Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Liu Weijian has defined his cold and recondite way of 'social narration' through his early works: he wears a cold neutral 'image' mask and takes it as the root of his 'conceptual painting'. With his cold touch and melancholy feelings, Liu Weijian's work deals with many of the current issues he and his contemporaries think about daily and creates a feeling of constant movement and of un-finished business.
After that, the ever-changeful themes and painting styles are the self-evolution with the increase of ages, expansion of horizons and the changes of social experiences of Liu Weijian. 'Every once a while I will go to some places, somewhere nothing special, no particular choice, just like the randomness of life…endless walking makes me get closer to the conception between ‘people’ and ‘me’.' In this highly symbolism tour, painting is the ideal way to express his self-cognition seeking journey, and his works are the rebuild of different memory fragments.
Liu Weijian (b.1981) lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from Shanghai Normal University of Art (2005). Recent exhibitions include I Love You, Shanghart Beijing (2015); Under the Sun, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2014); The Idea Before Sunrise, Galería Yusto, Giner, Malaga, Spain (2012); Farewell my Country—Liu Weijian Solo Exhibition, Gallery Louis Vuitton Maison, Hong Kong (2011); China Power Station, Part IV, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2011); Antenna—Solo Exhibition, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai (2010); The Call of Crowns, BizArt Art Center, Shanghai (2007).
Ocula Conversation William Zhao Independent Curator, Critic and Consultant, Hong Kong The last decade has seen an extraordinary interest in the art of China, yet Hong Kong artists have been significantly overlooked in this bubbling and frothing phenomena. It is timely therefore that Ai Weiwei, arguably the most well-known of the Chinese artists, has chosen to curate an exhibition in Hong Kong featuring only Hong Kong artists; and...
