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...
Para Site is Hong Kong's leading contemporary art centre and one of the oldest and most active independent art institutions in Asia. It produces exhibitions, publications, discursive, and educational projects aimed at forging a critical understanding of local and international phenomena in art and society.
Founded in early 1996 as an artist run space, Para Site was Hong Kong's first exhibition-making institution of contemporary art and a crucial self-organised structure within the city’s civil society, during the uncertain period preceding its handover to Mainland China. Throughout the years, Para Site has grown into a contemporary art centre, engaged in a wide array of activities and collaborations with other art institutions, museums, and academic structures in Hong Kong and the international landscape. In early 2015, Para Site moved to greatly increased premises, in North Point/Quarry Bay. Throughout its history, Para Site's activities have included a range of different formats, among which P/S magazine (1997-2006), a bilingual publication, which was Hong Kong's first visual arts magazine and a central platform for the development of art writing and of a discursive scene in the city and the Curatorial Training Programme (2007-2010). Since 2012, Para Site has been running an International Art Residency Programme and has been organizing an annual international conference. This is accompanied, starting from 2015, by a new educational format aimed at training young curators and other art professionals. Para Site's activities are made possible by the generous support of its patrons, and grants from foundations and the Government of the HKSAR.
Ocula Report ‘Organising Wherever You Are’: Art and Praxis at Para Site Conference 1 Nov 2019 : Sara Garzón for Ocula 'Where do Turkeys originally come from?' asked Sugata Ray, associate professor of South and Southeast Asian art at Berkeley University, as he inquired into the possibility of a post-anthropocentric approach to art history. Ray was one of the 14 invited speakers at Para Site's annual conference in Hong Kong (10–12 October 2019), organised in...
Ocula Report Aichi Triennale Grapples with History and Censorship 30 Aug 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula The 2019 Aichi Triennale (1 August–14 October 2019) is all about mediating polarisations—whether between 'nationalism and globalism, elitism and anti-intellectualism, universalism and relativism, idealism and realism, metropole and periphery, young and old'. The exhibition enacts this mediation by deftly weaving together works employing...
Ocula Report Art Basel in Hong Kong: Exhibitions to See 23 Mar 2019 : Tessa Moldan for Ocula For those visiting during Art Basel in Hong Kong (29–31 March 2019), the smell of fresh paint may still be in the air at the latest heritage conservation project, The Mills, which opened on 16 March to encompass the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textiles (CHAT), joining the ranks with ex-prison complex Tai Kwun, along with Eaton HK—a retro...
Ocula Insight What to Let Go?, the sixth annual Para Site International Conference (22–24 November 2018) organised by Hong Kong non-profit art organisation Para Site, took as its theme the tangled issue of heritage. Fittingly, the conference was held in the JC Cube Auditorium in the recently opened Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong's new public...
Related Press Nam June Paik today ArtReview : 18 October 2019 Koki TanakaHow did you first encounter the work of Nam June Paik?I think it was through TV Buddha, but not sure which one. I just googled it now, and find out there are so many different versions of TV Buddhas by Paik...
Related Press Material World: Para Site Director Cosmin Costinas' Textiles Collection Hong Kong Tatler : 8 April 2019 'Oh, I'm getting all excited now,' Cosmin Costinas exclaims as he flings open a wardrobe in his apartment, revealing hundreds of brightly coloured, intricately patterned textiles stacked on top of each other. 'I think I have over a thousand,' he adds, opening a second cupboard packed with fabrics and gesturing at the reams of material draped around...
Related Press Beyond Art Basel: 9 Non-Profit And Museum Shows To See In Hong Kong Hong Kong Tatler : 19 March 2019 Hong Kong artist Hon Chi-fun, now in his late 90s, and American artist James Turrell, are featured at the Asia Society. Hon is renowned for co-founding the Circle Art Group in the 1960s, a pioneering collective of artists hailed for bringing modern art to Hong Kong.
Related Press Jakarta’s Museum Macan launches with exhibition of who’s who in Eastern and Western art Post Magazine : 29 August 2017 Chinese collectors have so quickly become a mainstay of the art market that it is easy to forget that wealthy Southeast Asian connoisseurs started buying contemporary art decades earlier.
