Ocula Report ‘An Opera for Animals’ at Rockbund Art Museum 19 Jul 2019 : Penny Liu for Ocula An Opera for Animals was first staged at Para Site in Hong Kong between 23 March and 2 June 2019, with works by over 48 artists and collectives that use opera as a metaphor for modes of contemporary, cross-disciplinary art-making. The exhibition's second iteration takes up a large portion of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai (22 June–25...
Ocula Conversation Mandy El-Sayegh: Productive Ambiguity Moving across installation, painting, drawing, and writing, Malaysia-born and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores the political, social, and economic complexities of humanity, using a mosaic of information—from advertising slogans and pornographic imagery to newspaper articles—that she subjects to processes of layering,...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
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 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....
Ocula Photolog ADAA | The Art Show 2019 4 March 2019 'Organized annually by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA), The Art Show offers intimately scaled and thoughtfully curated presentations of the highest quality—fostering active conversations with gallerists, new relationships, and close looking at works by artists from a variety of genres, practices, and national and international...
Ocula Insight Moving between her bases in the United States and China, Qinmin Liu questions the structures that define her identity through long-form, playful projects. The farcical nature of the elitist lifestyle synonymous with the global art market is the focus of her ongoing project 'AngelHaha', the first artist-run airline. The 'dream-driven business' was...
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 Along China’s New Silk Road: Zhao Yao, Zhao Zhao and Zhuang Hui Frieze : 16 April 2018 While I was writing this article, in February 2018, the artist Zhao Yao received permission to rent the iconic Workers' Stadium in north-eastern Beijing for one day in May. His intention was to show an abstract composition on fabric, measuring 116 × 86 m, which was produced in 2016 and initially displayed 5,000 m above sea level on a mountainside...
Related Press Sydney Biennale modestly comes of age with moments of curatorial brilliance The Conversation : 16 March 2018 If a 21st birthday "coming of age" observance can be applied to cultural events, 2018 marks the launch into adulthood of the Biennale of Sydney. In some ways Sydney's biennale was a precocious child, turning its back during infancy on mainstream Eurocentric art in favour of exploring its local geographic region, early on including...
Related Press Picturing Ai Weiwei in Istanbul Hyperallergic : 5 January 2018 In an era where superstar Chinese artist Ai Weiwei feels ubiquitous, this past summer I experienced the full extent of that reality over the course of two months. After attending a New York preview for his new film about migrants, Human Flow (2017), I traveled to Israel to visit a major exhibition of his work at the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem,...
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
