aaajiao, also known as Xu Wenkai, was born in 1984 in Xi'an, and later moved to Shanghai, where he continues to live and work. aaajiao is one of China's foremost digital artists, bloggers and free culture developers. In 2003 he established the sound art website: cornersound.com, and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog we-make- money-not-art: We Need Money Not Art. He is devoted to Processing, an open-source visual programming software, Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds, and event structure, an interdisciplinary centre for art, media technology and academic research-based in Shanghai. In his works in general, aaajiao focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display, and how meaning is understood through the process of transforming the movement from reality, to data, and back again. His most significant aesthetic contribution to new media in China is a social one, acting as a vector for the interpretation and communication of international and local trends in the usages of software in artistic practice.
Ocula Insight Afterimage: Dangdai Yishu at Lisson Gallery, London By Sam Gaskin, London An afterimage is a false visual burned onto the eyes even after its source is no longer being viewed. Victor Wang, the curator of Afterimage: Dangdai Yishu (3 July–7 September 2019) at Lisson Gallery, London, borrows the term to describe one of the key accomplishments of contemporary art: the accommodation of work that is post-figurative, or...
Ocula Feature China’s Post-Intranet Artists Get Personal By Sam Gaskin, Auckland China's post-80s artists are no longer all that 'young', nor do they much need that moniker. With the oldest of that generation fast approaching 40, to call them young would be misleading given how rapidly many of them rose to prominence during the tail-end of China's foreign collector-powered art boom and subsequent influx of domestic collectors....
Ocula Insight Howard Bilton, founder and chairman of the Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong By Ocula Editors Yorkshire-born businessman Howard Bilton is the founder and chairman of the Sovereign Art Foundation, established in Hong Kong in 2003. The Foundation focuses on both recognising the abundance of artistic talent in Asia and bringing the benefits of art therapy and education to underprivileged children. In both endeavours, the Foundation...
Related Press Overpop 19 December 2016, ArtAsiaPacific With two years' worth of research and multiple studio visits by the Yuz Museum's founding director Budi Tek and his team, along with New York-based gallerist Jeffrey Deitch and Karen Smith, director of OCAT Xi'an contemporary art center in China—the exhibition Overpop developed into a cross-cultural exchange of artists who are seen as a new...
Related Press Preview: Art Basel Miami Beach 2016 gallery highlights from Asia and Africa 1 December 2016, Art Radar Journal From 1 to 4 December 2016 galleries from around the world will converge on Art Basel Miami Beach. In Art Basel’s 15th edition in Miami Beach, there are an impressive 269 galleries expected from 29 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The art fair is proven to be a highlight of the art calendar, with almost all...
Related Press 'Remnants of an Electronic Past' - in conversation with Chinese new media artist aaajiao 19 September 2016, Art Radar Journal aaajiao explores the fate of obsolete computer technology in the face of its relentless development, as part of a programme aimed at stimulating debate around the relationship between art and technology, as well as e-waste and its relation to climate change and the environment. Art Radar speaks with the artist about his work. As the City of...
