Ocula Conversation Cinga Samson: ‘a different conversation on representation’ By Jareh Das, New York Cinga Samson 's paintings lay bare the complex relationship between contemporary life, African traditions, globalisation, and representation. His strikingly sombre portraits contain similarities to those of contemporary painters such as Toyin Ojih Odutola, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye , Kehinde Wiley , Florine Démosthène, and Tunji...
Ocula Report Armory Week Lowdown: Art Shows to See By Casey Carsel, New York After structural issues forced The Armory Show into last-minute relocation pirouettes last year, the fair returns between 5 and 8 March 2020 with a flourishing programme, complemented by stand-out shows across New York City.
Ocula Insight At the freshly opened Winsing Art Place in Taipei, works by Vietnamese-Danish artist Danh Vo are being presented in Taiwan for the first time. In this video, the founder of Winsing Arts Foundation, Jenny Yeh, introduces Vo's exhibition.
Ashley Bickerton completed studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 1982 before attending the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Bickerton is known as one of the original members of the group of artists known as Neo-Geo, which also included artists such as Peter Halley and Meyer Vaisman.
Read MoreBickerton’s works are a combination of found objects, photographs, and painting. His works are colourful and figurative, yet with often grotesque connotations. His practice involves painting the bodies of his subjects then taking photographs which he manipulates in order to create his uncanny caricatures with disproportionate and unsettling features. Bickerton provides a dystopian view of humanity through his portraits of grotesque figures. His infamous ‘blue-man,’ often a self-portrait, is representative of the 20th century man who, in Bickerton’s works, is both a family man and a manic drug fiend.
Pieces produced during Bickerton’s time as an artist-in-residence at the STPI in 2006 have an almost nightmarish quality with monstrous-looking heads peering out from beneath the surface of water surrounded by debris. Bickerton’s move from New York to Bali in the 1990’s is a clear influence in his work. The frames of Bickerton’s works are made up of materials bought by the artist in Bali and recall Indonesian craft making.
Bickerton’s works are held in many international public collections including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Foundation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Berardo Collection Museum, Portugal; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Frances Hodgson | Ocula | 2016
Ocula Conversation Emi Eu: ‘We have to look at Southeast Asia as one market’ By Stephanie Bailey, Singapore STPI's Emi Eu reflects on S.E.A. Focus, an STPI project platforming artists and galleries from Southeast Asia, in the wake of Art Stage's decline in 2019 and ahead of the launch of Singapore's new art fair, Art SG, in October 2020.
Ocula Report Singapore Lowdown: Shows to See By Tessa Moldan, Singapore Singapore Art Week returns from 11 to 19 January 2020 with a host of island-wide events, at the centre of which is the second edition of S.E.A. Focus (16–19 January 2020) at Gillman Barracks, showcasing the best of contemporary art in Southeast Asia.
Ocula Report Art Jakarta Drops Anchor in a Stormy Southeast Asian Art Market By Sam Gaskin, Jakarta Jakarta may be sinking, prompting the announcement last month that Indonesia will create a new capital on the island of Borneo, but the city's longest-running art fair is on the rise. Founded by the license holder of Harper's Bazaar Indonesia , the fair began as Bazaar Art Jakarta in 2008. While it's still owned by the same holding company, MRA...
Ocula Insight James Page on Yogyakarta Art Lab By Elliat Albrecht Initiated by Singapore-based Gajah Gallery in 2012, Yogyakarta Art Lab (YAL) is a foundry and production house located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. With a small staff expertly trained in a variety of metal production techniques, the lab's purpose is to engage international artists to experiment with new mediums in order to expand their practices....
Related Press Ashley Bickerton: Direct, enigmatic and in constant pursuit of profitable alienation... 1 July 2017, ArtReview Boom! That's how Ornamental Hysteria , Ashley Bickerton's current exhibition at Damien Hirst's Newport Street Gallery, opens—with a box sporting an ominous red LED number-counter bolted to the wall. It's the kind of thing you can imagine the late Roger Moore briefly interrupting a moment of passion to rush and defuse during his...
Related Press Where are they now? Tracking the Neo-geometric Conceptualists. 4 April 2016, LEAP Magazine We live in a state of the perpetual present. With the revolving door of exhibitions in more and more venues, commercial and scholarly alike, thousands of artists appear on a relatively flat plane of aesthetics. This is good for a lot of things—fair art criticism among them—but it tends to hurt our understanding, as viewers, of where the...
Related Press Mutant Mystique—The STPI network 22 January 2016, Randian Randian is in Singapore for Art Stage. As part of our coverage we are visiting a number of the institutions and galleries contributing to the emerging Singaporean and South East Asian art scene. In this article, we turn to Singapore’s STPI If New York’s alter ego is Gotham City, then Singapore’s is more like a figment of...
Related Press Ocula Q&A: Jasdeep Sandhu, founder of Gajah Gallery, Singapore 29 August 2015, Ocula In 1996, Jasdeep Sandhu established Gajah Gallery in Singapore with the purpose of promoting Southeast Asian Contemporary Art with an emphasis on Indonesian contemporary art. Now twenty years on the gallery is about to expand into a 6,000 square foot space in Tanjong Pagar Distripark in Singapore, and also recently opened a second exhibition...
