Ocula Conversation Hito Steyerl: How To Build a Sustainable Art World 'A Picture of War is Not War', we read in Hito Steyerl's iconic film November (2004), an essayistic Super 8 film tackling the definition of terrorism constructed around the figure of the artist's best friend Andrea Wolf, who was killed as a terrorist in 1998 in Eastern Anatolia after she joined the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Mixing documentary...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Lee Kit's art practices aim to intertwine the boundaries between art and daily life. His works range from painted fabrics, installations that enclose paintings, ready-made objects, video projections, and performative works that address seemingly ordinary daily rituals, concerned with redefining how we identify with the everyday. Lee Kit's novel environments are rendered through ready-made objects and the use of his signature cardboard-paintings. Merging with video-projections, they establish a silent dialogue amongst equals that adds a further dimension to the artist's practice. Through a measured and subtle approach to his mediums, Lee Kit offers a model of resistance to constraint, be it existential, political or social.
Ocula Report Lyon Biennale 2019: The Art of Dispersal 27 Sep 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula 'The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.' This excerpt from a poem by American writer Raymond Carver is the somewhat florid departure for Là où les eaux se mêlent, the 15th Lyon Biennale (18 September 2019–5 January 2019)—a materially rich exhibition of works by around 50...
Ocula Conversation Lee Kit Artist, China The Lee Kit exhibition, You., shown recently the Cattle Depot Artist Village in Hong Kong, was an expanded adaptation of his solo presentation for Hong Kong at the 55th Venice Biennale. The Venice presentation, entitled You (you)., received international critical acclaim and Lee was touted by the Wall Street Journal as ‘one of the five...
Ocula Conversation Alan Lo Chairman, Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, Hong Kong Active in promoting art and design in Hong Kong, Alan Lo is the Chairman of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, sits on the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and was a member of Art HK’s advisory group. Lo is also a co-founder and director of Hong Kong-based Press Room Group, owner and operator of various well-known restaurants and...
Related Press The Enormous Space ArtAsiaPacific : 1 March 2018 In 1989, British author JG Ballard published The Enormous Space, a short story about Gerald Ballantyne, a man who withdraws from the world and fortifies himself in his abode, not due to agoraphobia but to 'experiment' with reducing his immediate environment to nothing but his house, committing what is in effect a slow suicide. OCAT Shenzhen's...
Related Press 10 Highlights from the inaugural Kathmandu Triennale 2017 Art Radar Journal : 10 April 2017 The Kathmandu Triennale is an event developed on the back of past success of the Kathmandu International Art Festival, held in 2009 and 2012. The inaugural edition of Kathmandu Triennale (KT 2017) takes ‘The City’ as a thematic starting point – a catalyst to explore the many socio-cultural and political issues embedded in urban settings. Francis...
Related Press Lee Kit at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Art in America : 11 November 2016 “Who sees me naked, and who spends time alone with me in the bathroom? Johnson & Johnson. Nivea.” This is how Lee Kit, Hong Kong’s representative at the 2013 Venice Biennale, discusses the personal hygiene product logos in the paintings that unassumingly populated his Walker exhibition, Hold your breath, dance slowly: as...
Related Press Slowly dancing to an exhibition about love Hyperallergic : 24 August 2016 MINNEAPOLIS — A kind of dance happens as you walk through Lee Kit’s exhibition at the Walker Art Center, appropriately titled Hold your breath, dance slowly. As you enter, there’s no sign that dictates whether you should walk right or left, but most people walk right, out of convention, and don’t see the ready–made...
