Ocula Conversation Kim Tschang-Yeul: Art Without Ego Kim Tschang-Yeul turns 90 this December, following an illustrious career that played a crucial role in bringing post-war Korean painting into the modern and contemporary art canon. Long celebrated for pensive depictions of water drops, the esteemed artist uses dual languages of abstraction and hyperrealism to articulate the psychological traumas...
Ocula Conversation Melati Suryodarmo: Performance Art as Trigger In 2012, Melati Suryodarmo opened Studio Plesungan in her native Surakarta, also known as Solo, the historic royal capital of the Mataram Empire of Java in Indonesia. Suryodarmo had returned to Indonesia from Germany, where she studied Butoh and choreography with Butoh dancer and choreographer Anzu Furukawa, time-based media with avantgarde...
Ocula Report In a Year of No Future: Cyberpunk at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun 22 Nov 2019 : Emily Verla Bovino for Ocula In what was reportedly Tokyo's cloudiest summer in over a century this July, Yoshiji Kigami, key animator of the cyberpunk classic Akira (1988), died in an arson attack that killed 35 people at Kyoto Animation. The attacker lit the fire with a lighter after dousing the studio with gasoline. 'They are always stealing', he explained in the belief 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...
Ocula Conversation Nari Ward Nari Ward has witnessed his neighbourhood transform. Harlem, once neglected and teeming with creative energy but rampant with drugs, crime, and wreckage, has become home to organic groceries, high-end cafés, and high-income housing. It is a symptom of many gentrifying neighbourhoods in New York, whereby high-earning populations replace lower-income...
Ocula Report Net Art's Archival Poetics at the New Museum 23 Feb 2019 : Banyi Huang for Ocula How should net art be classified, historicised, and exhibited, when time has elapsed between its initial production and its latter presentation? On view at the New Museum from 22 January to 26 May 2019, The Art Happens Here: Net Art's Archival Poetics presents 16 seminal artworks from Net Art Anthology, an ambitious two-year initiative undertaken...
Ocula Report New York Autumn Exhibitions: The Lowdown 14 Sep 2018 : Jareh Das for Ocula The autumn exhibition season has officially kicked off in New York, with countless solo and group exhibitions featuring emerging, mid-career, and established artists, with some exhibiting works in the US for the first time. With a host of exhibitions to choose from, including a series of stellar museum exhibitions whose runs are nearing completion,...
Ocula Conversation John Akomfrah Artist The polyphonic has been a guiding principle in John Akomfrah's work. As a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, which was active from 1982 to 1998, Akomfrah produced experimental documentaries and films that responded to growing social turmoil in 1980s Britain. The collective's first film essay, Handsworth Songs (1986), licensed and...
Ocula Report Songs for Sabotage: the 4th New Museum Triennial 20 Apr 2018 : David Xu Borgonjon for Ocula Songs for Sabotage, the fourth edition of the New Museum Triennial (13 February–27 May 2018) curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Alex Gartenfeld, assembles a group of works that, according to the curatorial statement, represent 'models for dismantling and replacing the political and economic networks that envelop today's global youth.' Sabotage...
Ocula Report The Lowdown: shows to see during Armory Week 1 Mar 2018 : Robert Ayers for Ocula Seasoned visitors to New York City's Armory Show (8–11 March 2018) know that the fair is really just the weekend-long cherry on top of the splendid sundae that is the New York art scene and all it has to offer. With so much else to see, here's the lowdown on some of the city's current standout shows.Songs for SabotageNew Museum 13 February–27...
