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...
Rodolphe Janssen founded his gallery in Brussels in 1991, and has since organized over 200 exhibitions. The gallery participates in many major international art fairs, and in 2016-2017, it took part in Art Basel Miami, Armory, MiArt, Art Brussels, BRAFA, Art Düsseldorf and Frieze New York. At first, photography was Rodolphe Janssen’s main focus, but his scope has widened, and today he covers a number of disciplines and different generations of artists. During the twenty-six years since the gallery opened, he has built up strong relationships with collectors, contemporary art museums and art centres in Europe, the USA and Asia. Rodolphe Janssen is a member of the Belgian Chamber of Art Experts and of the selection committee of Art Brussels.
Ocula Insight Wim Delvoye on his art, censorship and the future 7 February 2019 At 53, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye continues to employ the shock factor with abandon. Moving between the sacred and the profane, inflections of gothic drama and high technology imbue the artist's drawings, sculptures, and installations. He frequently swings from fine art to the decorative, applying Belgian ornamental elements such as coats of arms...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Miami Beach 2018 6 December 2018 'This year, over 200 of the world's leading international Modern and contemporary art galleries display artworks by over 4,000 artists, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, film, video, and digital art.' –Art Basel in Miami Beach (6–9 December 2018).
Ocula Photolog FIAC Paris 2018 19 October 2018 'For the 2018 selection, held in Paris from 18 to 21 October, FIAC brought together 195 galleries from 27 countries in the nave and exhibition rooms of the Grand Palais. The fair presented the finest examples of artistic creation since the turn of the twentieth century; modern masters through to the latest trends, notably represented in the...
Ocula Photolog Frieze New York 2018 4 May 2018 'Providing vital insight into artistic practice worldwide and across art history, Frieze New York brings together top-tier international programs andgrowing participation from galleries across the Americas and the world. The fair showcases an extraordinary cross-section of work by international artists, from newly discovered talents to the most...
Related Press Critics' Picks: 'Material History' Zachary Fine : 8 March 2019 Her current show features work by three artists: Yuji Agematsu, Charles Harlan, and Nari Ward. The theme of 'everyday objects'—ranging from carefully salvaged dross to mundane materials—loosely binds the selection.
Related Press The Strange and the Mundane: Torbjørn Rødland Interviewed by Osman Can Yerebakan BOMB Magazine : 19 June 2018 In his photographs of sun-filled Los Angeles interiors or flora-dense backyards, Norwegian-born artist Torbjørn Rødland flirts with his viewer by contrasting clinical level hygiene with elements of contamination and excess. At first, seductive models of irresistible charm engage with fetishized objects or one another amid desirably impeccable...
Related Press Betty Tompkins is the feminist artist you need to know Elle : 20 November 2017 Known for a series of giant genitalia 'fuck paintings' (inspired by her husband's porno mags), the 72-year-old painter was once blacklisted and disregarded by radical feminists for her frank depiction of sexuality. As her new women words project - people send in words they use to describe women - makes its way across Europe, ELLE chats to the...
Related Press Thomas Lerooy’s Playground T L Magizine : 15 November 2017 About 10 years ago Belgian artist Thomas Lerooy placed a wicked version of his home country's famed Manneken Pis atop the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, left to do his thing over unsuspecting visitors. Today 18 of those mannekens, with menacing golden skulls instead of cherubic faces, are back at the museum as part of the eponymous piece of Playground,...
Related Video & Audio Wim Delvoye: This Shit is Art Louisiana Channel : 15 February 2018 Wim Delvoye was interviewed by Rasmus Quistgaard at Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Herning, Denmark in April 2017.
Related Video & Audio Torbjørn Rødland: A Different Type of Sensibility Louisiana Channel : 5 February 2018 'Of course, this is shallow material, but can I find something of value there?' Meet the Norwegian photographer Torbjørn Rødland, whose photos transcend and defamiliarise their seemingly ordinary motifs.
