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...
Shugo Satani, the owner of ShugoArts, has been working on defining distinctive flows of Japanese and Asian art scenes since the 1980s after having become independent from Satani Gallery, a trailblazing gallery in Tokyo from the 1970s, which was operated by his father Kazuhiko Satani. Since its opening in Tokyo 2000, ShugoArts has been representing artists such as Masato Kobayashi and Shigeo Toya who seek their own ways of expression by redefining principles of painting and sculpture in Japan after Gutai and Mono-ha. The gallery is also eager to represent artists in their 30s such as Masaya Chiba and Lee Kit who have tried to expand the field of painting. ShugoArts has opened its new space in Roppongi fall 2016 and remains active on international platforms.
Tomoko YonedaJoyce’s Glasses—Viewing a letter to Sylvia Beach, the first publisher of Ulysses, 1998 Gelatin silver print
Tomoko YonedaBrecht's Glasses—Viewing a dedication by Walter Benjamin, 2008 Gelatin silver print
Ocula Photolog West Bund Art & Design 2018 9 November 2018 'With a strong selection of returning exhibitors, the 2018 edition welcomes 87 galleries in the Galleries section, among which 39 are participating for the first time.'– West Bund Art & Design (8–11 November 2018).
Ocula Insight Far from slowing down, the sixth week of Asia Contemporary Art Week continues to explore and unravel the rich possibilities of 'thinking collections', bringing together a variety of artists, filmmakers, and institutions in transnational and cross-disciplinary dialogue. Together, 'Asian-ness' is not deployed as a homogenising concept, but rather an...
Ocula Report Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale: The World's Largest Outdoor Art Festival 30 Aug 2018 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula Running since 2000, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, the largest outdoor art festival in the world, injects art into the landscape of Japan's snow country, littered in the summertime with phosphorescent, green rice paddies that lie flat beneath the mountains of the southern part of Niigata prefecture. Rather than assigning each edition with a new...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Hong Kong 2018 29 March 2018 'The sixth edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong brought together a uniquely global mix of galleries spanning six continents, outstanding artworks by established and new artists from across theworld and a singular gathering of international collectors and institutions.' –Art Basel in Hong Kong (29–31 March 2018).
Related Press Ilya Kabakov Harnesses His Inner Misanthrope to Maintain Artistic Independence Hyperallergic : 22 February 2019 On Art, a new collection of essays by Ilya Kabakov, recently translated and edited into English by Matthew Jesse Jackson, begs a closer look at the life of an artist in permanent flux.One reason Ilya Kabakov's decades-long career is so interesting is that it maps with cartographic intensity life under a broken Soviet system, later transformed by...
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 Yasumasa Morimura: Ego Obscura & In the Room of Art History The Brooklyn Rail : 11 December 2018 Yasumasa Morimura's practice is about blurring boundaries. His intricate tableaus hover in the interstitial space between painting and photography and are admired for their inquiry into the construction of gender and identity. Two exhibitions, In the Room of Art History at Luhring Augustine Bushwick and Ego Obscura at the Japan Society, make clear...
Related Press The Japanese artist putting himself in the world’s most famous art works Dazed : 15 November 2018 'In the end, what is history? And what is historical truth? These are questions that do not have ready answers,' Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura asks in egó sympósion', the preface he pens in the catalogue for Ego Obscura, a 30-year retrospective of photographic work in which he transforms iconic works of art and pop culture into self-portraits.
Related Video & Audio ASIA NOW 2018 || Teppei Kaneuji (artist) & Reiko Tsubaki (Curator at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo) ASIA NOW : 1 November 2018 The artist Teppei Kaneuji and Reiko Tsubaki, Curator at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, discuss the artist's recent sculptures and performances. Kaneuji investigates the mass consumption of contemporary Japanese culture, sourcing materials from everyday life, found objects and manga characters to create sculptures that are at once playful and...
