Ocula Report ‘An Opera for Animals’ at Rockbund Art Museum 19 Jul 2019 : Penny Liu for Ocula An Opera for Animals was first staged at Para Site in Hong Kong between 23 March and 2 June 2019, with works by over 48 artists and collectives that use opera as a metaphor for modes of contemporary, cross-disciplinary art-making. The exhibition's second iteration takes up a large portion of the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) in Shanghai (22 June–25...
Ocula Conversation Mandy El-Sayegh: Productive Ambiguity Moving across installation, painting, drawing, and writing, Malaysia-born and London-based artist Mandy El-Sayegh explores the political, social, and economic complexities of humanity, using a mosaic of information—from advertising slogans and pornographic imagery to newspaper articles—that she subjects to processes of layering,...
Ocula Report Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House 5 Jul 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers at Somerset House in London (12 June–15 September 2019) surveys more than half a century of black creativity in Britain and beyond across the fields of art, film, photography, music, design, fashion, and literature.Curated by Zak Ové, works by approximately 100 intergenerational black...
Born in 1987 in Zhejiang province in China, Chen Zhou graduated from Media Art Lab Department in China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. Since 2010, Chen Zhou has experimented with aesthetic languages in his video work. Through exaggerating and simplifying semiotic forms, these works attempt to dissociate, reassemble and reproduce various narrative structures that he explores. Chen Zhou describes his current stage of work with term ‘hedonism’ – the pursuit of pleasure or sensual self-indulgence. His works also convey Chen’s uncertainty of the aesthetic value in his work and the anxiety that comes with it. He now lives and works in Beijing.
Notable solo exhibitions include Talk (2009) at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute in Beijing, Hot Spots Project (2012) at SH Contemporary in Shanghai, and I’m not not not Chen Zhou (2013) at the Magician Space in Beijing, China. Chen has exhibited widely both in China and around the world, namely Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013), Today Art Museum, Beijing (2012), Tang Contemporary Art Center, Beijing (2012), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston (2012), Centro Per L’arte Contemporanea, Prato (2012), Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2011) and Meulensteen, New York (2011).
Related Press “Cold Nights” at UCCA: curators Boliang Shen and Zhanglun Dai Art Radar : 23 November 2017 Capitalist excess, a dysfunctional family, communication breakdown, and a widening gap between traditional and modern ideologies are some of the issues raised by modern Chinese writer Ba Jin in his 1947 novel Cold Nights. Although these problems persist in today's China, in fact in many societies around the world, they are set in an era of war and...
Related Press Critic’s Guide: Beijing Frieze : 14 November 2017 From explorations into the varied meanings of 'Asia' to an uncomfortably personal solo show, highlights of the best shows across the cityDiscordant Harmony: Observations of Artistic Practices in East Asia at the Transition between the 1980s and 1990s, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, 4 November – 4 February 2018.Beijing is the final stop in a...
Related Press Digital Personalities Aesthetica : 27 January 2017 With the rise of the social media, artificial intelligence, video games and the power of anonymity afforded by the Internet, the process of adopting a newly invented persona is a now a common part of everyday life and popular culture. After Us, from the K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai, and the New Museum, New York, examines the possibilities,...
