it affect the art
museum directors, curators, collectors The exhibition will also make a world?” The last question, in particular, is
and art professionals who might have survey of art patronage from a historical pertinent to the situation in China today.
stopped in Shanghai on their way to Art viewpoint. Art patrons with their larger- In an academic paper co-published in
Basel Hong Kong. than-life character and cutting-edge 2009, economists William N. Goetzmann,
It was revealing that the exhibition vision have always played a pivotal role Luc Renneboog and Christophe Spaenjer
invitation listed all 36 contributing throughout history, across ancient China, concluded, “Art booms whenever income
collectors and collections, yet not a single Renaissance Italy and 20th Century inequality rises quickly.” As China’s
artist was mentioned. The emphasis was America. It is also a complicated but economy has grown, increasingly favoring
Essays artasiapacific.com 63
big business and the super-wealthy, the Tiehai to spearhead the West Bund Art and elevate institutions and cultivate a healthy
country has also been at the forefront of Design fair, supporting private institutions infrastructure. Concurrently, the emerging
art prosperity. Prices for art are as high such as the Tank and the Yuz Museum, art market, sustained by the upper classes,
as ever at the moment. But as Sotheby’s and encouraging galleries to relocate to was gradually replacing royal and religious
former principal auctioneer Tobias Meyer the corridor. The municipal government is patronage in supporting artists and
once explained in an interview with Vanity responsible for the success of the area, but, their artworks. As a result, art since then
Fair magazine: “The prices [for art] are not as art historian Xing Zhao observed in a has been evaluated through the lens of
prices, they’re relationships to individual recent issue of Yishu magazine, West Bund’s economics, as art critic Boris Groys has
worth.” It is important to consider that allure is largely enhanced by the efforts of written: “Aesthetics, as a philosophical
not all wealthy Chinese are automatically “individual collectors, entrepreneurs and tradition and academic discipline, relates
granted entry into high-society circles. It foreign investors at their own initiative and to and reflects on art from the perspective
depends crucially on which families they for various reasons.” of the art consumer.”
were born or married into, and how they Indeed, nearly all contemporary art When private collections enter the
make their money. Therefore, art patronage museums and alternative spaces in China public domain, the relationships change.
is a way for many to signify their cultural are privately owned or administered, and Aside from enhancing the patron’s legacy
superiority and mark a position of privilege, are dependent on patrons to fund the and attracting tourists, private museums
in the hope of climbing the social ladder. So, programming and keep the staff on payroll. need to adopt institutional and social
as the rich are rapidly getting much richer But unfortunately, when money is the responsibilities. While their owners’ role
in China, as elsewhere in the world, Qiao’s determinant, the person who funds the as actors in the market is crucial for the
exhibition “Art Patrons” extolled the virtues program often becomes its self-appointed art ecosystem, private institutions have
of philanthropy. Yet, it also ostentatiously author, turning the institution into a circus the potential to offer enjoyment for
celebrated the trophy-hunting practices in which the patron performs as producer, visitors no less than public ones. They
of an elite group of 15 women and 22 men director, connoisseur, curator, head of can also provide intimate viewing
who are constituents, and competitors, acquisitions and even docent. Artists, experiences not possible in heavily
in a hierarchy of prestige built on the their artworks, curators and other didactic public institutions. But when
conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, art professionals become disposable standards of research, conservation,
including fine art. accessories, garnishing the patron’s ego. design, management, education and
Many of Qiao’s fellow collectors have Most private museums in China do collection are disregarded, especially
established their own museums and private not meet the qualifications and code of when curatorial values are repudiated, the
spaces. Several of these are now located ethics of the International Council of typical grandiosity of these physical spaces
in West Bund, the riverfront property Museums, established in 1946. Some appear becomes the magnified manifestation of
founded in 2012 with an investment of to reduce the notion of serving the public to intellectual poverty, undercutting any
RMB 660 million (USD 96 million) from merely giving a guided walk-through at the possible sociopolitical agency in art. For
the government. This state-guided and opening. Institutional exchange might be instance, when the collector Wang Wei put
market-based initiative of establishing an no more than having dinner with a highly together a show of women artists at her
outsize arts district aims to put Shanghai on publicized museum director from the West. own Long Museum, not only did she fail to
the international culture map and stimulate I’m not aware of any Chinese museums articulate the extraordinary contributions
China’s soft power. The local authorities fulfilling the responsibility of keeping of those women to the field of contemporary
have taken various measures, including complete records of the removals of objects art, but she also completely overlooked the
inviting the well-respected artist Zhou from the collection. Though it opened in historical and social contexts in which the
2014, the Yuz Museum, for example, does art was made.
not yet have a curatorial team to take care of As a freelance writer, consultant and
the collection and organize exhibitions. exhibition organizer, I am very aware of
In the press release for the “Art Patrons” the risk of biting the hand that feeds me.
exhibition, Qiao delves into the history However, my critique is a matter of sincere
of the practice of patronage, in an attempt conscience and urgency. This is not a
to align himself with the Medicis of personal attack on individual collectors.
Florence and the Yangzhou merchant- Rather, it is my constructive attempt, as
patrons in the Ming and Qing dynasties. a member of the art community, to evaluate
But those benefactors lived in times when the current state of private museums
private collections stayed in private or and spaces, and to confront our willing
exclusive spaces. The concept of a modern participation in a system that perpetuates
museum, as a secular space for public economic inequality.
engagement through the presentation The art world has always been dependent
of objects to educate the masses in areas on and in close contact with the leisure
of cultural refinement, began in Europe class. However, a healthy autonomy from
in the 18th century. The Louvre Museum it has been shown historically to be
in Paris, opened in 1793, was the first crucial for art’s critical and discursive
institution to provide free access for development, as well as for institutional
people regardless of their social status. sustainability. It is precisely in this spirit
In the 19th century, academically trained that I am scrutinizing the institution of
professionals emerged to oversee the art against, in the words of Andrea
institution, specializing in acquisition, Fraser, from her 2012 essay “There’s No
curation, research and conservation. By Place Like Home,” “the critical claims
not only providing content for exhibitions of its legitimizing discourses, its self-
but also contributing to the academic field representation as a site of contestation and
Portrait of QIAO ZHIBING. Courtesy Qiao Collection, Shanghai. of art, professionals help broaden topics, its narratives of radicality and revolution.”
68
Dale Harding
ALWAYS PAINTING, ALWAYS SCULPTING
BY TIM WALSH
70
Akiko Yamazaki
and Jerry Yang 72
UNDERSTATED VISIONARIES
BY OLIVIA WANG Khvay Samnang
THE LONG WAY HOME
BY OPHELIA LAI
Profiles artasiapacific.com 67
Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
Portrait of Dale Harding. Photo by Karen Lawton.
BY TIM WALSH
DALE HARDING
Carnarvon Gorge, a nearly 20-mile canyon were spent in Moranbah, more than 250 sewed in soft, mohair wool collars—under
situated in Central Queensland, Australia, miles north of the Gorge, a small town “built his mother’s tutelage—around the neckline,
is a space uniquely defined by its rock out of necessity, for the two coal mines there” tempering the abrasive material. Yet his
art paintings and by the sculpting of its and which exuded “a pervasive 1990s grunge recent practice—especially since his
landscapes, the cliffs forged by the coursing and griminess. It felt like a slow-moving presentation in Documenta 14—has been
of creeks and springs. The place carries the adolescence for multiple generations who guided by a desire to deliberately pivot
ongoing histories of communities including lived within the town.” His cultural points away from “urgent histories of abuse and
the Garingbal and Bidjara people of Central of reference came from his mother, a highly suffering of previous generations in the
Queensland who have maintained their skilled artisan, and his father, a respected [earlier] work,” a conscious decision made
stories in the region for at least 20,000 years, cattle farmer—both of whom were involved by himself and his family once they felt that
one descendant of which—Brisbane-based in the broader Aboriginal community in these issues had been properly addressed.
Dale Harding—has made it his mission Central Queensland. In 2001, Harding “Presenting Indigenous suffering had
not only to sustain these narratives but to moved to the Sunshine Coast, north of the begun to feel like a convention to me—
articulate their futures through his own Queensland capital of Brisbane, to continue beyond historical redress. It was time to
painting and sculpting. developing his practice and to broaden his offer myself some notes to future bodies
At the two-city Documenta 14 in 2017, cultural horizons—he recalled a period of of work,” he explained. “I am an artist,
Harding presented different bodies of work obsession around Anglo-Australian artist and I’d been longing to return from the
that opened up streams of discourse between Brett Whiteley’s paintings of birds, with a political arenas of contemporary art to the
these dual mediums. For Athens’ EMST- particular focus on the Fijian fruit dove. studio, where I could work at dreaming up
National Museum of Contemporary Art, In 2009, at the age of 27, Harding enrolled futures through visual culture.” His 2017
Harding, who descends from the Ghungalu in the Queensland College of Art’s renowned solo exhibition, at Brisbane’s Milani Gallery,
people, installed the sculptural Body of Contemporary Australian Indigenous represents this shift: the formally engaged
Objects (2017), comprised of black silicone Art program, where he began to examine work incorporated the same technique of
replicas of ceremonial spears, boomerangs, sculpture on a more academic level. His pigment-blowing used in the wall paintings,
throwing sticks, nulla nulla (hunting clubs) first solo exhibition in 2012, “Colour by but this time the paint was sprayed across
and other tools re-created with permission Number” at Brisbane’s Metro Arts, featured pieces of glass, scaled to the human body
from his communities’ elders. a body of work with a strong sculptural bent and installed so that some would catch rays
In Kassel’s Ottoneum, three white, that referenced his matrilineal family’s of natural light from the space’s skylights.
freestanding walls became “canvases” experience of the Queensland Government’s The central piece, Blue Rest (2017), is coated
for a large-scale painting, created using brutal laws. In No Blame Rests with on one side with a uniform layer of Reckitt’s
ancestral techniques of ocher blowing and Them (2012), a suspended wooden fighting Blue. When struck by a sunbeam, the work’s
stenciling. As a derivation of Aboriginal stick rests its narrow point on top of a color throws a subtle blue light across the
pictographs, typically painted in naturally “plinth” carved and painted to look like a floor—revealing a soft radiance that exudes
occurring clay pigments of red, brown, tin of the chocolate-malt powder drink Milo a sense of optimism.
white and black, Composite Wall Panel: (albeit without the signature green label), This future appears bright for Harding,
Reckitt’s Blue (2017) includes a vibrant, blue the rod pointing downward at a graceful but with an upcoming survey at the Institute
powder, as a reference to the hue mixed by threatening angle. Its poise and elegance, of Modern Art, Brisbane, opening in early
French artist Yves Klein. This particular coupled with the subtle detail of scalloped 2019, as well as a major, multi-venue
synthetic powder was developed as a popular edges on an upper section of wood, alludes public commission for the University of
whitening agent for laundry in the mid- to the relationship, in Harding’s mind, Sydney. His sources of creative energy—
19th century and was used domestically between the works of iconic modernist the cultural knowledge of his people and
across colonial settlements. In the context sculptor Constantin Brancusi and the art historical references in rock art sites,
of Harding’s family history, however, traditional nulla nulla: “Brancusi’s tapered ceremonial objects, avant-garde works by
Reckitt’s Blue conveys contrasting, complex bird forms were the same forms I grew up Klein, Brancusi, Whiteley and Harding’s
narratives. Harding’s grandmother and with and look just like the nulla nulla made contemporary peers, along with constant
great-grandmother both worked as domestic by my grandfather. So when I saw Brancusi’s inspiration from his wider family—remain
servants and, like many Aboriginal women works, in a sense, I knew them already.” a consistently renewing fount. In the recent
and girls at the time, were indentured under In the years since then, Harding has TarraWarra Biennial, Harding and his cousin
the control of the Queensland Government developed his material exploration of his Jordan Upkett presented a vast 30-meter-
through the Aboriginals Protection and family’s history through works that describe wide wall painting, Wall Compositions from
Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act of trauma, tinged, in marked contrast, with Memory (2018) using earth from Harding’s
1897. Reckitt’s Blue was also utilized, tenderness. For example, for Bright Eyed grandmother’s country, which they blew
unconventionally, by Harding’s matrilineal Little Dormitory Girls (2013), Harding made from their mouths and rubbed into the
ancestors to decorate their shields. small, raw hessian-sack shirts embroidered structure of the gallery. Among this red
As Harding noted, “‘Doing’ and ‘being’ with the Crown of England symbol, recalling ocher painterly composition, incisions were
culture was always something very natural the young Aboriginal dormitory workers made by Harding and Upkett, referencing
growing up for me. I’ve been learning typically forced to wear the rough garments their communities’ important stories and
processes of communicating culture since as punishment for resisting their employers. songlines. Even when painting, Harding’s
I was around ten years old.” His early years Intervening in a reparative fashion, Harding sculptural instincts persist.
Profiles artasiapacific.com 69
Photo by Angela DeCenzo.
Portrait of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang.
BY OLIVIA WANG
Understated Visionaries
AKIKO YAMAZAKI AND JERRY YANG
IRENE CHOU, Untitled, 1995, ink on paper, 152.4 x 106.7 cm. Courtesy Akiko Yamazaki
and Jerry Yang, and Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford.
Profiles
“When I first started to think about thought to criteria such as provenance, New York. “There is something just so
collecting, I really had no basis for judging beauty, condition and rarity. The couple now compelling about his art,” she explained.
what was good or bad,” the ever-humble own 50 antique ceramic pieces. In the pair’s characteristically understated
Jerry Yang said when I asked him about the Though Yang and Yamazaki developed manner, they approach their roles as
beginnings of his journey as a collector. Yet different passions, their interests converge collectors with reverence. “As for the art
after getting married in 1997 and settling when it comes to collecting contemporary we collect, we own it for now, but we’re
down together in California, he and his wife Chinese ink paintings. They made their first ultimately passing it down to the next
Akiko Yamazaki agreed that they would purchase in 2001, and have since amassed generation of collectors, whether it is ours or
focus on “collecting works that reflect more than 100 works, focusing initially on someone else,” Yang said. “The contemporary
[their East-Asian] heritage.” They have works by artists whom they came to know artworks we collect are a reflection of the past
since built a three-tiered collection, which personally through specialists in the worlds and present, and hopefully will be around
comprises traditional calligraphy, overseen of calligraphy and traditional painting, in the future.” Yet they have no plans to
solely by Yang, Song-dynasty ceramics— such as Li Huayi, Gu Wenda and Wang establish a private museum to house their
Yamazaki’s pursuit—and their joint passion, Tiande. “It was more like relationship- collection. “I prefer the model of lending,”
contemporary Chinese ink paintings. based collecting, but obviously with explained Yamazaki, “whereby institutions
Yang’s penchant for traditional calligraphy good guidance from [experts such as] can curate their exhibitions according to
might be surprising to some given his Michael Knight [who is also consulting their audiences.” Yang continued, “There’s
profession. He holds undergraduate and curator of the couple’s collection] and the goal with those who want to establish a
postgraduate degrees from Stanford in Mee-Seen Loong,” Yang explained. At the private museum to leave their legacy in art. I
electrical engineering, and co-founded time, these artists were still in the early don’t know if we feel that strongly about that
Yahoo—an acronym for the ironic phrase to mid-stages of their careers; some have being our legacy. But who knows, check back
“Yet Another Hierarchical Officious become leading figures in the genre—a with us in the future!”
Oracle”—in 1994 with his friend David Filo testament to the couple’s discerning eye. Beyond collecting, the pair have
while he was still a doctoral candidate. With Many of the paintings were acquired from donated generously. In 2017, they pledged
the official job title “Chief Yahoo,” he was the artists directly, but there are also a USD 25 million toward an architectural
propelled to dot-com billionaire status within portion that were commissioned for special and programming revamp at the Asian
two years of the company’s launch. occasions. To celebrate their 20th wedding Art Museum—the largest donation in the
His exposure to art, however, can be traced anniversary, for example, Yang and institution’s history. “We’re relatively private
to his childhood in Taiwan, where he was Yamazaki asked Zheng Chongbin—known people, but when it comes to art and loaning
born and raised before moving to the United for fusing Western principles of abstraction our art to exhibitions, we feel it is important
States with his family at the age of ten. He with Chinese ink traditions—to create a to use art to initiate cultural dialogue,” Yang
practiced calligraphy as a student in Taipei, work. The result was a large-scale, abstract said. “China, Japan and Korea are involved
and when he made his first acquisition, in collage spanning over two meters in height, in so many facets in the world today,
1998, it was a piece by Ming-dynasty master composed of overlapping and folded paper particularly politically, economically and
calligrapher Dong Qichang. Calligraphy fragments painted with ink and white geopolitically. I think having art encourage
struck a chord, Yang said, because of his acrylic. Zheng is extensively represented such a dialogue is very important.”
familiarity with the medium. He has since in their collection, with roughly 12 works For the couple, engaging with art starts
put together an impressive collection of more dating from 1995 to the present. Liu Dan at home. Yamazaki recounted having a
than 300 calligraphy works dating from the is another artist whose oeuvre the couple mini-version of Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration
13th to 19th centuries. has followed closely. They own six of Liu’s Room (2002– )—an interactive installation
While Yang cultivated his eye for works, including his monumental 1991 where viewers are invited to cover a space
calligraphy, Yamazaki directed her attention painting of an open Chinese dictionary with brightly colored dot-shaped stickers—
to Song-dynasty ceramics. Yamazaki was bearing traditional characters—as opposed constructed for their younger daughter’s
raised in Costa Rica, where her father was a to the simplified characters that emerged eighth birthday party a few years ago. Their
Japanese expatriate, and earned an from the Maoist era—illustrating Liu’s daughter and friends primed the installation
undergraduate degree in industrial reverence for traditional culture. To provide first with white paint, so they could
engineering from Stanford in 1990. Though historical context for the contemporary understand that artists have to work very
she took painting and calligraphy classes at ink works in their collection, the duo have hard physically, before affixing the stickers
her school in Costa Rica, her passion for art also acquired paintings by pioneers of the anywhere they wished. Their daughter’s fete
and collecting ceramics was sparked only genre who were active in Hong Kong in indicates the couple’s earnest and genuine
after she joined the San Francisco’s Asian the 1960s and ’70s, such as Lui Shou-kwan, efforts to share their passion for the arts
Art Museum as a board member in 1997. Liu Kuo-sung and Irene Chou. with others. With all the attention-seeking
Gradually taking on a more active role in the Given the couple’s deliberate approach collectors that exist in the contemporary art
museum’s leadership, she was elected chair toward collecting, I was curious to know world today, it is inspiring and refreshing
of the board in 2014. Yamazaki explained that if they had ever made an impulse purchase. to see those who approach collecting
over the years, with the advice of Hao Sheng, Yamazaki spoke with enthusiasm as and patronage with as much respect and
former curator of Chinese art at Boston’s she told me about a 17th-century Rinpa- deliberation as Yang and Yamazaki.
Museum of Fine Arts, she has taken an style flower painting by Takashi Murakami
increasingly critical and disciplined approach that she unexpectedly acquired after See our website for the Chinese version of this article.
to collecting ceramics, giving considerable a recent visit to the artist’s studio in
Profiles artasiapacific.com 71
Courtesy Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong/Shanghai.
Portrait of Khvay Samnang.
BY OPHELIA LAI
KHVAY SAMNANG
“If I hear there are protests in an area, I masks he had created for them after they World Wars as a result of French colonial
go there. I want to know what happened, voiced their fears of repercussions for rule. In the installation Yantra Man (2015),
and I want to show it through art,” Khvay participating in what could be construed as pieces of medieval-looking metal armor
Samnang said to me. He was explaining his anti-government dissent. The masks became are scattered on the floor. Each is engraved
artistic process, which has involved dumping emblematic of the government’s erasure with designs inspired by sacred yantra
buckets of sand over himself in a series of of lower-income social groups from the drawings and tattoos traditionally believed
performance-protests, or filming a dancer increasingly privatized urban landscape, as to offer protection, asserting the cultural
embodying rainforest animal spirits. The well as representing the hidden anxieties of identities of Cambodian soldiers who have
bucolic settings and humorous antics often those being forced from their homes. been whitewashed in history books. The
belie the seriousness of the subject matter, Similarly concerned with the struggle arrangement recalls body parts dispersed
as his works are urgent, if unexpected, over property is Khvay’s iconic 2011 after an explosion, emphasizing the tragedy
responses to contemporary issues such as performance-based series, in which the artist of dying for a foreign cause, but Khvay
environmental degradation. At the same poured a bucket of sand over himself while offered a sweeter interpretation: the yantra
time, he tries to steer clear of didacticism, standing in various lakes across Phnom engravings symbolize victories clinched with
instead conveying empathy, compassion and Penh. A protest against land reclamation the help of “magical Cambodia.”
spiritual wonder. and the displacement of residents, these For his two-channel film installation,
Born in Svay Rieng province, Cambodia, performances arose after Khvay saw a family Preah Kunlong (The Way of the Spirit)
the artist studied painting at the Royal refusing to leave their stilt house, an act (2016–17), commissioned for Documenta 14,
University of Fine Arts (RUFA) in Phnom which construction workers ignored as they Khvay returned to more familiar territory,
Penh, where he is still based, though his dumped sand into the water. “It really hurt to hearing of the Cambodian government’s
practice has largely encompassed everything imagine how it would feel to try to escape the plans to allow a Chinese company to build
but painting. “There weren’t many mediums mud, the sand,” he explained. a dam in a patch of rainforest inhabited by
I could choose [at university],” he explained. The gesture of tipping a bucket over the indigenous Chong community. After
He had also trained in photography while himself became a way to interrogate gaining the trust of the Chong villagers, he
a student at RUFA, but it was a trip in 2009 relationships between humans and the learned of the indigenous spiritual belief of
to Japan for a residency at Tokyo Wonder environments they inhabit. Khvay traveled honoring animals who assisted them, and,
Site that opened his eyes to a wealth of to Fukushima only months after the collaborating with local weavers, crafted
artistic possibilities. “I saw something that earthquake and tsunami that led to the vine masks of various revered animals. He
Cambodia didn’t have. It made me think that Daiichi nuclear accident. There, standing in then invited his frequent collaborator, the
it’s not only painting that can show what I front of picturesque orchards and forests, dancer and choreographer Nget Rady, to put
want to say; there’s also photography, video clad only in black boxer briefs, he “poured” on the masks and to embody these creatures
and my body.” The residency culminated in air over himself for a series of images titled through improvised dance. Juxtaposing
an early performance work, Samnang Cow “Air” (2011). “Everyone was scared to go to close-ups of Nget’s writhing body as he
Taxi at Asakusa (2010), in which he donned a Fukushima,” he explained. “I just wanted to transitions to animal form with wider shots
headpiece resembling buffalo horns and gave test myself. What if it had happened to me?” of him reveling in nature, reclining at the
free rickshaw rides to strangers as a gesture In Rubber Man (2014), the emptying base of a waterfall as a crocodile or running
of thanks to his host city. The horns had been of buckets appears again, though Khvay’s through a field as a peacock, Preah Kunlong
crafted from hair collected at Phnom Penh’s environmental concerns take a mystical simultaneously captures the survivalist
roadside hairdressers, bringing a slice of the turn. During a trip to the forests of Northern struggle and breathtaking beauty of nature—
artist’s native country to Japan. Cambodia to investigate controversial and existence within it—in equal measure.
Home is an important theme in Khvay’s government concessions of indigenous- This dualism pervades Khvay’s work,
work, and it’s at the heart of the photographic occupied land for commercial interests, such which so often is centered on hardship and
series “Human Nature” (2010–11), initiated as the rubber industry, he dreamed of a white destruction but maintains a lightness
upon his return to Phnom Penh. “I try to figure. When he saw how the rubber was of touch, a willingness to see humor
follow what’s happening in my environment: collected from the trees, he felt a strong desire and beauty in difficult or even hopeless
land issues, human-rights violations.” At to pour the substance over himself. Later, situations. Responding to this observation,
the time, the pressing problem was the when he viewed the footage, he was struck by he said: “I think this is life in the work. This
impending demolition of the historic Bassac how his rubber-coated self looked identical to is what I see.”
Riverfront municipal housing complex the man in his dream, making him wonder if Khvay is busy these days balancing
after the government had sold the land to it had been a displaced tree spirit: “Maybe it his teaching duties at Sa Sa Art Projects,
a property developer. The issue was also came to me in my dream to ask for help.” which has an education program, and is
personal: the nonprofit Sa Sa Art Projects, Khvay’s solo exhibition, “Footprints of preparing for an upcoming show in 2019
which Khvay had helped to establish in 2009 Yantra Man” (2015), at the Berlin residency at Munich’s Haus der Kunst, where he will
as part of Stiev Selapak, or “art rebels”—a space Künstlerhaus Bethanien, marked again tackle subjects of land rights and
collective he co-founded with fellow artists a major shift in subject matter away from the new colonizing forces in Cambodia.
Lim Sokchanlina, Vuth Lyno and (now geographically specific issues to historical Khvay may move on to a different area of
ex-member) Vandy Rattana—was located relations between Europe and Cambodia. contention each time, but he always circles
in the building. Wanting to document the After visiting the German Historical Museum back to a theme with universal resonance:
place before its demise, Khvay photographed in Berlin, the artist began to think about the his deep-seated commitment to the place
residents in their homes. They wore colorful Cambodian soldiers who fought in the two called home.
Profiles artasiapacific.com 73
84
Anita Dube
NAKED AND
KNIFE-SHARP
76 BY JYOTI DHAR
Ma Qiusha
CUTTING THROUGH
HISTORIES
BY TOM MOUNA
Features
96
106
YOUNG & EMERGING
BY THE EDITORS
THEN AND NOW
BY THE EDITORS
Features artasiapacific.com 75
C U T T I N G
T H RO U G H
HISTORIES
Ma Qiusha
By Tom Mouna
(Previous spread)
FROM NO. 4 PINGYUANLI TO NO. 4 TIANQIAOBEILI,
2007, single-channel video with color and sound: 7 min 54
sec. All images courtesy the artist and Beijing Commune.
(This page)
FOG NO. 6, 2012, watercolor on paper, 98.5 x 152 cm.
(Opposite page)
STORY OF SPACE – MY GRANDMA’S LIVING
ROOM NO. 1, 2007–08, digital print from the
series “Story of Space,” 86.5 x 118 cm.
Features artasiapacific.com 79
Much like a historian a room filled with simple necessities like worn-out cooking pots,
wooden furniture and family photographs, emphasizing stasis and
history. Although these interiors function differently, as depicted
and anthropologist, in these carefully constructed compositions, Ma reveals that each
space plays a significant role in making up the city.
Ma has a fascination For Ma, Beijing’s structures contain narratives about society
and its histories, which can be unpacked and examined for new
resonances and associations. Ma found this was the case with the
with looking at niche never-completed “Luxury Brand Outlet Mall and Eco-Resort,”
optimistically named Wonderland, which symbolizes the rapid
cultures in China with consumer transformation and rising middle class of the late
1980s and 1990s. These same driving factors, Ma believes,
were responsible for shifts in taste and demand for women’s
fresh eyes. apparel and products. This association between the two social
phenomena became the subject of Ma’s installation series
“Wonderland” (2016–18), in which she explores different kinds
of nylon tights, from the 1980s to the present day, while evoking
the period’s unpredictable economic fluctuations. For her solo
show at Beijing Commune in 2016, Ma took a ten-by-six-meter
slab of concrete, smashed it into chunks, and then wrapped these
shards in sheer, nude tights of varying shades, before piecing the
concrete back into its original rectangular shape. As Ma explained
(This page) to me, “Shattering and reassembling the concrete reflects those
Installation view of WONDERLAND, same powerful forces that both brought to life and halted the
2016, cement, nylon stocking, plywood,
iron and resin, 980 x 615 cm, at
‘Wonderland’ project, signaling unfulfilled dreams and the fractures
“Wonderland,” Beijing Commune, 2016. that occurred in society as a result of rapid change at this time.”
The series had also been prompted by the birth of Ma’s first
(Opposite page)
TWILIGHT ZONE, 2017–18, digital print, child, an event that led her to study her own mother’s generation,
240 x 420 cm. in an attempt to understand societal trends and habits of that time.
Features artasiapacific.com 81
These anecdotes
convey a strong,
collective desire for
social advancement
and how families and
individuals will go to
great lengths to realize
these dreams.
that if she specialized in one particular field she would not starve,
and describes her regimented upbringing, from the intense focus
on mastering a musical instrument to learning how to draw (the
multidisciplinary artist Song Dong was her first art teacher). As the
video progresses, Ma has difficulty speaking, occasionally stopping,
seemingly with pain written across her face. Near the video’s end, it
seems as if there is something darkening between her lips, and in the
last half minute Ma opens her mouth and extracts a razor blade, her
bloodied tongue and palate now visible.
These anecdotes convey a strong, collective desire for social
advancement and how families and individuals will go to great
lengths to realize these dreams. The photographic work Gift (2009)
approaches this theme from the perspective of a slightly older Ma.
In the image, we see Ma’s mouth, chin and upper chest area, as well
as the necklace she wears that was crafted from her grandmother’s
false teeth. Functioning as a kind of visceral heirloom, the artificial
teeth-necklace is an enduring reminder of pressurizing familial
expectations, which, like a piece of jewelry, can shape one’s identity.
The video Embrace (2011) similarly focuses on the control that
authority figures, whether parents, instructors or governmental
forces, maintain over the lives and bodies of Chinese youths. The
work is a two-minute-long clip of dozens of young female divers
performing pikes, tucks and somersaults in the air, captured
in the split-seconds of free fall. Ma slowed the frame rate in
postproduction, elongating each half turn or partial twist by several
seconds so as to highlight this pivotal moment in which the athletes
appear to have maximum autonomy over their own bodies. It’s
telling that Ma captured these brief moments of youthful freedom
in falling, perhaps revealing her own personal search for such
experiences. In fact, the footage was taken at a China national team
training facility, where athletes as young as eight years old train in a
high-pressure environment, much like the artist’s own upbringing.
Perhaps not surprisingly for an artist whose practice deals with
the idea of control or a lack of it—over one’s own agenda, over the
female body, over the larger societal shifts occurring in Beijing
and China—Ma likes to collect objects, as if to temporarily possess
the narratives that they carry or for the purpose of allowing
her to process conjectured histories. Her collection includes
calendars from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, as well as idiosyncratic
Chinese magazines from the 1980s and ’90s of nude photography.
The photograph books are curious relics; not least because of
how their contents are at odds with current, conservative Chinese
Features artasiapacific.com 83
NAKED
AND
KNIFE-
SHARP
A NI TA DU BE
By Jyoti Dhar
I. Love and Politics connections point to the contemporary relevance of Dube’s work,
her own suggestion in the film that “the values I stand on are
Noor Mohammed, a lower-class Muslim businessman—the old” reminds us that her concerns are not reactionary but are
alter-ego of Anita Dube, who could be identified as a middle- rooted in deep preoccupations with syncretism and pluralism,
class Hindu woman artist, but whose life and practice seeks to the fluidity of gender and sexuality, pathos and eros. The latter of
blur such boundaries—tells us that it’s his lucky day; he’s been these, particularly eros and politics, or “love as a way of thinking
given 15 minutes of fame. “What can I say about myself?” he asks, through politics” (as activist Ponni Arasu spoke about in a recent
looking quizzically at the camera, deciding how best to introduce discussion on “Histories of Queer Feminisms in South Asia: Love
himself. “Noor is a loving human being, who places a great onus on and Resistance,” in Sri Lanka), or the radical potential of love,
friendship,” he begins. “Love is the highest form of worship. This is forms a central thread through Dube’s work.
my religion.” Over the next 15 minutes, Dube-as-Noor addresses a
mix of personal, political and philosophical thoughts to two of her/
his closest friends, artists Anita Dube and CK Rajan. Confessing
II. Culture in Currency
to these unseen figures in flowing Urdu enriched with Sufi poetry, Dube’s own path to art, love and politics was prefaced, originally,
Dube’s alter-ego weaves the fictional with the factual, telling them by a desire to escape what she called “the provincial, middle-class
about his love of literature, his childhood in Lucknow, and his male way of life” that she experienced in the relatively conservative
and female lovers in Delhi. In these dark times, he laments, power social landscape in Lucknow. “I knew that the only way to get
has become a religion, politics is practiced like an art form, and love out of this place was to do well,” she said. Her parents, who
transformed into a commodity. were both doctors, suggested that she prepare for the Indian
The impromptu script contains profound and candid lines, Administrative Service exams. Rather than follow that path, she
such as, “If you had understood me, if your desire was not double, surprised everyone when she achieved the highest results in the
it may not have come to this.” Throughout her performance on state in the field of arts. This, she said, paved the way for her to
camera, Dube appears amused, heartfelt and forlorn, in what is a move to the capital, where she first enrolled in a history degree at
rare insertion of herself in her work. Shot over the course of one the University of Delhi (1975–79). Within a year she found herself
evening, Kissa-e-Noor Mohammed (Garam Hawa) (2004) is the immersed in a rich cultural scene, where she was part of a poetry
only film-work Dube has ever made, and reveals much about her circle with artist Jatin Das and writer Aman Nath, and this led her
instinctual and intellectual approach. The queering of subjectivities to decide to apply for further studies in art history.
we see on screen confronts nationalist and patriarchal rhetoric, Dube still remembers her interview with the eminent
simultaneously rupturing traditional notions of gender, class, painter and professor Gulam Mohammed Sheikh—who was
religion and sexuality. This is particularly significant given the film’s impressed with her reading of what were considered to be “poets
fraught context, coming in the aftermath of the 2002 communal in currency” at the time, such as Anna Akhmatova and Aimé
riots in Gujarat and amid the temporarily successful campaign in the Césaire—and offered her a place on the art criticism Master’s
2000s to amend the law (Section 377) to decriminalize homosexual course at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Here, from
activity in India. 1979 to 1982, she was part of an intimate and inspiring class of just
Dube’s film also connects to other seminal cultural works in five students taught by Sheikh. Ever the keen thinker, Dube chose
important ways. Its title echoes Garam Hawa (1973), a critically to extend her Master’s by a year, so that she could attend every
acclaimed film about Hindu-Muslim relations after Partition, lost theory course available, on subjects ranging from the European
loves and being split by two worlds, and its subtext of forbidden Renaissance to the Indian miniaturists. Tellingly, outside of class
desire and heartbreak resonates with Fire (1996), a film that became she was happiest among artists, observing them making work.
a key moment in galvanizing the LGBTQ movement in India On one of her trips back to Baroda after she had graduated, she
after protests by right-wing Hindu groups. Though these cross- encountered artist Alex Mathew, whom she would go on to briefly
Her concerns are not
reactionary but are rooted
in deep preoccupations with
syncretism and pluralism,
the fluidity of gender and
sexuality, pathos and eros.
(Previous spread)
SILENCE (BLOOD WEDDING), 1997, human
bones covered in red velvet, dimensions variable.
Courtesy the artist and Devi Art Foundation,
Gurugram.
(This page)
KISSA-E-NOOR MOHAMMED (GARAM
HAWA), 2004, stills from video with color
and sound: 15 min. Courtesy Nature Morte,
New Delhi.
marry. “I saw some of his wood carvings and I liked him because of
his sculpture,” she said.
Unbeknownst to her, this meeting with Mathew and several other
artists originally from Trivandrum studying at Baroda, including KP
Krishnakumar, NN Rimzon and KM Madhusudhanan, would spark
a pivotal moment in her own critical trajectory as well as within
Indian contemporary art. “We were reading Kafka and Dostoevsky,
discussing Marxism and egalitarianism, all in a very bohemian
milieu,” she said. “It was a wonderful world that had not been
opened up to me before.” By the time the group graduated in 1984,
Dube, who was lecturing at an architecture college in the nearby city
of Ahmedabad at the time, suggested that they apply to the newly
opened postgraduate studio Kanoria Centre for Arts there. This,
she explained, was to be one of the origins of the Indian Radical
Painters and Sculptors Association (IRPSA, or better known as the
Radicals). Yet their residency didn’t last long. There was a dispute
with management at the center, with Dube tasked as the group’s
spokesperson, and they collectively resigned.
Features artasiapacific.com 91
Beyond eros and death, this work also employs motifs of the medico-
erótico to reflect upon ills within the social corpus.
Dube’s pull toward the body and its politics might seem
inevitable in retrospect, as a feminist engagement with ideas of
embodiment allows for many social categories to be played with
and simultaneously destabilized. “Women have always been asking
whether something feels real or not, and this often comes to them
through the body,” she said. One of Dube’s most critically celebrated
works, Keywords (2005), acts as a triangulation of her core concepts,
connecting up language and art; art and the body; and the body
and language. Performed in front of a small audience at Khoj
International Artists’ Association in Delhi (and with her alter-ego
being that of a Muslim man) the artist took huge slabs of bloody beef
and painstakingly carved out phrases using her father’s scalpel. With
each letter taking up to 15 minutes to carve, she surgically sculpted
the words “Permanent Revolution,” “Avant-Garde,” “Sexual Love”
and “About Ethics,” over a few hours, in a bid to reveal their inherent
instability and mutability.
From initially writing about objects and ideas, she physically
turned words into objects and doubted their fixity of meaning.
(She would explore this abstraction of language further in
subsequent works such as Three Texts, 2009, in which she takes
white velvet and uses black ink to write three texts over one another,
leaving us to seek alternative and new meanings from them.) In
addition to this, Dube assumed multiple roles in Keywords, as an
agent of criticality, the daughter of a surgeon and her performative
alter-ego. In the book South Asian Feminisms (2012), scholar Ratna
Kapur talks about the agency of such mixed subjectivities as being
located “in the relationship of these identities and performances
with the subject’s interior disposition.” Aptly, Kapur cites the idea
of “revolution” as ultimately being “within the subject.” Dube
continued her exploration of performing many parts in A Touch of
Moon (2012), this time more overtly as a blind mendicant, dapper
dandy and social medium. Wearing silver contact lenses and a gray
suit, and holding out a silver begging bowl, she walked the streets—
stopping to connect with individuals who held her hands and saw
their reflections in her eyes. With these gestures, she sought
to privilege intimacy, embody ethical questions and overcome
cultural boundaries.
(This page)
everything, I hate being
THREE TEXTS, 2009, Ink on velvet, 401.32 x
518.16 cm. Courtesy Nature Morte, New Delhi.
trapped or fixed . . . I’m very
comfortable in my body but
I like exploring diferent modes.
It’s all about attitude, and
identification in terms
of eros.”
Features artasiapacific.com 93
VII. The Artist-Critic-Curator
This idea of remaining fluid, between genders and roles,
is extremely important to Dube. “With curating, working,
everything, I hate being trapped or fixed,” she told me. “I’m
very comfortable in my body but I like exploring different
modes. It’s all about attitude and identification in terms of
eros.” In many conversations and artworks, Dube circles back
to the notion of eros and the erotic as a source of revelation
and knowledge. For example, she cites the installation,
Erotics/Politics (2014) in which we see the word “politics”
written in elongated black capitals on the wall underneath the
word “erotics,” slanting as if it were its shadow, as one of her
most important works. “I’ve always thought that both these
things are motors or engines that drive this world. Eroticism
drives us as human beings, our individual subjectivity, while
politics drives us collectively. Both fascinate me as a duo in
which either erotics is dominant and politics is its shadow or
vice versa. Like wrestlers or conjoined twins.” The twinning of
these concepts also reminds us that pleasure, love and desire
are often left out of the discourse of feminist politics. Dube’s
foregrounding of feminism was rather organic, however, and
developed over time, as oddly enough the otherwise liberal
Radicals viewed feminism as an import. “How can you be
truly radical without feminism?” she asks now.
In her recent critique of the group, and the ideas that they
tried to live by, she said that some of them still ring true,
but not all of it stands the test of time. “As you get older you
realize these ideas are all great, but revolution is far away—
that’s the slow, painful part of growing up,” she explained.
“Now I see it as a moment, like when you light a firecracker;
an action or radical burst. It shakes up a few things . . .
‘Questions and Dialogue’ was essentially a set of propositions.
Some of these questions can still be addressed and are still
alive.” As Dube approaches her next critical challenge, as
curator of the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale,
she said that she will employ many of these concepts, from
the initial questions set by the Radicals in the 1980s, to her
early curatorial endeavors in the 1990s, within the exhibition.
For example, she told me there will be an open pavilion
at the Biennale where she hopes for “people and ideas to
float through, like wind flows through space,” in a very similar
way to her “Desire Garden” exhibition. Another aspect
where she returns to the notion of letting people, or the
subaltern, speak for themselves comes with the Biennale’s
focus on inclusivity—particularly Dalit, tribal, queer and
older woman artists. She reiterated her hope for “those
pushed to the margins of dominant narratives” to speak, “not
as victims, but as futurisms’ cunning and sentient sentinels”
in her curatorial note for the exhibition, incidentally
published a day after the historical judgment in which the
Supreme Court finally overturned Section 377 decriminalizing
homosexual activity.
Given India’s current political positions, the evocation
of Dube’s continuous and prescient themes, including the
politics of friendship, love, dialogue, social action and even
the ideas of solidarity and equality that Krishnakumar tried to
promote, remind us of what makes her work “ahistorical,” or
always relevant, as curator and long-standing friend Arshiya
Lokhandwala said when we spoke. Whether a focus on the
sensory, sociological or sensual, what we can expect is that
Dube will construct narratives via objects and allow forms
to communicate freely for themselves. “The Biennale will
be a reflection of her and the way she looks at the world,”
explained Lokhandwala. “She’s really committed to what art
means, reproduces and says. It will be intense, like her.”
*Visit our Digital Library at library.artasiapacific.com for more articles on Anita Dube.
Features artasiapacific.com 95
Y O U N G
& EMERGING
NEW DIGITALS
By Ysabelle Cheung, Julee Woo Jin Chung, Chloe Chu, Ophelia Lai and HG Masters
How deep into the unknowable can art take us? Using digital animation and virtual reality, Seoul-born artist Hayoun Kwon leads
viewers into physical locales that we cannot otherwise access. Her early works explored a site central to the collective imagination
of South Korean society that is nonetheless forbidden: the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two warring halves of Korea. Her
interest in portraying this bufer area started with the project Panmunjom (2013), when she was refused permission to record the Joint
Security Area where soldiers from the two sides face each other. Instead, she created an animation that initially simulates filming with
a thermal-imaging camera, appearing to show soldiers on their patrols, before becoming an absurdist choreography of marching that
blurs real and imagined, and one side and the other. Her interest in the DMZ carried over into 489 Years (2015–16), which was based
on the testimony of a South Korean soldier known only as Mr. Kim, who had conducted covert nighttime patrols inside the DMZ.
Rendering Kim’s descriptions in a CGI animation viewable on virtual-reality headsets, Kwon opens the barbed-wire gates of the DMZ
and guides viewers inside this forbidden zone that is paradoxically a wondrous nature preserve, and deadly military hunting ground
littered with mines.
In her latest work, Kwon uses virtual reality to access the visually rich but inaccessible space of memory. The animation The Bird
Lady (2017) is based on a story told to Kwon by her drawing professor (Daniel Nadaud) who recalled visiting an incredible-looking
Parisian apartment that was akin to stepping into another world, filled with antique cages and exotic birds in flight. The work unlocks
the doors of an interior that has surely disappeared in reality, but has survived, not only in Nadaud’s memory but also now for those
who experience Kwon’s work. HGM
M I A O
Y I N G
“Do we live in the real world, or is it all in our minds?” booms actor Morgan
Freeman in his low-pitched Southern drawl, a trademark baritone voice
stereotypically cast, in Hollywood productions, as the voice of god. His
existential monologue, from the popular science television show Through
the Wormhole, is asynchronously remixed with clips featuring hosts from the
Chinese live-streaming video platform Douyu, who perform acts ranging
from the mundane to the absurd, such as eating hotpot, singing karaoke,
roasting a rat, and selling Viagra on Taobao. In Post Commentary, Monetary
Likes and Morgan Freeman’s Advice on Reality (2016), and other new-media
works, Miao Ying reveals glimpses into Chinternet (Chinese Internet)
culture and aesthetics developing within the Great Firewall of China
(GFW)—an internet-censorship apparatus enforced by the government
to block foreign websites and regulate domestic internet content. For
example, “LAN Love Poem.gif” (2014–15) is a series of visual poems that
combines phrases found online with screenshots of banned websites,
as a way to visualize the desire and nostalgia for access. For example, in
Flowers All Fallen, Birds Far Gone (2015), the “birds” reference the social-
media platform Twitter, which was scrubbed from the Chinternet in 2009.
Mining expressions written by Chinese netizens, who employ the tactic of
homophones to circumvent the country’s censorship algorithms, the artist
documents a parallel reality where public opinion and social criticism exists
in the form of obscure, viral memes, images, GIFs and videos.
Miao’s ongoing online project Chinternet Plus (2016), which parodies
the Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang’s 2015 “Internet Plus” initiative
promoting technological progress, questions the party’s vigilant politispeak
that, at times, talks big and says little. The work humorously promotes
a “shanzhai (counterfeit) ideology” through a campaign that comprises
outlandish homemade GIFs and grandiose statements that mimic political
rhetoric. Through satire and wit, Miao dissects the social, cultural and
linguistic aspects of the Chinternet, and uncovers an underground public
sphere that is quick to find the holes in the ever-rising firewall. WJC
Features artasiapacific.com 99
J E S S
J O H N S O N
Psychonauts will tell you that the most potent hallucinogenic experiences are typically driven by an explosive,
fuzzy spiraling of visual efects. In Jess Johnson’s virtual reality (VR) animations and installations, these apparitions
are isolated, stripped from their kinship with drug use and recontextualized in a white-cube gallery setting.
Tessellating, grid-like patterns of squares, zigzags and rotating columns are backdrops for abstract, science-fiction
scenes, which are inspired by varied, era-spanning interests including traditional Pacific quilt-making, horror films,
video games and medieval architecture. In one work, a salmon-hued human form cleaves in two and then reforms
itself; in another, monstrous scaly worms fly through a pitch-black sky.
Johnson initially began exploring the alternate, speculative universe through two-dimensional drawing before
meeting animator Simon Ward, who, since 2014, has been a close collaborator. For their five-part VR installation
Terminus (2018), Johnson painstakingly hand-drew hundreds of cosmic-mythological scenes, which were then
animated by Ward—the act of digitization itself a commentary on warped translations across media—and
transposed into Oculus Rift headsets. When viewers put on the headsets, they activate winged creatures, a giant
ouroboros, wriggling tube-like figures winding out from pools of red liquid, and reveal New Age temples and
architecture that lie beneath the floor and above the ceiling of a space in which the work is installed. The time-
and space-traveling experience is presented as narrative-free, positioning viewers as protagonists of their own
journey, while at the same time forcing them to surrender their bodies and minds to a terrifying imagined past,
present and future. YC
A memory is often seen as an intangible, ephemeral thing that can be manipulated, invented or simply lost over time in the mysterious annals
of the mind. But what if we see human memories as data? And how would such data be given material form? These questions are at the heart of
new-media artist Refik Anadol’s “Melting Memories” (2018) series of “data paintings and sculptures” that explore the materiality of the human mind.
For this series, Anadol gathered data from electroencephalograms on the neural activity of people instructed to focus on long-term memories, and
then applied various algorithms to visualize the data as elevation models. The resulting CNC-machined sculptures transpose the brain’s electrical
activity into a physical terrain of cavernous hollows and winding ridges. These forms are animated on monumental screens, with the seething swirls
rising and receding to reveal the topography of the mind.
Anadol takes his investigations into human consciousness further with the installation Pladis: Data Universe (2018), using open-source NASA data
to create an immersive virtual environment aimed at altering viewers’ perceptions of self and physical space. Clustered constellations, beams of light
and incandescent numerals create kaleidoscopic moving patterns when projected into a darkened room with strategically placed mirrors, creating the
illusion of an unbounded space.
Whether through translating mental processes into objects or experimenting with the architectonics of virtual environments, Anadol illustrates the
endless versatility of the digital realm, and its ability to expand the frontiers of reality. OL
PETER ROBINSON
Untitled
AAP 37: “Shilpa Gupta,” by Johan Pijnappel
1996
Oil stick on crate, dimensions variable. Cassette recordings of people expressing joy, paintings made from clothes stained by menstrual blood, canvases
Courtesy the artist. blessed by holy men—these are some of the projects that Shilpa Gupta created in the 1990s and early 2000s. In
(This page)
an Essay on the Mumbai-based artist’s practice, curator Johan Pijnappel contextualized Gupta’s works as critical
takes on India’s new consumerist society, one in the throes of globalization and in thrall to the new fast lanes of
SHILPA GUPTA
www.sentiment-express.com
the worldwide web. Gupta’s technological savvy and humorous satire coalesce in the love-letter ordering service
2001 with deliveries by mermaids or hostesses, sentiment-express.com (2001), typically shown in the exhibition context
Installation and website, dimensions variable.
on a single desktop computer. Pijnappel also explored Gupta’s perspectives around the place of women in society,
Courtesy the artist.
noting that the sectarian violence of 1992–93 in Mumbai took place during the artist’s student days at the Sir JJ
School of Art, and cited Rummana Hussain and Nalini Malani as established artists whose works of the time made
powerful feminist statements. In one untitled installation work from 2001, Gupta fashioned together clothing that
women had used, at the artist’s request, to absorb menstrual blood. Wrestling with the flux of Indian society and
art-making itself, at the time Gupta embodied a post-conceptual, post-studio and post-national position as an
artist—even if those terms hadn’t come into being just yet. HGM
200
2
19
97
07 experiment that aimed to, metaphorically, alter the topography of a fixed landscape. The resulting photograph
To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain (1995), is by now an iconic work in Chinese contemporary art
history. However, the legal authority of the ten artists—which include Zhang Huan and Cang Xin—over ensuing
sales of the photograph, as contributor Chin-Chin Yap argues in her Essay, presents a conundrum. The image
cannot be logically divided into ten equal parts and thus, under the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of
China, the rights are jointly held. Using hypothetical scenarios, she illustrates real-life tensions in ownership and
intellectual property that form the mercurial terrain of Chinese contemporary art: “Duchamp might have relished
the unresolved case of the Mountain copyright as a true artistic coup: a conceptual gambit that, unwittingly but
brilliantly, subverted the very legal structures that society enacted for the autonomy of artists.” YC
210
2
AAP 78: “Kim Beom: Open the Most with the
Least,” by Han Keum Hyun
From the late 1980s to the early ’90s, South Korean multimedia artist Kim Beom was studying and living in New York.
His early paintings, produced during this period, were playful pokes at the artifices of the two-dimensional plane;
later, investigating how images are understood through their contexts, he began to deconstruct videos, such as in the
well-known Untitled (News) (2002), where he pieced together fictional 100-second stories from actual news clips. In
a Feature on Kim, independent curator and critic Han Keum Hyun traced the many ways in which the mischievous
artist toys with visual and textual semiotics. The installation Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools (2010)
features dozens of household items “watching” a video lecture by a male figure about how they need not aspire to
be more than simple devices. Here, Kim highlights how we have been taught to aix certain meanings and values to
objects through traditional education systems, prompting viewers to question—in Han’s words—“What is involved in
what we see? And after all is said and done: what is it that we actually see?” CC
SHI XINNING
At the Anonymous Mountain
2006
Oil on canvas, 179 x 359 cm.
Courtesy Beijing East-8 Strategic
Consulting Company.
KIM BEOM
Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools
2010
Installation with daily objects, miniature
wooden chairs, chalkboard, television
monitor and video: 21 min 8 sec.
Courtesy the artist.
(This page)
MELATI SURYODARMO
I Love You
2007
Photo documentation of performance at
eBent 07 Festival, Barcelona, 2007.
Photo by Angel Vilà.
Courtesy the artist.
GI V I NG VOIC E ,
FOR M I NG B ODY
A Conversation between Christina Végh,
Alexander Birchler and Teresa Hubbard
2 7
Features artasiapacific.com 111
In late August 2017, Katharina Amman, head of the Swiss Institute for research, propelled by our interest in narrative structures—how to unpack
Art Research (SIK-ISEA) and Christina Végh, director of the Kestner a story, how a story is told and who is telling it. In our collaboration, we are
Gesellschaft, Hanover, gathered in Zurich for a public dialogue with artists searching for a third place—collective authorship—a third voice.
Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler at Villa Bleuler, the headquarters of
SIK-ISEA. The event explored Hubbard and Birchler’s contribution to the Teresa Hubbard: It leads all the way back to when we were studying at
Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, cited by audiences and critics as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in Halifax, Canada.
one of the most meaningful, outstanding works in the Biennale. Continuing It was very early on in our collaboration—we were the first artists in North
the initial dialogue, the artists and Végh further explored ideas about America to be accepted into an MFA program as a collaborative team.
feminism, storytelling and re-framing history in the following conversation. Artistic collaboration is significantly more accepted now, but at the time, the
school took a bold stance to make an experiment with us. We were fortunate
Christina Végh: I would like to start with Flora (2017), the film that our attempts in finding a language and ground to work together were
installation you developed for the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice nurtured in an environment that embraced trial and error as a defining
Biennale, in which you provide a multilayered, kaleidoscopic view of artist responsibility for an artistic practice. The discourse at NSCAD, well known
Flora Mayo, previously only mentioned in passing in studies on her lover for their legacy in conceptual art and early video art, provided a generative,
Alberto Giacometti. Various narrative lines emanate from the work: the critical challenge to our interests in storytelling.
story of an American woman living in Paris, passionate about becoming
an artist; a romance between two young people; an exploration of the The dichotomy between absence and presence is crucial to Flora (and
relationship between a mother and son; a discussion on storytelling itself, other of your works) and also happened to be the point of departure for
and how our identities, experiences and opportunities in life are affected Philipp Kaiser’s curatorial approach to the Swiss Pavilion, in reference to
by the narratives that we tell or are told to us; and finally a critique on the fact that Giacometti had repeatedly rejected invitations to represent
art history and historiography in general, making it visible how women Switzerland at the Venice Biennale.
are often neglected in research. After all, you “simply” detected some
mistakes of former art historians and corrected them! AB: I think it really started when we began talking about ideas of absence.
Your work is providing new critical insights into the art historical Philipp [Kaiser] had closely followed our Sound Speed Marker trilogy (2009–
domain, but obviously you work from the standpoint of artists rather than 14), which is focused on ideas of absence and obsolescence and where we
art historians. How does your “artistic research” differ, and how do you experimented with hybrid forms of storytelling, combining documentary
view this term within your own practice? Can you elaborate on the issues and narrative forms. For the Venice Biennale, Philipp asked us to consider
connected to definitions of “research,” and describe the working modes the 1952 and Giacometti’s refusal to show in the Swiss Pavilion as a way to
you are interested in? think about absence. We spent a lot of time finding a point of departure,
researching the history of the Swiss Pavilion and Giacometti’s life. Eventually
Alexander Birchler: Rather than thinking of “correcting,” we think about we came across Mayo through a biography of Giacometti by James Lord.
“re-framing.” We start from a place of questions and these questions lead Mayo is but a brief mention in this biography, but she stuck with us.
us to other questions as part of the journey that’s fueled by our interest
in storytelling and strategic digression. We allow ourselves to get lost and TH: Lord’s entries about Mayo are sexist. His biography about Giacometti
we allow for a place of unknowing. We think of our work as action-based was very popular yet fiercely criticized by art historians and Giacometti
I presume most people who saw Flora at the Swiss Pavilion must have (This page)
been struck by the double projection. The orchestration of image and Exhibition view of “Women of Venice,” Swiss
Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, 2017. Photo by
sound lures the viewer into the knot of stories instantly. However, the Ugo Carmeni. Copyright Teresa Hubbard and
Alexander Birchler. Courtesy the artists and
longer I reflect on the work, the more I think the bust—standing in for the
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles
lost original made by Mayo of Giacometti—which was included as part of and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin.
your Venice Biennale presentation, can almost be seen as the culmination
point of your project. You commissioned the bust to be made after a
found photograph. What seems to be a portrait of a famous artist turns
out to be much more about the materialized reconstitution of another
artist, namely Mayo, who in her time was underestimated, dismissed as
a woman artist in both her professional and private context. You have
given her form and weight, literally in a bronze cast, as an artist and as
a person. Understanding the backdrop of the bust, it receives a ghostly
quality. How do you see this? Can you tell us about the procedure?
TH: When we first saw the reproduction of Mayo and Giacometti in Lord’s
book, all of our questions began to emerge. Who was the photographer?
Where was the negative? Where was the positive? Part of the trail of our
research eventually became embedded in the lengthy title of the work:
Bust 2017
Flora Mayo and Alberto Giacometti, with the bust she made of him, circa
1927. Photographer unknown. Original photograph belonging to Flora Mayo,
kept under her mattress, lost. Film negative missing. Reproduction from only
known duplicate print, archive of Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur. Original
clay bust portrait of Alberto Giacometti by Flora Mayo, lost. Reconstructed
and cast in brass.
TH: What was known about Mayo before we started this work was
very little: she is only a side note in Lord’s book. She has survived in art
history until now only because at the same time Mayo was working on
her sculpture of Giacometti, he was also sculpting her. His work survived:
Tête de femme (Flora Mayo) (1926) is in the collection of the Giacometti
Foundation, Paris. Mayo’s portrait bust of him—indeed, we do not know if it
was ever finished, as all we have is a blurry, poor-quality reproduction—has
not survived.
AB: If the woman depicted in the image is not Mayo, then the artwork
depicted in the image is also not made by Mayo. With Wiesinger’s
published pronouncement, Flora Mayo as an artist becomes efectively
erased a second time. We set about making contact with Wiesinger to
ask her more about her research and how she came to her conclusion.
Wiesinger generously gave us her time and notes. By retracing the steps of
her research, we discovered that there were some leaps in her conclusions.
We realized that in order to fully verify the identity of the woman in the
photograph next to Giacometti, we needed to find other photographs, other
traces of Mayo. In order to find more photographs, we needed to find her
family. This took us on an incredible journey searching for possible family
members, ultimately leading us to find Flora’s only surviving child, David
Mayo, a son no one knew existed.
TH: With the help of David and the numerous photographs he has of his
mother, we were able to correctly identify that the woman in the image
(This page)
Detail of TERESA HUBBARD / ALEXANDER
with Giacometti is indeed Flora Mayo.
BIRCHLER’s Bust, 2017
Flora Mayo and Alberto Giacometti, with the bust
she made of him, circa 1927. Photographer
AB: We discovered a most amazing error: that in another photograph
unknown. Original photograph belonging to Flora Wiesinger had used as part of her “proof” that Mayo was not the person in
Mayo, kept under her mattress, lost. Film
negative missing. Reproduction from only known the picture with Giacometti, Mayo is indeed present; however, she’s not the
duplicate print, archive of Fotostiftung woman in the foreground standing next to her mentor Antoine Bourdelle,
Schweiz, Winterthur. Original clay bust portrait of
Alberto Giacometti by Flora Mayo, lost. as Wiesinger asserted. Mayo is actually standing in the background, at the
Reconstructed and cast in brass. edge of the frame. That position—the figure at edge of the frame—says so
Framed silver gelatin print, 89 x 72cm;
brass sculpture with concrete base, 154 x 47.9 much about our agency and how we approach storytelling. What eventually
x 53.3 cm. turned out to be an art historical error by Wiesinger forced us to dig
Photo by Ugo Carmeni. Courtesy the artists and
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles deeper. Wiesinger’s finding was an immensely disruptive stumbling block,
and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin. yet it became an extraordinarily generative moment for us.
(Opposite page)
TERESA HUBBARD / ALEXANDER It is such an amazing outcome! The discovery of Mayo’s still-living son
BIRCHLER, House with Pool, 2004, high
definition single-channel film installation, David enabled you to focus on existential questions manifest in a mother-
20 min 39 sec., loop. Copyright Teresa Hubbard
son relationship, and what it meant to be a single parent in those days.
and Alexander Birchler. Courtesy Burger
Collection, Hong Kong. More importantly, you gained an important voice for Mayo. David’s
Ultimately, you helped David to see his mother in a new light. I think this The majority of protagonists in your film installations and photography
is one of the reasons why a lot of people were so deeply touched by your are women. Even when you were invited to play off the curatorial line
work; every viewer can identify with those existential aspects that you of the persistent absence of Alberto Giacometti, you ended up with a
built in by focusing on the mother-son relationship. The construction of woman, Flora Mayo, at the forefront. May I ask somewhat provocatively:
the self is complex; it may also depend on our understanding of where what makes women so interesting? On a very general level, art enables
we come from, of our parents, for instance. In other works, such as Single us to see or learn about the previously unknown, and historically, it is
Wide (2002), House with Pool (2004) or Eight (2001) and Eighteen (2013), indisputable that women have always been less visible and heard in the
the formation of subjectivity and identity is traced too, though I wouldn’t public sphere, which is connected automatically to power and influence. Is
see you as contemporary portraitists at all, but quite the opposite—as it these blind spots and how they possibly manifest themselves in female
artists describing the fluidity and uncertainty of things that seem stable figures that interests you?
and firm, deconstructing histories in which people are enmeshed.
In Flora, the same story is simultaneously told in different ways, across TH: As a feminist working for many years primarily in a lens-based
two channels. Flora’s story focuses on cinematographic style, whereas practice, I have always questioned coded functions of spectatorship and
David’s takes a strictly documentary approach. For the viewer, this leads to the blind spot. I am drawn to examine it like a moth to the flame. Why?
TH: Yes! Flora and Bust refer to the past but are an indictment of the
present: of how women and the work women produce is framed and valued.
126
Beijing
INDONESIA, SPIRIT
OF THE WORLD
GWANGJU SHOJI UEDA National Gallery of Indonesia
BIENNALE 2018 Three Shadows Photography Art Centre
Various locations
132
Reviews
London
133
New York
135
Minneapolis
THE PROGRESSIVE
FIVE HEADS (TAVAN REVOLUTION: MODERN
TOLGOI) – ART, ART FOR A NEW INDIA SIAH ARMAJANI
ANTHROPOLOGY AND Asia Society Walker Art Center
MONGOL FUTURISM
Greengrassi Gallery and Corvi-Mora
artasiapacific.com 119
GWANGJU
Various locations
TARRAWARRA BIENNIAL
FROM WILL TO FORM
KUNIÉ SUGIURA
ASPIRING EXPERIMENTS / NEW YORK IN 50 YEARS
Opposite page New York-based artist Kunié Sugiura’s first major she discovered the captivating effect of pairing
ISADORA VAUGHAN retrospective in her birth country, “Aspiring paintings with photographic images and pursued
Canker Sore Experiments / New York in 50 Years,” presented at making diptychs, as in Tree Trunk 2 (1971). The
2018
Ceramic, epoxy, synthetic polymer
the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, was a five- distorted tree bark, framed in a close-up shot,
sheet, steel, glass, silicon, crushed rock part, chronological showcase of her multimedia and the accompanying minimalist canvas,
and sand, dimensions variable. practice, beginning with her graduation work at interchangeably present reality and fiction,
Installation view at “From Will
to Form,” TarraWarra Biennial, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and abstraction and representation.
TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2018. ending with her latest digitally printed photo- Sugiura’s full return to photography came in
Photo by Andrew Curtis.
canvas series shot in Japan. the early 1980s in the form of photograms. Starting
Courtesy the artist and Station
Gallery, Melbourne. In 1963, cynical about what the future held for with flowers, she elaborated the photogram-
her as a woman in Japan, Sugiura decided to move making process—involving placing objects
This page
from Tokyo, where she was a physics student, over surfaces coated in photo emulsion, which
KUNIÉ SUGIURA to study photography in Chicago. There, taking are then exposed to light—to include living
Hoppings A Positive
1996 the advice of her tutor, Sugiura initially pursued creatures from her neighborhood. The Kitten
Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 cm. photojournalism. Immediately realizing that was Papers (1992), for example, features a variety
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo/New York.
not for her, she retreated to her studio, where she of marks as a result. Ephemerality, playfulness
aimed to push the possibilities of the photographic and a lack of total control are important factors
medium. Her spirit of innovation was evident in in Sugiura’s photograms, and the instantaneous
her graduation series “Cko” (1966–67), displayed decision-making in her process freed her from the
in the first section of the retrospective. The heaviness of painting—a comparatively time-
voyeuristic, surreal images featuring nudes consuming mode of creation. Sugiura continued
distorted by strange perspectives, interiors of to work with the photogram format. One of the
rooms and abstract patterns, were manipulated latest examples included in the show was the
chemically via different photographic processing life-size “Artists and Scientists” (1999– ) portrait
and printing techniques, and evoke feelings series in the fourth section. From fellow New York
of suffocation and alienation, as reinforced by artists Ushio Shinohara and Jasper Johns to the
the series’ title, which means solitude. “Cko” Nobel Prize-winning scientist James D. Watson,
was a fitting point to begin the exhibition as it the works mark Sugiura’s foray into depicting
became clear that isolation as well as alchemical people in carefully crafted moments, as opposed
experimentation are palpable even in Sugiura’s to animals and aleatoric instances. Despite the
most recent works. collaborative process between Sugiura and her
The show’s second section was centered around sitters, however, the images from these one-on-
the decade after Sugiura’s relocation to New York one sessions emphasize individuality rather than
in 1967. During this time, Sugiura continued to unity; and a sense of isolation, too, is apparent.
work in a solitary environment. Playing with Sugiura’s photograms straddle the boundary
the application of photo emulsions on various between photography and painting. They are
materials, where monochrome images could created with photographic techniques, yet all the
then be exposed, Sugiura eventually settled with end products are unique. The three works drawn
canvas as the ground of her works. For a brief from her “DG Photocanvas” series (2009– ), which
period thereafter, she worked exclusively on concluded the exhibition, further complicated
abstract paintings. It was through an accident that notions of originality and reproducibility as
pertaining to photography and painting by
involving film, digital scanning and pigment
printing on canvas. The three abstract, close-up
images of rocky mountains in Japan were printed
back in her New York studio. In this way, Sugiura
probes the limitations of photography, as well as
her conflicting desires to be alone and connected,
in this case to her homeland, which she left
behind half a century ago.
As evidenced in the exhibition, the uniqueness
of Sugiura’s practice lies in the very coexistence of
seemingly opposing elements: boundary-breaking
explorations supported by the enclosure of a
space; science and everyday life; and treasuring
solitude while enjoying collaboration.
MAKI NISHIDA
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Kunié Sugiura.
BUSAN BIENNALE
DIVIDED WE STAND
History is a recurring nightmare. Renewed absurdly dramatic, like the sculpture of a gigantic,
tensions between NATO allies and Russia and dead black crow by Laura Lima and Zé Carlos
China have plunged the world into a second Garcia, both at the Biennale’s second venue, the
Cold War. It was fitting then that the 2018 Busan former Bank of Korea building.
Biennale, hosted in the only corner of the Korean Elsewhere at the Bank of Korea, artists delved
peninsula not captured by the communist forces into the sinister, occult and weird—and possibly
during the Korean War (1950–53), examined queer—facets of Cold War-era culture. Im
the postwar legacy of divisions, from ill-fated Youngzoo’s essayistic video Guest Star (2018)
partitions made in the process of decolonization looked at historical misunderstandings, from the
to the enduring material and cultural borders message sent by the United States to the Soviet
cleaved between the first, second and third worlds. Union in 1963 to test a new joint emergency
Organized by artistic director Cristina Ricupero hotline that prompted the Kremlin to hire
and curator Jörg Heiser, with Gahee Park serving cryptographers to decipher its meaning, to a
as guest curator for projects by younger artists lip-reader trying to decode footage of leaders’
from Asia, “Divided We Stand” featured 66 artists conversations at the recent North-South Korean
and collectives from 34 countries still affected by summit in April 2018. Oscar Chan Yik Long’s
divisions and conflicts in the wake of the Second maximalist wall paintings in ink and hanging
World War. banners of crazed-looking animals and skeletons
The Biennale’s strength and weakness was grafted Chinese mythology into the Christian
its clarity. From the outset at the Museum of apocalypse narrative. Musician Minwhee Lee
Contemporary Art Busan, there was a well-defined and artist Yun Choi’s collaborative six-part
historical perspective. Chin Cheng-Te’s collection music-video series Viral Lingua (2018) delved
of historical documents and press clippings, into the recurrence of Cold War trauma in South
titled American Pie (2016), relays Taiwan’s Cold Korean society through imagery such as a crying
War experience of military dictatorship and woman with eyes painted like sunsets singing
the deleterious influence of American military about leaving her country behind. The curators
culture while Chantal Akerman’s film D’Est concluded the Biennale on a dystopic note with
(From the East) (1993) portrays life in Poland Phil Collins’s room-sized installation Delete
and Russia just after the Soviet Union’s collapse Beach (2016), comprising mounds of sand, oil
through long, sobering takes. In a similar vein, drums, tires, bubbling pits of black liquid and
Henrike Naumann’s immersive installation of a screen playing an anime about a schoolgirl
cheap 1980s postmodern furniture was dotted who joins an anti-capitalist resistance group
with videos detailing the disaffected youth in a carbon-less future society. The collective
culture, following the dissolution of the German indifference of the world’s superpowers to the
Democratic Republic (East Germany), which in planet’s impending ecological catastrophe
turn gave rise to the economically disadvantaged suggests that, on this point, “united we fall.”
region’s current budding neofascism. A forceful HG MASTERS
and dramatic memorial to the ghosts of history,
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Minouk Lim’s installation On Air (2017) resembles on the Busan Biennale.
a television studio populated by ghoulish
mannequins and taxidermy animals, with
camera cranes made from tree branches and old
car headlights. In an adjacent room, Lim’s new
video and blacked-out wall of signs, It’s a Name
I Gave Myself (2018), draws from the 1983 Korean
television show Finding Dispersed Families, in
which people wore signs around their necks with
question marks standing in for the biographical
information erased by the war.
Though the Biennale was thematically coherent
and geographically comprehensive, covering the
partitions of Ireland, Palestine and Punjab, as well
as the division of Sudan, at times the thematic
focus on the Cold War felt overelaborated.
There were a handful of works that were eye-roll
inducing in their overtness, such as Dora Longo
Bahia’s two paintings in reds and oranges of
abandoned-looking amusement parks scribbled
with the names “Fukushima” and “Chernobyl,” or
CHENG RAN
THE LAMENT: MOUNTAIN GHOST
SHOJI UEDA
CAO FEI
A HOLLOW IN A WORLD TOO FULL
Opposite page In a dank, moss-covered concrete room, a Guan and weeps while watching Kwan-the-artist’s own
SHOJI UEDA Yu statue sat in webs of dust in a shrine. Moody video piece.) Another reading of the film, with its
Papa, Mama and Children twangs of 1980s Cantopop played; mangoes spilled profuse footage of Tai Kwun’s grounds, is as an
1949
Gelatin silver print, 20 x 28 cm.
out of a basket onto the floor; and a portrait of advertisement, thinly veiled as a documentary, on
Courtesy Shoji Ueda Oice and Three Queen Elizabeth II hung crookedly over a desk the complex’s history as a colonial police station,
Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing. littered with papers detailing the case of an court and jail.
This page imprisoned poet. This scene, like many others Curated by Ullens Center for Contemporary
in the works Cao Fei has produced since the Art director Philip Tinari in association with Tai
CAO FEI
Rumba mid-1990s, was wholly constructed: the mold Kwun’s Xue Tan, the three-floor exhibition framed
2015–18 was artificial, the mangoes a hard plastic and older installations and videos that demonstrated
Wooden stage and cleaning
robots, dimensions variable.
the prisoner a fictional character in a new film, Cao Fei’s practice of orchestrating mini universes,
Installation view of “A Hollow in a World Too Full” Prison Architect (2018), commissioned for “A with film stills and installations of props related
at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2018–19. Hollow in a World Too Full,” the artist’s first solo to Prison Architect (2018), as a way to investigate
Courtesy Tai Kwun.
institutional exhibition in Asia, housed at Tai themes of captivity and freedom. On the first floor
Kwun Contemporary. was the installation Rumba (2015–18), comprising
Shown on the exhibition’s top floor, the new several robotic, autonomous cleaning devices that
film is an hour-long, magical-realist tale that circulate endlessly on several platform “islands,”
follows two characters: a modern-day architect, evoking the conditions of a city such as Hong
played by actress Valerie Chow, of Chungking Kong, or a jail. This obvious metaphor was further
Express (1994) fame—tasked with converting pronounced through a large color photograph
an art center into a correctional facility—and pinned up nearby showing an actual prison cell
an incarcerated poet in the 1960s, sensitively from Tai Kwun. Similarly, La Town (2014), a tale
brought to life on screen by the Hong Kong artist of ex-lovers fixating on their domestic trials in a
Kwan Sheung Chi. The two characters converse now-decimated country (portrayed with miniature
across time and eventually meet after Chow, figurines), investigates elements of liberation in
tortured by conflicting thoughts on the criminal- the purging of memory and the past. The second
justice system, releases Kwan and fellow inmates floor featured installations of Cao Fei’s lauded
from confinement. Although the premise of the machinima works, i.Mirror and RMB City: A
film—ultimately an inverse of Tai Kwun’s own Second Life City Planning (both 2007), representing
history—is intriguing, its plot is mostly powered her interests in entrapment or radical escapism via
by saccharine, pseudo-philosophical ruminating virtual, digital worlds.
(“So what kind of prison do you want to live in?” Despite this considered curation, the exhibition
“How [sic] does your ideal prison look like?”) didn’t offer visitors any orientation or guiding
with inclusions of quotes by Albert Camus, clips information, or the important disclaimer that
of past riots in Hong Kong and even sly in-jokes it was vital to view Prison Architect first, before
about contemporary art. (In one scene, Kwan-as- attempting to understand the new installations
poet visits “Dismantling the Scaffold,” a group and photographs. For example, the plastic green
show mounted at Tai Kwun earlier in the year, mangoes hanging in the building’s circular
staircase remained abstract unless one sat through
the entire film, which revealed that, for the artist,
the fruit symbolizes freedom.
Ultimately, the film and exhibition did little to
reveal a progression in Cao Fei’s practice. If the
themes of captivity and freedom were already
prevalent in older works such as i.Mirror and
La Town, what purpose was there to produce
this film, except to make rampant use of, and to
promote, Tai Kwun’s newly restored grounds? The
show’s final work, Coming Soon: Hong Kong (2018),
featured two swinging performers attempting
to beat their feet against vertically installed
drum sets, signaling, perhaps, the artist’s struggle,
and that there is something more substantial
still to come.
YSABELLE CHEUNG
FX HARSONO
REMINISCENCE
FX Harsono’s solo exhibition, “Reminiscence,” Behind the partition was another of Harsono’s
presented by Singapore’s Sullivan + Strumpf, was well-known installations, Memory of the
focused on the artist’s investigation of the genocide Survivor (2016), a living room featuring a
of ethnic Chinese-Indonesians in Java, Indonesia, wheelchair and period furniture with white,
from 1947 to ’49. Widely recognized for his prolific three-dimensional models of tombstones placed
practice, which addresses the plight of minorities in various vintage cabinets and tables, as well as
and the socially underprivileged, particularly in the found photographs hanging on the walls. An old
context of Indonesia’s history of political turmoil, Dutch radio sat below these photographs, playing
the show reaffirmed Harsono’s ability to powerfully broadcasts related to Indonesian political history.
convey narratives of pain and upheaval. The living room setting effectively humanized the
It may be hard to grasp the heart of violent period of troubling history—it is as if genocide
conflicts from the plethora of media that surrounds inhabits what could be a viewer’s home. Yet, there
us today, but it was nearly impossible to avoid the is no anger or bitterness in the work, just quiet
sense of personal loss expressed in Harsono’s acknowledgment of facts and faces.
iconic installation The Spirit of Light (2016). Harsono’s artist statement reinforces this
A single tombstone, bearing a handful of names, position: “I am not angry . . . It has never been
replicates a marked gravesite and commemorates my intention to place blame with anyone. Rather
the victims—the actual number of which remains this is a call to everyone to accept the truth of
uncertain—murdered during the two-year history, however wretched it is, for a stronger
genocide in Java. The concrete slab basks nation.” Genocide is far more relevant today
in a blood-red light, cast by a chandelier than we care to admit. There are quite a number
suspended above it, and is one example of of us, even among the millennial generation,
how Harsono draws attention to the presence who have had our connections to our lands
of people subsumed by the dark shadow of of origin—where our great-grandparents or
historical narratives. grandparents came from—suppressed or erased
Beside the arresting installation was Harsono’s because of political upheavals and displacement.
new charcoal drawing, titled Memorandum Harsono’s body of work in “Reminiscence” dares
of Inhumane Act No. 3 (2017), inspired by to acknowledge this.
documentary photographs taken by the artist’s In a time when global powers continue to
father in the 1950s that depict exhumations of commit or turn blind eyes to past and present
known mass-graves. Closer inspection reveals acts of violence against minorities in favor of
that the charcoal portrait of Chinese-Indonesian political control and economic growth, examining
people holding human skulls is superimposed on the pains of those who have been marginalized,
copies of an official memorandum outlining the without inciting retaliation, is all the more
acts of violence perpetrated by Indonesian forces relevant and necessary.
on the country’s Chinese population before and REENA DEVI
after Dutch Police intervention, which Harsono
uncovered during his research at the National
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Archives of the Netherlands. The overlaying of on FX Harsono.
text and image amplifies the horrors of lives lost,
while bringing together personal and authoritative
accounts of the events.
Nearby, and playing on a monitor, was the
new video Taking Nothing But Pictures (2018),
centered on a female genocide survivor praying
to the dead. On a partition wall across from the
screen, the same female figure appeared in The
Survivor Story (2016), a series of five paper works,
including a black-and-white still from the video
with “My name Tjoa Er Ries” and “The Survivor
Story” scrawled beneath the subject’s image.
Among the other components were archival
government documents, a black-and-white photo
of a ceremony with people holding flags, and
a list of people’s names possibly from a grave
marker, embossed in red. The artist unmistakably
communicates history and the weight of his past,
which he shares with his community, bound by
ties of blood and loss.
TIES OF HISTORY
Although “Indonesia, Spirit of the World,” curated in independence-era artwork, as well as from
by Amir Sidharta and Watie Moerany, coincided dominant depictions of exoticized bodies in
with the Jakarta Palembang 2018 Asian Games, modern and contemporary artworks about
it was far from a mere diplomatic exercise. In Indonesia—although such archetypal imagery
its selection of artworks from the collection of was still present in the collection. In one corner of
Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, the show the room, independent women depicted by Djaya
offered a rare view of paintings and sculptures and Batara Lubis stand looking out, challenging a
created and collected from the 1930s to the 1960s. problematic 1961 Basoeki Abdullah painting hung
These works express a collective optimism in on the opposite wall, which illustrates the capture
Indonesia at the time and the forging of a new of the beautiful, mythological Sinta.
identity fueled by independence and rising As reflected in his collection of international
internationalism. Here, the theme of colonization artists, Sukarno had a worldview of non-aligned
was boldly explored through images of resistance, inclusivity and solidarity with the global south.
revealing a shared, global vision of unity aided by To illustrate the former president’s forward-
intercountry friendship and artistic exchange—a thinking vision, curators paired a 1964 painting
far cry from the tightening of borders and of a Balinese dancer dressed in Japanese-inspired
racialization that we are seeing today. block colors, by Shinsui Ito, with Abdullah’s
The cleverly curated exhibition showcased how portrait of Sukarno’s Japanese wife, Ratna Sari
Sukarno’s collection dovetailed with his vision for Dewi, in an Indian sari. While the exhibition
an independent Indonesia. The painting Shooting carried many excellent individual pieces, its
an Arrow (1944) by Hendrik Ngantung, a political true strength was in forming a portrait of an
affiliate of Sukarno and the former governor extraordinary statesman who combined a bold
of Jakarta, depicts an archer aiming an arrow, national vision with a strong cultural agenda.
with ghostly figures in the background alluding In the spirit of the Asian Games, it was a timely
to Javanese shadow puppetry. Next to this was reflection on how Indonesia progressed from
archival footage of the president Sukarno its colonial past, how it was primed as an
meeting with his cabinet in front of the painting, international world player, and most importantly,
revealing the artwork’s role as witness to the raised questions of the future: Where are we now?
proclamation of independence. Sukarno clearly Whose side are we on? Who do we want to win?
had a penchant for figures in motion, emphasizing VERA MEY
a celebration of the victorious body—perhaps as a
metaphor for the strength of the nation. Greeting
visitors at the entrance to the exhibition was
The Harpooner (1959) by Argentine artist Roberto
Juan Capurro, a bronze, not-quite-life-size
sculpture of a male figure poised to strike with
a spear, which the president had commissioned
after seeing the original while on an official visit
to Latin America. A small archival section also
revealed Sukarno’s favorite sculptor as Edhi
Sunarso, responsible for many of the public
and grand monuments around Jakarta, such as
the Tugu Pancoran and the Selamat Datang, or
“welcome” monument, which features two figures
with their arms thrown up to the sky in a gesture
of openness.
The section “A Nation’s Struggle United
in Diversity,” which focused on portraiture,
presented a nostalgic look at a time that cultivated
national heroes such as the 19th-century anti-
colonial leader Harijadi Sumadidjaja. Within this
selection was a smaller group of works dedicated to
local figures. These included portraits of modern
women, such as in Otto Djaya’s Rochani (1949),
where the figures, shrouded in decorative elements
of dress, stare directly at the viewer, rejecting
instrumentalization or objectification. Here, the
works presented an intelligent diversion from the
visual trope of male bodies in battle, common
SUBCONTRACTED NATIONS
TADANORI YOKOO
DEATH AND DREAMS
Best known for his psychedelic collages The other “Mystery Woman” paintings
channeling 1960s pop culture, Japanese artist resemble film-noir posters, pairing femmes fatales
and graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo has with men who don’t appear quite human. In
dedicated himself to a new medium since Cavern of Love (2018), the male lover has a sickly,
renouncing commercial work in the 1980s. green complexion. Meanwhile, a gaping black
The pieces the octogenarian produces in his hole, evoking the damage left by an object that had
now preferred medium of painting present been thrown through a glass window, mars the
a noticeable departure from his signature, woman’s head. The villain in Looted Lady (2018)
iconoclastic posters. At the same time, he is even more ghoulish in form. Faceless with two
continues to play with highly stylized, vintage craters where eyes should be, he wraps one arm
imagery. Yokoo’s solo exhibition “Death and around a smiling, blonde woman, as the other
Dreams” at Albertz Benda gallery in New York points a gun at her disembodied torso. Indeed,
focused on his portraits of women drawn from Yokoo’s latest series gives off the feeling of a
three different series, beginning with more morbid reverie from which one struggles to
impressionistic works and concluding with the awake. A skull hovering over a woman’s face in
surreal. The female subject loosely tied together the exhibition’s titular work Death and Dreams
the otherwise disparate paintings in oil, acrylic (Part I) (2017) invokes an art historical trope that
and watercolor, the majority of which were shown depicts women with the skeletal figure of death.
for the first time outside of Japan. By not only deploying the male gaze but
A lone, untitled oil painting (c. 1980) of also casting death as something nostalgic,
a woman with her naked back turned to the “Mystery Woman” revels in the seductive nature
viewer—displaying a head of glossy chestnut hair of contemplating mortality. The presence of a
cascading around her shoulders—introduced grim reaper indirectly lingers in Black, Red,
Yokoo’s “Back of Head” series (1980), which was Blue (2017), which shows a book with the word
hanging in uniform rows on a nearby wall. The “Faust” on the cover imposed over the woman’s
tidy arrangement of the 21 watercolors served face. The artist frequently referenced the afterlife
to emphasize the interchangeability of the in his early graphic design, such as in a 1970
subjects. Though their hair color and texture may photo project inspired by Dante Alighieri’s The
vary, and the palette ranges from sunny yellow Divine Comedy and later through painting ravaged
to rosy pinks to moody blues, the women’s pose landscapes, reminiscent of the underworld, in
never alters. The series can be regarded as a his “Red” series, begun in 1996. “Death and
study of sorts, offering a glimpse of Yokoo’s then Dreams” suggested that Yokoo is not yet done
budding practice on paper and eventually canvas. with this ever-present theme, or with his devotion
Yokoo further explored the feminine figure to painting.
in his three-portrait series “The Falling Woman” MIMI WONG
(2010). Again, the subjects’ visage remains hidden
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here under either a blue veil or a short, wavy on Tadanori Yokoo.
blonde bob. Contrasting with their protectively
covered faces, the women unabashedly pull open
the top of their blouse, baring their breasts. An
enigmatic quality pervades the resulting images.
A disquieting atmosphere similarly comes
through in the “Mystery Woman” series (2017–18),
in which Yokoo layers surreal elements onto his
portraiture. Here, he partially obscures glamorous
women’s faces, except for their painted red lips,
with quotidian objects, as in Women with Toilet
Paper (2017) and Woman with Cabbage (2017).
The perturbing yet sensual depictions recall
the notorious nudes of French painter Francis
Picabia, who drew from 1930s erotic magazines.
Predominantly Western-styled and white, the
models featured in Yokoo’s compositions are
reminiscent of vintage advertisements from the
1930s and ’40s. He has attributed his penchant
for kitsch to growing up with an adoptive father
who worked as a kimono-fabric wholesaler and
admiring the fabric labels that blended Western
and Japanese motifs.
SIAH ARMAJANI
FOLLOW THIS LINE
TOMOO GOKITA
If the face is the mirror of the mind and the eyes is the astute sensibility of Gokita—though the TOMOO GOKITA
Replicant J.B.
the window to the soul, what happens when visual information is incomplete, off-kilter or
2018
visages are obscured? Displayed at Blum & Poe in discomfiting, the viewing experience is deeply Acrylic gouache on canvas, 130.2 x 130.2 x 2.5 cm.
Los Angeles, Tokyo-based artist Tomoo Gokita’s satisfying due to the richness and fluidity of his Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe,
Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo.
latest body of work comprises single, double and painted surface.
group portraits. However, the information central Often, Gokita’s compositions appear as if they
to a typical portrait—the subject’s likeness—is are family snapshots that have been burned in a
made to be bizarre, jarring or missing completely. fire or otherwise compromised. House of Terror
As such, meanings in the black-and-white features a standing man and a seated couple in
paintings are diffuse and dependent on the formal wear against a backdrop that suggests a
viewer—the blobs and smears covering the faces domestic space. Their stoic stance and the interior
appear like Rorschach inkblots. Replicant J.B. (all details of the floor and chairs are reminiscent of
works 2018), for example, takes a jovial image of David Hockney’s double portraits of the late
deceased African-American musical icon James 1960s and early ’70s, except that no faces are
Brown and turns it into something ghastly. Where depicted and one of the woman’s hands is
his face should be is a cavity, as if someone ripped monstrously disfigured. Living Together pictures
off his skin, revealing his nasal skeleton and teeth. a possibly vacationing couple posing for a photo
Is the death mask in Replicant J.B. perhaps a in their swimwear. We see the woman’s smile but
comment on the flamboyant performer’s brushes the rest of her face is smeared away. In place of the
with the law, including charges for drugs, domestic man’s face is an outline of a horseshoe, the center
violence and two police chases? Pop-culture of which looks as if it leads to a deep black hole
references are also found in Minor Apprehension, of nothingness.
a painting of Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Gokita has been quoted as saying that he
Ali in an embrace. Instead of the bombshell’s doesn’t intend for his paintings to mean anything.
beauty, however, we see a caricatured, exaggerated However, it was apparent in this exhibition that,
expression as she glances sideways at her male purposefully or not, his canvases require us to
companion, who has tiny close-set cartoon eyes. interrogate the images and stories we surround
It is pertinent to consider not only the meanings ourselves with, from photographs to paintings,
of these images to the individual psyche, but magazines and social-media posts. Without
also their cultural significance depending on the faces, we are forced to attempt to look beyond
country in which they are viewed. Considering the surface.
current racial tensions in the United States, these JENNIFER S. LI
images were layered with contention in the Los
*Visit our Digital Library at library.artasiapacific.com for more articles
Angeles gallery. on Tomoo Gokita.
Music has always been a big influence on
Gokita, and several of the pieces are named after
song titles, though the phrases do less to explicate
than to confuse. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,
the title of a whimsically melancholic Bing
Crosby tune, shows a group of men and women
drinking and socializing. The central woman is
the only person whose face is fully visible, and
yet her expression is inscrutable. A couple of the
images appear to stem from Gokita’s fondness for
1960s and ’70s soft-core pornography magazines
(his father did advertising for Playboy and as a
young boy Gokita frequently flipped through the
magazine’s pages in the family’s living room).
Among them is a painting of a seated woman
draped in a towel, named Bongo Nyah, Jamaican
Creole slang for “gangster Rastafarian” and the
title of a song covered by several reggae artists.
Her face and part of the backdrop are melting
away, as if burned or waterlogged. Bemsha Swing,
also a jazz standard by Thelonious Monk and
Denzil Best, shows a fleshy woman reclining
seductively. Where her right hand should be
is a fluid swath of white paint, contrasting
with the deep black of the background. This
The two provocateurs who populate Slavs and Their installations, lectures and performances,
Tatars keep a low profile. Their real names don’t divided into “cycles,” are documented in excellent
appear in their works or their writings, and as proper publications, whose digital versions are free to
philosopher-nomads they don’t advertise where they’re download. The writing is clear, elegant and often
based in. They describe themselves as a “faction of humorous; didactic, yet academic-lite and scintillating,
polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of transporting the reader to the faraway worlds they
the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of inhabit. In fact, the key to understanding their practice
China known as Eurasia.” This vast canvas gives them lies in these texts, which contain the essence of their
ample space to roam; but rather than flailing with all- works. Reading the cogent texts alone is also a rare
encompassing brushstrokes—they confess that they pleasure in a world of mega-syllabic art writing. It’s
“are not painters, but polemicists”—they build complex, refreshing to see language, linguistics and especially
even absurd, structures from the minutiae of puns, both verbal and visual, raised to the realm of art.
history, language, geography, ethnicity and the everyday. By comparison, many of the ready-mades, plaques,
In so doing, they ride the rails of two major worlds of banners and maps they display seem almost like banal
thought and action that have galvanized conflict in the afterthoughts, requiring little to no craftsmanship.
past and present centuries: Islam and communism. The book Slavs and Tatars: Mouth to Mouth is a
Perhaps not coincidentally, they emerged on the art retrospective compilation of highlights, in the form of
scene in 2006, around the time of Gary Shteyngart’s texts and on-site photographs, from the duo’s eight
post-Soviet satirical novel Absurdistan and Sacha Baron multimedia cycles completed between 2006 and
Cohen’s mockumentary film on Kazakhstan, Borat. 2017. (A subsequent cycle, “Wripped Scripped,” was
A C
BEIJING-LUCERNE 798 Art District, No. 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang
District, Beijing 100015
104 Caochangdi Cun, Cui Gezhuang Xiang, » www.pacegallery.com
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 » [email protected]
» galerieursmeile.com » (tel)+86.10.5978.9781
» [email protected] » (fax)+86.10.5978.9781 - 818
» (tel)+86.10.6433.3393 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat)
» (fax)+86.10.6433.0203 Pace Beijing was founded in 2008, becoming the first
» 11am–6.30pm (Tues–Sun) major Manhattan art gallery to open in Beijing.
Ai Weiwei, Chen Hui, Cheng Ran, Wim Delvoye, Andreas
Golder, Hu Qingyan, L/B, Li Dafang, Li Gang, Li Zhanyang,
Liu Ding, Meng Huang, Qiu Shihua, Christian Schoeler,
Shan Fan, Shao Fan, Anatoly Shuravlev, Julia Steiner, Not
Vital, Wang Xingwei, Xia Xiaowan, Xie Nanxing, Yan Xing.
4A CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARARIO GALLERY SHANGHAI GALLERIA CONTINUA PÉKIN FINE ARTS
ASIAN ART 1F, No. 2879 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District, Dashanzi, 798 Art District No. 8503, 2 Jiuxianqiao
No. 241 Cao Changdi Village, Cui Gezhuang Xiang,
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015
181–187 Hay Street, Haymarket, NSW 2000 Shanghai Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 » www.pekinfinearts.com
» www.4a.com.au » [email protected] » galleriacontinua.com » info@pekinfinearts.com
» [email protected] » (tel)+86.21.5424.9220 » [email protected] » (tel)+86.10.5127.3220
» (tel)+61.02.9212.0380 » 10am–7pm (Tues–Sun) » (tel)+86.10.5978.9505 » (fax)+86.10.5127.3223
» (fax)+61.02.9281.0873 » (fax)+86.10.6436.4464 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Fri), 11am–6pm (Sat)
» 11am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » 11am–6pm (Tues–Sun) » Sun and Mon by appointment only
» Closed on Public Holidays Pékin Fine Arts is a Beijing-based contemporary art gallery
We are a non-profit organisation. Our program of exhibitions, representing international artists, focusing primarily on
talks and lectures is dedicated to the contemporary art of the artists from China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong
Asia-Pacific and Australian and Asian cultural dialogue. and Taiwan.
ART
contemporary art in mainland China and home to the
» 1pm–5pm (Sat) Shanghai Biennale.
111
» (tel)+61.732.525.750 » [email protected]
» (fax)+61.732.525.072 » (tel)+86.10.5762.6373
» 12pm–6pm (Tues, Wed, Fri and Sat) » (fax)+86.10.5762.6372
» 12pm–8pm (Thurs) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
Since its establishment in 1975, the Institute of Modern Art Springs Center of Art is located inside Factory 798, Beijing’s
has been a leading venue for the production, presentation, most vibrant art district. The Center has a spectacular
and circulation of art in Australia. Bauhaus-style showroom measuring 2,300 square meters.
B F
261 Caochangdi Airport Service Road, Red No. 1-B1, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District,
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 Beijing 100015
» artmia.net » www.inkstudio.com.cn
» [email protected] » [email protected]
» (tel)+86.8457.4550 » (tel)+86.10.5127.3143
» (fax)+86.8457.3782 » (fax)+86.10.5127.3143
» 9.30am to 6pm (Tues-Sun) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
» Closed on Mondays and Public Holidays Ink Studio is a Beijing-based gallery and experimental art
space devoted to documenting and responding to new and
exciting developments in the media of ink painting currently
emanating from China.
AXEL VERVOORDT GALLERY BEIJING COMMUNE MAGICIAN SPACE GALERIE EMMANUEL PERROTIN
Vlaeykensgang – Oude Koornmarkt 16 Art Zone, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, 798 East Road, 798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, 76 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris
2000 Antwerp Beijing 100015 Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 10 Impasse Saint Claude, 75003 Paris
» www.axelvervoordtgallery.com » www.beijingcommune.com » www.magician-space.com » galerieperrotin.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected]
» (tel)+32.477.88.80.60 » (tel)+86.10.8456.2862 » (tel)+86.10.5840.5117 » (tel)+33.1.4216.7979
» 2pm–6pm (Wed–Sat) or by appointment » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » (fax)+86.10.5978.9635 » (fax)+33.1.4216.7974
From its inception in 2011 the gallery has been a strong Founded in 2004, where the most influential figures » 10.30am–6.30pm (Tues–Sun) » 11am–7pm (Tues–Sat)
supporter of Zero and Gutai art. Our vision has gradually in the Chinese art scene launched their watershed solo Founded in 2008, Magician Space seeks to challenge,
evolved into contemporary art with a special interest in exhibitions, and simultaneously serving as the incubator stimulate, and address the blind spots in the development
the concept of the void, space, and time. for emerging artists. of contemporary art in China.
GERMANY ASIA ART ARCHIVE HANART TZ GALLERY POLY AUCTION HONG KONG
G
11/F, Hollywood Centre, 401 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central Suites 701-708, 7/F, One Pacific Place 88 Queensway,
233 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan » hanart.com Admiralty
» aaa.org.hk » [email protected] » www.polyauction.com.hk
» [email protected] » (tel)+852.2526.9019 » [email protected]
» (tel)+852.2815.1112 » (fax)+852.2521.2001 » (tel)+852.2303.9857
» (fax)+852.2815.0032 » 10am–6.30pm (Mon–Fri) » (fax)+852.2303.9888
» 10am–6pm (Sat) » 9am–6pm (Mon–Fri)
Hanart TZ Gallery represents contemporary artists from Established in 2012, a young but remarkable auction house
Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. in Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific region.
A3 ARNDT ART AGENCY AXEL VERVOORDT GALLERY HANART SQUARE RAVENEL INTERNATIONAL ART
Fasanenstraße 28, 10719 Berlin Unit 15D, Entertainment Building, 30 Queen’s Road, 2/F, Mai On Industrial Building, 19 Kung Yip Street,
GROUP
» www.arndtartagency.com Central Kwai Chung Room 1307A, 13/F, Kodak House II, 39 Healthy Street
» [email protected] » www.axelvervoordtgallery.com.hk » hanart.com East, North Point
» (tel)+49.30.88.71.34.43 » [email protected] » [email protected] » www.ravenelart.com
» 10am–6pm (Mon–Fri) » (tel)+852.5937.8098 » (tel)+852.2526.9019 » [email protected]
A3 Arndt Art Agency presents curated exhibitions in » 11am–7pm (Tues–Sat) » (fax)+852.2521.2001 » (tel)+852.2889.0859
collaboration with international artists, museums, and As the first overseas exhibition venue of the Axel » 10am–6.30pm (Mon–Fri) » (fax)+852.2889.0850
private collections while staging temporary projects in Vervoordt Gallery in Antwerp, the gallery continues to » 10am–6pm (Sat)
Asia and Australia. bridge artistic expressions between the east and the west Hanart Square represents contemporary artists from
presenting modern and contemporary artists, some of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
them lesser known to the Hong Kong audience.
NOME BLINDSPOT GALLERY HONG KONG ARTS CENTRE ROSSI & ROSSI (HONG KONG)
Glogauer str. 17 – 10999 - Berlin 15/F, Po Chai Industrial Building, 28 Wong Chuk 2 Harbour Road, Wan Chai Yally Industrial Building, Unit 3C,
» www.nomegallery.com Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang » www.hkac.org.hk 6 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang
» [email protected] » www.blindspotgallery.com » [email protected] » www.rossirossi.com
» (tel)+030 92283788 » [email protected] » (tel)+852.2582.0200 » [email protected]
» 3 pm - 7 pm (Tuesday - Saturday) » (tel)+852.2517.6238 » (fax)+852.2802.0798 » (tel)+852.3575.9417
Founded in 2015, NOME presents a curated program » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » 8am–11pm (Mon–Sun) » 11am–6pm (Tues–Sat) or by appointment
developed with international artists whose practices » (Sun and Mon) by appointment only A self-financed and non-profit organisation. For the past Rossi & Rossi stands at the forefront of the global Asian art
engage diverse disciplines and involve a broad range of » Closed on Public Holidays 37 years, HKAC has been promoting contemporary art and market, pioneering its development in the West. The new
media. culture through a wide range of programmes. Its education industrial space in Hong Kong gives the perfect opportunity
arm, the Hong Kong Art School, is an accredited institute to develop ambitious contemporary projects while
established in 2000. HKAC is also the Main Operator of continuing to showcase classical Himalayan masterpieces.
“Comix Home Base”.
H
KONG 22nd Floor, Alexandra House
18 Chater Road, Central
3F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central
» www.massimodecarlo.com
52 & 54 Sai Street, Central
» sinsinfineart.com
» christies.com » [email protected] » info@sinsinfineart.com
» [email protected] » (tel)+852.2613.8062 » (tel)+852.2858.5072
» (tel)+852.2760.1766 » 10.30am–7pm (Mon–Sat) » 9.30am–6.30pm (Tues–Sat)
» (fax)+852.2760.1767 Massimo De Carlo (MDC) gallery was founded in Milan in Sin Sin Fine Art is the first and main force in Hong Kong
» 9.30am–6pm (Mon–Fri) 1987 with galleries in Milan, London and Hong Kong. to bring Indonesian artworks to Hong Kong and open new
Christie’s, the world’s leading art business, a name that windows for them to the international art scene. Sin Sin
speaks of extraordinary art, unparalleled service and Fine Art focuses on contemporary art from all over the
expertise, a showcase for the unique and the beautiful. world that is spiritual and inspiring, cultivating a collection
of works by selected international artists.
AFFINITY FOR ART EDOUARD MALINGUE GALLERY PARA SITE ART SPACE SOTHEBY’S HONG KONG GALLERY
1/F, 1 Queen’s Road West, Sheung Wan 1/F, 8 Queen’s Road, Central » para-site.org.hk 5/F, One Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty
» www.ainityforART.com » edouardmalingue.com » [email protected] » sothebys.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » (tel)+852.2517.4620 » [email protected]
» (tel)+825.3173.8626 » (tel)+852.2810.0317 » (fax)+852.2517.6850 » (tel)+852.2822.5566
» 12pm–6pm (Tues–Sat) or by appointment » (fax)+852.2810.0311 » 12pm–7pm (Wed–Sun)
Affinity for ART represents emerging and established » 10am–7pm (Mon–Sat)
contemporary artists in Asia - primarily from Southeast Edouard Malingue Gallery presents emerging and
Asia, Taiwan and China. established contemporary artists with a multicultural
perspective. Occasionally, the gallery shows modern art
in collaboration with Galerie Malingue, Paris.
INDIA GALLERIA CONTINUA TOMIO KOYAMA GALLERY GALLERY HYUNDAI, MAIN SPACE
I
Via del Castello 11, San Gimignano (SI) 53037 3-10-11 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0051 122 Sagan-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-190
» galleriacontinua.com » tomioyokoyamagallery.com » galleryhyundai.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected]
» (tel)+39.057.794.3134 » (tel)+81.3.6434.7225 » (tel)+82.2.2287.3591
» (fax)+39.057.794.0484 » (fax)+81.3.6434.7226 » (fax)+82.2.2287.3590
» 2pm–7pm (Tues–Sat) » 11am–7pm (Tues–Sat) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
» Closed on Sundays, Mondays and National Holidays
NATURE MORTE MASSIMO DE CARLO OTA FINE ARTS GALLERY HYUNDAI, NEW SPACE
» www.massimodecarlo.com
A-1 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi 110049 » (fax)+39.02.7492.135 Piramide Bldg. 3F, 6-6-9 Roppongi, Minato-ku, 80 Sagan-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-190
» naturemorte.com Tokyo 106-0032 » galleryhyundai.com
» [email protected] Piazza Belgioioso 2, 20121 Milano » otafinearts.com » [email protected]
» (tel)+91.11.4174.0215 » [email protected] » info@otafinearts.com » (tel)+82.2.2287.3500
» (fax)+91.11.4176.4608 » (tel)+39.02.366.36.990 » (tel)+81.3.6447.1123 » (fax)+82.2.2287.3580
» 11am–7pm (Mon–Sat) » 11.30am–7pm (Tue–Sat) » (fax)+81.3.6447.1124 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
Exhibiting a wide range of contemporary art by Indian » 11am–7pm (Tues–Sat)
Via Giovanni Ventura 5, 20134 Milano » Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
artists including Anita Dube, Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat,
» [email protected]
Bharti Kher, Pushpamala N., and Dayanita Singh, with
» (tel)+39.02.7000.3987
special appearances by international artists.
» 10am–6pm (Tue–Sat)
Massimo De Carlo (MDC) gallery was founded in Milan in
1987 with galleries in Milan, London and Hong Kong.
K
C-84 Neeti Bagh, New Delhi 110049 Viale Stelvio 66 (cross via Valtellina), Milano 20159 171, Dalmaji-gil 65beon-gil, Haeundae-gu,
» talwargallery.com » primomarellagallery.com Busan 48117
» [email protected] » [email protected] » johyungallery.com
» (tel)+91.11.4605.0307 » (tel)+39.02.8738.4885 » (tel)+82.51.747.8853
» 11am–7pm (Mon–Sat) » (fax)+39.02.8738.4892 » (fax)+82.51.742.8852
Primo Marella Gallery Represented Artists: » 11am–7pm (Tues–Sun)
From China: Liu Ding Chen Ke, Shi Jinsong, Shi Xinning,
Li Wei
From Southeast Asia: Ronald Ventura, Jigger Cruz, Jon
Jaylo, Entang Wiharso, Donna Ong
From Africa: Abdoulaye Konaté, Joel Andrianomearisoa,
Cameron Platter, Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo
J
43, Mannam-ro, Dongnam-gu, Cheonan-si, 54 Samchong-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-200
Chungcheongnam-do 330-160 » kukjegallery.com
» arariogallery.com » (tel)+82.2.735.8449
» (tel)+82.41.551.5100 » (fax)+82.2.733.4879
» (fax)+82.41.551.5102 » 10am–6pm (Mon–Sat)
» 11am–7pm (Mon–Sun) » 10am–5pm (Sun)
CEMETI ART HOUSE MIZUMA ART GALLERY ARARIO GALLERY SEOUL ONE AND J. GALLERY
Jl. D.I. Panjaitan No. 41, Yogyakarta 55143 2F Kagura Bldg., 3-13 Ichigayatamachi Shinjuku-ku, 84 Bukchon-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-200 130-1 Gahoe Dong, Jongro-gu, Seoul 110-260
» cemetiarthouse.com Tokyo 162-0843 » arariogallery.com » oneandj.com
» [email protected] » mizuma-art.co.jp » (tel)+82.541.5701 » (tel)+82.2.745.1644
» (tel)+62.274.371015 » [email protected] » (fax)+82.541.5704 » (fax)+82.2.745.1642
Since 1988, Cemeti Art House has been actively » (tel) +81.3.3268.2500 » 10am–7pm (Tues–Sun) » Exhibition Hours 11am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
promoting and stimulating practices in the » (fax)+81.3.3268.8844 » Non-Exhibition Hours 10am–6pm (Mon–Fri)
contemporary Indonesian art scene and art practices » 11am - 7pm (Tues-Sat)
on a wider international platform. » Closed on Sundays, Mondays, and Public Holidays
Executive Director Sueo Mizuma opened Mizuma
Art Gallery in Tokyo in 1994. Since then the gallery
has continuously presented artists from Japan and,
increasingly, the surrounding region, whose works
possess distinctive sensibilities unaffected by fleeting
stylistic trends.
VIVI YIP ART ROOM MORI ART MUSEUM ARARIO MUSEUM IN SPACE THE PAGE GALLERY
Lot 2–3 The Promenade, Jalan Warung Buncit Raya 98, Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, 6-10-1 Roppongi, 83 Yulgok-ro, Jongnon-gu, Seoul 110-280 B2 Galleria Foret, 85 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu,
Pejaten Barat, Jakarta Selatan 12510 Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-6150 » arariomuseum.org Seoul
» viviyipartroom.com » mori.art.museum » (tel)+82.2.736.5700 » www.thepage-gallery.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » (fax)+82.2.747.6039 » [email protected]
» (tel)+62.21.790.0480 » (tel)+81.3.5777.8600 » 10am–7pm (Tues–Sun) » (tel)+82.2.3447.0049
» 12pm–7pm (Mon–Sun) except public holidays » (fax)+81.3.6406.9351 » (fax)+82.2.3447.0050
We try to probe the art world and its various elements, » 10am–10pm (Wed–Mon) » 10.30am–6pm (Tues–Sun)
taking them as they are, to go with the flow with honesty » 10am–5pm (Tues)
and openness. To exist, just as it is without dwelling too Providing programs to stimulate the public’s intellectual
much upon defining our position. We simply want to “be curiosity, the Mori Art Museum promotes its vision of “art
present and glide.” and life in the 21st century.”
L
2263 Don Chino Roces Avenue Ext., Makati City 1231 St. Andrew’s Road, # 01-01 Singapore 178957 61 Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo 7a
» www.silverlensgalleries.com » www.nationalgallery.sg » saskiafernandogallery.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected]
» (tel/fax)+63.2.816.0044, (mobile)+63917.587.4011 » (tel)+65.6271.7000 » (tel)+94.11.742.9010
» 10am–7pm (Tues–Fri) » 10am–7pm (Mon–Thurs) » 10am–7pm (Mon–Fri)
» 10pm–6pm (Sat) » 10am–10pm (Fri–Sun) Established in early 2009, the gallery organizes and
Through artist representation, institutional collaborations, Opening 24 November 2015, the National Gallery Singapore curates exhibitions for contemporary artists working
and exhibition programming, SILVERLENS places its is a brand new visual arts museum that engages, excites in multiple mediums including painting, sculpture,
artists within the broader framework of contemporary art. and inspires with the art of Singapore, Southeast Asia and photography, video and new media. It is inspired and
Its continuing efforts to transcend borders across art the world. The Gallery will contribute to Singapore’s ambition motivated by the creativity and determination of a new
communities in Asia have earned it a reputation as a leading to become a global city for the arts. wave of artists wishing to be exposed to, and accepted
contemporary art gallery in Southeast Asia. SILVERLENS by, the world.
was founded by Isa Lorenzo and Rachel Rillo in 2004.
Q
Jisr el Wati, Street 90, Building 110, 1st Floor,
ART SINGAPORE
Beirut 2066 8421 Block 43 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks,
» ashkalalwan.org Singapore 109443
» [email protected] » ntu.ccasingapore.org
» (tel/fax)+961.1.423.879 » [email protected]
» By appointment only » (tel)+65.6339.6503
Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese association for plastic arts, » 12am–7pm (Tues–Sun), 12am-9pm (Fri)
is a platform for the creation and exchange of artistic » Open on Public Holidays
practices. As a non-profit, the association is committed to » Free admission to exhibitions and public programmes
education, production, support and circulation of creative The NTU CCA Singapore positions itself as a space for
and intellectual endeavors rooted in an engagement with critical discourse and encourages new ways of thinking
civil society. about Spaces of the Curatorial in Southeast Asia
and beyond.
M
MODERN ART 7 Lock Road, #02-13 Gillman Barracks,
BEIJING-LUCERNE
Education City, off Al-Luqta Street, Doha Singapore 108935 Rosenberghöhe 4, Lucerne 6004, Lucerne
» mathaf.org.qa » otafinearts.com » galerieursmeile.com
» (tel)+974.4487.6662 » sg@otafinearts.com » [email protected]
» 11am–6pm (Sat–Thurs) » (tel)+65.8611.7556 » (tel)+41.4.1420.3318
» 3pm–9pm (Fri) » 11am–8pm (Tues–Sat) » (fax)+41.4.1420.2169
» 10am–6pm (Sun) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Fri), upon request (Sat)
Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art invites you to look
at the thriving art production of the Arab world, Iran Founded in 1994 in Tokyo, Ota Fine Arts opened a new Ai Weiwei, Chen Hui, Cheng Ran, Wim Delvoye, Andreas
and Turkey. space in Gillman Barracks in September 2012. Golder, Hu Qingyan, L/B, Li Dafang, Li Gang, Li Zhanyang,
Liu Ding, Meng Huang, Qiu Shihua, Christian Schoeler,
Shan Fan, Shao Fan, Anatoly Shuravlev, Julia Steiner, Not
Vital, Wang Xingwei, Xia Xiaowan, Xie Nanxing, Yan Xing
S T
6A Jalan Cempaka, 16 Taman Cempaka, Ampang, Gillman Barracks, Block 47, Malan Road, #01-25,
Selangor 68000 Singapore 109444
» homarttrans.blogspot.hk » www.silverlensgalleries.com
» [email protected] » [email protected], [email protected]
» (tel)+6.012.373.6004 » (tel/fax)+65.6694.4077
» (fax)+6.03.9285.6004 » 12pm–7pm (Tues–Sat)
» 11am–6pm (Mon–Fri), 1pm–6pm (Sat) » 12pm–6pm (Sun)
» By appointment (Sun) Through artist representation, art fairs, exhibitions and
» Closed on Public Holidays museum collaborations, SILVERLENS artists participate
House of Matahati (HOM) is an independent art space in the global contemporary art dialogue. In Manila and
comprising a gallery and studio facilities. A core objective Singapore, it is the only Philippine gallery accepted
being to promote and nuture emerging artists through the into Art Basel.
Matahati Art Residency programme.
RICHARD KOH FINE ART ELEMENT ART SPACE SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM CHI-WEN GALLERY
229 Jalan Maarof, Bukit Bandaraya, Bangsar, 22 Lock Road #01-35, Gillman Barracks, 71 Bras Basah Road, Singapore 189555 1/F, No. 32, Lane 2, Zhongshan North Road Sec 6,
59100 Kuala Lumpur Singapore 108939 » singaporeartmuseum.sg Shilin District, Taipei 11155
» rkfineart.com » elementartspace.com » (tel)+65.6332.3222 » www.chiwengallery.com
» info@rkfineart.com » [email protected] » (fax)+65.6334.7919 » [email protected]
» (tel)+60.03.2095.3300 » (tel)+65.6694.2827 » 10am–7pm (Mon–Sat), 10am–9pm (Fri) » (tel)+886.2.2837.0237
» 10am–7pm (Tues-Sat) » 11am–7pm (Tue–Sat), 1pm–6pm (Sun) Opened in January 1996, the mission of the Singapore » (fax)+886.2.8771.3421
» By appointment only » Closed on Mondays and Public Holidays Art Museum (SAM) is to preserve and present the art » 1pm–6pm (Tues–Sat)
histories and contemporary art practices of Singapore and Founded in 2004 by Chi-Wen Huang, Chi-Wen Gallery
the Southeast Asian region. To date, SAM has amassed is one of Taiwan’s leading galleries, showing the best
one of the world’s largest public collections of modern and of contemporary Taiwanese art with a focus on video
contemporary Southeast Asian artworks, with a growing and photography.
component in international contemporary art.
P
39 Keppel Road, Tanjong Pagar Distripark,
PRINT INSTITUTE No.28, Lane 770, Beian Road, Zhongshan District,
#03-04, Singapore 089065 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore 238236 Taipei 104
» gajahgallery.com » stpi.com.sg » www.doublesquare.com.tw
» [email protected] » (tel)+65.6336.3663 » [email protected]
» (tel)+65.6737.4202 » (fax)+65.3663.3553 » (tel)+886.2.8501.2138
» 11am–7pm (Mon–Fri) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » (fax)+886.2.8501.2338
» 12pm–6pm (Sat, Sun and Public Holidays) » By appointment (Mon) » 10.30am–6.30pm (Tues–Sun)
Founded in 2015. Emphasis on the promotion of
Taiwanese contemporary artists, curatorial practice,
publishing, research and art collection services as its
core values.
U
4F-2, No. 21, Sec. 1, Dunhua South Road
» www.michaelkugallery.com
ARAB OF AMERICA 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
» newmuseum.org
» [email protected] EMIRATES » [email protected]
» (tel)+886.2.2577.5601 » (tel)+1.212.219.1222
» (fax)+886.2.2577.5601 » 11am–6pm (Wed)
Michael Ku Gallery was founded in 2008 in Taipei as one » 11am–9pm (Thurs)
of a few galleries with solid art history background. Mr. » 11am–6pm (Fri–Sun)
Ku curates the exhibitions and also composes related texts. » Closed on Mon and Tues
MIND SET ART CENTER BARJEEL ART FOUNDATION AICON GALLERY PACE GALLERY
7F, No. 180, Sec. 1, Heping E. Road, Da’an District, Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba, Sharjah 36 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012 32 East 57th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10022
Taipei City 106 » barjeelartfoundation.com » www.aicongallery.com » thepacegallery.com
» www.art-msac.com » [email protected] » [email protected] » (tel)+1.212.421.3292
» [email protected] » (tel)+971.65.566.555 » (tel)+1.212.725.6092 » (fax)+1.212.421.0835
» (tel)+886.2.2365.6008 » 10am–8pm (Sat–Thurs), 4pm–10pm (Fri) » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat) » 9.30am–6pm (Tues–Fri), 10am–6pm (Sat)
» (fax)+886.2.2365.6028 The Barjeel Art Foundation manages the collection With critical exhibitions of work by emerging and
» 11pm–6pm (Tues–Sat, or by appointment) contemporary South Asian artists, one of Aicon Gallery’s 534 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
of Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi and features artworks of
primary goals is to create a space for dialog and cross- » (tel)+1.212.929.7000
Mind Set Art Center is a trustworthy contemporary contemporary Arab artists living in the region and
collaboration between the arts of India, Pakistan and » (fax)+1.212.929.7001
art platform with strong background of art abroad. Each work represents an intercultural story of
consulting, dedicating to innovative programming and Arab identity and underpins how this identity is shaped the west.
545 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
collaborative projects of cultural exchange. within changing social, political and cultural contexts. » (tel)+1.212.989.4258
The foundation seeks to circulate its pieces regionally » (fax)+1.212.989.4263
and globally. » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat)
PROJECT FULFILL ART SPACE UNITED KINGDOM CHAMBERS FINE ART SOTHEBY’S
1/F, No. 2, Alley 45, Lane 147, Sec. 3, Sinyi Road, 522 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 1334 York Avenue at 72nd Street,
Taipei 10658 » chambersfineart.com New York, NY 10021
» www.pfarts.com » cfa@chambersfineart.com » sothebys.com
» [email protected] » (tel)+1.212.414.1169 » (tel)+1.212.606.7000
» (tel)+886.2.2707.6942 » (fax)+1.212.414.1192 » (fax)+1.212.606.7107
» (fax)+886.2.2755.7679 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat)
» 1pm–7pm (Tues–Sun)
TAIPEI FINE ARTS MUSEUM CHRISTINE PARK GALLERY JANE LOMBARD GALLERY TALWAR GALLERY
181 Zhongshan North Road, Section 3, Taipei 104 35 Riding House St., London W1W 7EA 518 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 108 East 16th Street, New York, NY 10003
» tfam.museum » www.christinepark.net » janelombardgallery.com » talwargallery.com
» [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected] » [email protected]
» (tel)+886.2.259.57656 » (tel)+44.20.7930.9865 » (tel)+1.212.967.8040 » (tel)+1.212.673.3096
» (fax)+886.2.259.44104 » 11am–6pm (Tues–Sat and by appointment) » (fax)+1.212.967.0669 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat)
Aiming to build a fresh and dynamic platform for
contemporary art, the Gallery encourages cross-cultural
exchange with its audience, in addition to being a commercial
space that artists can use as a canvas to realise their projects
and present new works to the public.
THAILAND ROSSI & ROSSI DAVID ZWIRNER TYLER ROLLINS FINE ART
21 Georgian House, 10 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AA 525 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10001 529 West 20th Street, 10W, New York, NY 10011
» rossirossi.com » davidzwirner.com » trfineart.com
» [email protected] » (tel)+212.727.2070 » info@trfineart.com
» (tel)+44.20.7629.6888 » (fax)+212.727.7072 » (tel)+1.212.229.9100
» 10am–6pm (Mon–Fri) » (fax)+1.212.229.9104
» 11am–4pm (Sat) 519 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10001 » 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat)
» (tel)+212.517.8677
Rossi & Rossi stands at the forefront of the global Asian art Specializing in cutting-edge contemporary art from
» (fax)+212.517.8959
market, with 40 years of experience in classical Himalayan Southeast Asia.
» 10am–6pm (Tues–Sat, Mon by appointment)
masterpieces. The only internationally renowned gallery
specializing in both classical and contemporary Asian art,
it has pioneered the development of Asian art in the West,
representing significant artists from Asia and the Middle
East and attracting major museums and private collectors.
Izumi Kato
PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT BY CHLOE CHU
Keiichi Tanaami
In our next regular issue, we look at how the visual acuity of
Japanese pop-art icon Keiichi Tanaami fuses personal history
with riotous visions and still influences artists today
For over five decades, Keiichi Tanaami has blended references to pop culture, Hollywood films, imagery from
traditional Japanese ink paintings and myths from various civilizations. His creations—paintings, sculptures,
prints and experimental films—unpack a traumatic childhood spent in Tokyo during the Second World War,
with distorted contours of bodily horror and looming, vacant eyes articulating the overwhelming mental shock
that the artist felt as a young boy witnessing incendiary air raids. Simultaneously, Tanaami’s works express his
anti-war convictions and allude to his philosophy of humanity’s interconnectedness, through forms and symbols
taken from Edo-period scroll paintings, ancient Greek lore and Christianity. Guangzhou desk editor Brady Ng
looks at how Tanaami constantly revisits moments of terror and agony in his work, finding flashes of beauty in
blinding flames that were ignited 74 years ago.