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...
Shan Hur works and lives in London. Hur holds an M.F.A from Slade, 2010, and a B.F.A in Sculpture from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, 2007. His work is held in the collection of the British Art Collection and some recent awards include ‘Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award’, London U.K, 2013, Oriel Davies Open 2012 Newtown Wales, Uk Finalist, 'The Open West', Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK, 1st Award, 'Art Catlin’ Finalist, 2011. His work is included in the forthcoming exhibition at the Korean Museum, and he has participated in recent exhibitions A New Column for Manchester, Manchester University, Manchester, UK, 2014, ‘L’ÂGE D’OR’, Aando fine art, Berlin, Germany, 2013, among others.
Shan Hur’s sculptural interventions disrupt the viewer’s perception of the white cube as an art container, directly implicating the gallery space as an active element in the artwork itself. The ideas, which inform his practice, derive from a careful examination of construction sites and closed shops, fascinated by the moment of transition when a particular space is reconfigured for a new purpose. During this transition the polished veneer of the city is temporarily removed, thereby exposing its farcical nature, and the mechanism by which this veneer is generated.
For Acquisiting, Hur exposes and plays with the façade of the exhibition space, transforming it into a site of discover. Rather than the passive role in which the viewer traditionally receives sculpture within the context of the gallery, here he becomes an active participant, in what seems to be an excavation. Though the participatory aspects of Hur’s work are mental rather than physical, they uncage an inquisitive imagination, evoking memories of the adventures and discoveries made during childhood.
–Marius Grainer, 2011
