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...
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.
Bickerton’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.
Ocula Report Art Jakarta Drops Anchor in a Stormy Southeast Asian Art Market 6 Sep 2019 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula 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....
Ocula Insight Ashley Bickerton 16 December 2015 In this Ocula Insight, Ashley Bickerton—who has lived in Bali for the last 22 years, but who came to the forefront of the art world as a central figure in New York’s vital East Village scene of the 1980s—discusses his work, and in particular how it has been influenced by both Bali and his time spent working at the Yogya Art...
Ocula Conversation Jasdeep Sandhu Founder, Gajah Gallery, Singapore 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...
Related Press Ashley Bickerton: Direct, enigmatic and in constant pursuit of profitable alienation... ArtReview : 1 July 2017 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 1970s/early-80s...
Related Press Where are they now? Tracking the Neo-geometric Conceptualists. LEAP Magazine : 4 April 2016 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 Randian : 22 January 2016 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 STPIIf New York’s alter ego is Gotham City, then Singapore’s is more like a figment of...
Related Press Art Basel Hong Kong on the Verge (Part 2) Hyperallergic : 21 May 2014 HONG KONG — On the first day of Art Basel Hong Kong 2014, Pearl Lam Galleries (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore) reported strong sales of new LED works in Chinese by the artist Jenny Holzer in the range of US$180,000–300,000. White Cube (London, Hong Kong, São Paul HONG KONG — On the first day of Art Basel Hong Kong 2014, Pearl Lam...
