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...
Exhibition view: Wu Jian'an, Infinite Labyrinth: New Works by Wu Jian’an, Chambers Fine Art, New York (8 September– 31 December 2019). Courtesy Chambers Fine Art.
Chambers Fine Art is a gallery specialising in contemporary Chinese art located in New York and Beijing. It was established by Christophe W. Mao in New York in 2000. Recognising the need for a gallery that would serve as an authoritative source of information on the latest developments in the rapidly growing contemporary art world in China, Mao named his gallery after Sir William Chambers, the celebrated British architect who was a leading exponent of Chinese principles in garden design in the late eighteenth century. During the first seven years, artists including Lu Shengzhong, Hong Hao, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen had their first solo exhibitions in the USA. Since then a younger generation of artists including Wu Jian’an, Zhao Zhao, Fu Xiaotong, and Guo Hongwei has added different perspectives to the gallery profile. Since 2009 the gallery has occupied premises at 522 West 19th Street, a block that is noteworthy for a concentration of new buildings by Frank Gehry, Shigeru Ban and Jean Nouvel as well as proximity to the High Line, the former elevated railway track that has become a much admired public park. Now in its second decade, Chambers Fine Art has become one of the essential destinations for all those interested in the latest and best coming out of China.
Ocula Photolog Asia Now 2019 21 October 2019 'Asia Now is expanding and this year will welcome over 50 of the most prominent and cutting-edge galleries presenting over 250 established and emerging artists from China, Korea, Japan, Central and Southeast Asia, who push the boundaries of contemporary art.' –Asia Now, Paris (16–20 October 2019).
Ocula Report Sydney Lowdown: Exhibitions to See 6 Sep 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The fifth edition of Sydney Contemporary will take place once again at Carriageworks between 12 and 15 September 2019, with Spring 1883 bringing together a cohort of 27 galleries from across Australia and the region to inhabit rooms at the Establishment Hotel from 11 to 14 September 2019, uniquely presenting contemporary works propped up on...
Ocula Conversation Lam Tung Pang and Abby Chen Born in Hong Kong in 1978, Lam Tung Pang is known for his paintings and drawings on plywood, along with site-specific installations, sound works, and videos that embody relationships between humans, nature, and the built environment. In the large-scale painting Centuries of Hong Kong (2011), for instance, which is housed at the Legislative Council...
Ocula Report China’s Post-Intranet Artists Get Personal 27 Apr 2019 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula China's post-80s artists are no longer all that 'young', nor do they much need that moniker. With the oldest of that generation fast approaching 40, to call them young would be misleading given how rapidly many of them rose to prominence during the tail-end of China's foreign collector-powered art boom and subsequent influx of domestic collectors....
Related Press what pixy liao’s photography tells us about love i-D : 13 August 2019 If it wasn't for the film Blow-Up, Pixy Liao may never have become a photographer. Working as a graphic designer in Shanghai and deeply dissatisfied with the lack of creative control she had over her own work, after watching Michelangelo Antonioni's cult classic about a fashion photographer loosely based on David Bailey, she was inspired to make a...
Related Press Stars Art Group, China's artistic freedom fighters, celebrate 40th anniversary The Art Newspaper : 29 March 2019 On the eve of Art Basel in Hong Kong's private view on Wednesday, the Beijing-based artist Huang Rui took to the streets of Central for a paint-splashed performance about the cyclical nature of history. The piece was a tribute to Lee Wen, the pioneering Asian performance artist who died early this month.
Related Press Photographer Pixy Liao on how humour and Japanese cinema shape her work Dazed : 20 March 2019 On an unusually warm March weekday afternoon, between lunch and rush hour, the Chambers Fine Art gallery in Manhattan is empty of people. Diminutive with a sharp bob and a multi-coloured patchwork sweater, Pixy Liao emerges from a back office, a small paint can in her hand. She's slightly startled to see me, five minutes early and ready to chat...
Related Press 'I was much more dominant': Pixy Liao's surreal photography disrupts relationship stereotypes CNN : 4 January 2019 hen Pixy Liao landed at the University of Memphis in 2006 to study photography, she wasn't quite sure what to photograph. 'I was having culture shock, coming from China,' she said on the phone from her Brooklyn apartment. 'I didn't know who I should be.'She tried landscapes and self-portraiture, using the camera to process her new environment,...
Related Video & Audio Wu Jian'an - Process Chambers Fine Art : 28 June 2018 In the hands of Wu Jian'an, the traditional Chinese medium of paper cut is elaborated and used to explore an idiosyncratic range of iconographic source material culled from all over the world. Over time, Wu Jian'an's works have grown both in scale and complexity as he increasingly conceives individual works as part of larger installations.
Related Video & Audio Zhao Zhao: ‘You cannot separate art from politics’ studio international : 4 October 2016 A prominent member of the post-1980s generation of Chinese artists and a former assistant of Ai Wewei, the Beijing artist talks about his visually stunning, anti-authoritarian and provocative work. Lilly Wei talked to the artist in his Beijing studio in 2015
