Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Related Press Chen Chieh-jen at Lin & Lin Art in America : 8 February 2019 Chen Chieh-jen's exhibition at Lin & Lin, After the Financial Crisis and Automated Production, featured a selection of his old and recent works exploring ways in which Taiwanese have been affected by neoliberal capitalism and technological developments. The show revealed how Chen's approach to these themes has changed since the 1990s.
Related Press CHEN CHIEH-JEN NAMED ARTIST OF THE YEAR AT 12TH AWARD OF ART CHINA ArtAsiaPacific : 23 May 2018 On May 21, Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Chen Chieh-jen received the prestigious Artist of the Year honor at the Award of Art China (AAC) ceremony in Beijing. In its 12th year, AAC is an annual award founded by Chinese art media group Artron, recognizing the best of contemporary art within Greater China. Chen was presented with a trophy for his...
Related Press HSIAO CHIN. A COLLECTION. ArtAsiaPacific : 22 September 2017 The Fondazione Marconi in Milan dedicated a museum-sized retrospective to Chinese artist Hsiao Chin, including more than 200 works from the gallery's collection. Showcasing paintings on canvas and paper dating from the late 1950s to the present, the exhibition traced the development of Hsiao's colorful abstraction infused with principles of Taoist...
Related Press Art as Resistance: an Interview with Taiwanese Artist Chen Chieh-jen My Art Guides : 11 February 2017 On the occasion of the solo show The Bianwen Book I, running from December 6, 2016 to January 15, 2017 at Lin & Lin Gallery, Taipei, we interviewed the artist Chen Chieh-jen (born in 1960, Taoyuan, Taiwan). The artist currently works and lives in Taipei. Since the early 1980s, Chen Chieh-jen has been an influent figure of Taiwanese conceptual...
Related Press China: The New Generation Artasia pacific : 19 February 2015 Modern China continues to distance itself from the days of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The Open Door policy, introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, enabled a new age of consumerism and commercialism in China, which increased Western influences in the country that led to its integration into the modern international community. In the...
Related Press Shanghai Art Show Asks: For The World'S No.2 Economy, What Now? James T. Areddy for The Wall Street Journal / 24 November 2014 : 25 November 2014 The 10th Shanghai Biennale that opened Saturday asks visitors to consider what else China can be, besides a fast developing economy. Apt for both the venue and the timing, the show represents the latest attempt to use art to peer beyond a China that is all high-octane expansion.
Related Press A Positive Start For Art Taipei 2013 AMA / 08 November 2013 : 9 November 2013 An initial press release from the communications agency behind Art Taipei 2013 – the longest-running art fair in the Asia-Pacific region – praised the event’s demonstration of the “variety” of the region’s art market.An emphasis was placed on the large number of high-cost works present in the fair, which...
Related Press CHEN CHIEH-JEN: PRAXIS IN THE HOBBESIAN DREAM Leap Magazine : 10 May 2013 TAIWAN'S MARTIAL LAW provisions included laws clearly suppressing assembly, demonstrations, and the forming of organizations. Nonetheless, one afternoon on a holiday in 1983, five youths appeared on Ximending Street dressed in white khaki pants and wearing cotton bags over their heads. They walked, shoulder-to-shoulder, from the Red House to the...
Related Press CHEN CHIEH-JEN Artforum : 30 November 2012 I HAD ALREADY BEGUN WORK ON HAPPINESS BUILDING I when I was invited to participate in this Taipei Biennial. As with my previous 'staged' video projects, which are sometimes shot on site, at the actual places that the film refers to—as with Factory (2003), Bade Area (2005), and The Route (2006)—I created the film in collaboration and...
