Ocula Conversation Sandrine Colard on the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest Francophone nation in Africa with vast resources and nearly 80 million inhabitants, is a place where commodities play a vital role in the national economy and the country's significance on the world stage. This is the context from which the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale (24 October–24 November...
Ocula Report From 20 to 21 July 2019, Artspace Sydney held a two-day symposium that brought artists in conversation with leading curators, writers, activists, academics, diplomats, and journalists from across Asia. The symposium was the final chapter of the 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS exhibition, publication, website, and Instagram project. Instigated and...
Ocula News We Are Our Infrastructure, Argues Newly Announced Shanghai Biennale Chief Curator 13 December 2019 The Power Station of Art will make a fitting location for Andrés Jaque, whose past projects expose the politics concealed by buried pipes and managed cables. Spanish architect, writer, and curator Andrés Jaque has been named the chief curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, which will take place at the Power Station of Art (PSA) from 13 November...
Ocula Insight 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...
ShanghART gallery was initiated in 1996 in Shanghai. It has since grown to become one of China’s most influential art institutions and a vital resource to the development of contemporary art in China with two spaces in 50 Moganshan Road (Main Space and H-Space), a public warehouse space in West of Shanghai (ShanghART Taopu), and a gallery space in Beijing and representing over 40 artists.
Read MoreBeing recognized for its importance ShanghART became the initial gallery from China participating in major international art fairs like Art Basel and Fiac, Paris. ShanghART gallery also enjoys the great respect of being among the 75 most influencial galleries selected in Thames & Hudson’s publication "International Art Galleries: Post-war to Post-millennium."
Ocula Insight Zhang Ding’s High-Speed Forms at OCAT Shanghai 22 November 2019 Modified mobility scooters steer viewers down a simulated highway in High-Speed Forms , Zhang Ding 's solo show at the new OCAT Shanghai in Sunken Garden, a short walk from its previous location north of Suzhou Creek (19 October 2019–8 March 2020). Sat in self-driving chairs, which make turns by reading reflective stickers on the ground,...
Ocula Photolog ART021 Shanghai 2019 12 November 2019 'As one of the most important contemporary art fairs in Asia, ART021 reinforces its ongoing commitment to leveraging local recourses with a global perspective, supporting contemporary Chinese art andcultivating new generations of domestic collectors. 111 world's leading galleries from 18 countries and 57 cities are selected to present contemporary...
Ocula Photolog West Bund Art & Design 2019 11 November 2019 'The fair provides a platform for international exhibitors to showcase the finest quality of modern and contemporary art in Shanghai. With exhibitions and art events offered by museums and galleries in the city, West Bund has made November's Shanghai a permanent fixture on the global art calendar.' –West Bund Art & Design, Shanghai (7–10...
Ocula Report At Art Taipei, Galleries Adapt to Regional Politics 25 Oct 2019 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula In Taipei , the artwork that said most about the contemporary art market's fraught situation in East Asia was not at the 26th Art Taipei (18–21 October 2019), but across town at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, a publicly funded art park established in Taiwan's former Air Force Command Headquarters in 2018. Chin Cheng-Te's Tender Soul –...
Related Press Lynn Hershman Leeson’s 'First Person Plural' Art Agenda : 18 April 2019 Who was Lynn Hershman Leeson between 1965 and 1994? The Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Móstoles, a city just southwest of Madrid, is showing First Person Plural , focusing on three decades of Hershman Leeson's oeuvre. The exhibition pivots on questions of identity, technology, and the female, or rather woman-identified, body.
Related Press Artes Mundi 8: Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul wins £40,000 prize BBC News : 24 January 2019 Indie Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has won the £40,000 Artes Mundi contemporary art prize. The judges said his film Invisibility was 'a powerful weapon in these turbulent times'. The 48-year-old gave a UK premiere to his dream-like work, projected over two screens and showing two figures rising from their beds in separate rooms....
Related Press The man with the exploding head: the director inspired by his medical condition The Guardian : 24 October 2018 Apichatpong Weerasethakul's house in northern Thailand is a luscious jungle paradise full of polished concrete and teak, palm trees and bamboo. Even the air smells zen. The house's three gatekeepers, Dracula, King Kong and Vampire, do little to disturb the peace. They are pugs – named because Weerasethakul loves horror movies – who have a...
Related Press Melati Suryodarmo: Timoribus at Shanghart, Singapore ArtReview Asia : 4 July 2018 Melati Suryodarmo's greatest asset is her Javanese dance- and butoh-trained body, the limits of which she explores in durational performances. The latter range from full-sprint displays of power (as in her best-known work, Exegie - Butter Dance , 2000, in which she dances and skids on blocks of butter), to periods of deep meditative surrender (in...
Related Video & Audio Zeng Fanzhi: From Hand to Mind Nowness : 16 May 2015 The search for identity in socially and politically evolving China characterizes Zeng Fanzhi's work. Often compared to the German Expressionists, his vivid brushstrokes have made him the most high-valued Asian artist working today ( The Last Supper , inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century mural of the same name, sold for $23.3 million at a...
