Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
In 2007 the opening of Chambers Fine Art Beijing in a building designed by Ai Weiwei greatly expanded the ability of the gallery to represent the work of influential established artists as well as young emerging talents. The transformation of Caochangdi from a village in the north east of Beijing into a major arts center is inseparable from Ai Weiwei's emergence as a distinctive force in contemporary architecture in projects as varied as the Neolithic Pottery Museum, Jinhua (2004) and the current Ordos 100 Project. Chambers Fine Art is located in the Red Brick Art Galleries and is entered through a courtyard which features works by Qiu Zhijie, Song Dong and Yin Xiuzhen, and Zheng Guogu. The courtyard is enclosed by the symmetrical gallery building which consists of two large galleries to the east and west and a smaller gallery to the rear for video, installations etc. As in New York, the incorporation of open space into the design of the building permits an unusual degree of flexibility in the planning of installations, cultural and social events.
Xie Xiaoze Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library (A965) 埃维利建筑与艺术图书馆, 2019 Oil on linen
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...
Ocula Photolog JINGART 2018 21 May 2018 'Focusing on modern and contemporary art & design, JINGART provides galleries and artists the platform to present art works of different eras and genres, and communicate with international collectors and lovers of art.' –JINGART (17–20 May 2018).
Ocula Report One belt, one road, one biennale: Yinchuan's stand against cultural desertification 1 Nov 2016 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula Over 70 artists from 33 countries are represented in the inaugural Yinchuan Biennale, which opened amidst scandal on 9 September 2016. Not included is a work by Ai Weiwei, who was invited to take part alongside other art stars Yoko Ono and Anish Kapoor before being disinvited just weeks before the opening.In a tweet, Ai connects the...
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 Press Journeys without Arrivals: Chinese contemporary artist Qiu Zhijie at Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève Art Radar : 20 December 2017 Running until 18 January 2018, Qiu Zhijie: Journeys Without Arrivals focuses on the work of the artist Qiu Zhijie, who made waves for his satirical, often tongue-in-cheek calligraphic maps of the world. The Beijing-based artist is known for producing enormous, overwhelming ink maps, which often provide an underlying commentary that weave physical...
Related Press Mining Mineral Structures with Watercolor and Sediment Hyperallergic : 6 November 2017 Beijing artist Guo Hongwei is a master of watercolor technique, able to create convincing, almost photographic, results from this most minimal medium. He is also a collector of sorts, using his skill to assemble taxonomies of natural elements: leaves and butterflies, rocks and crystals.
