Jim Lambie and ‘Metal Box (Istanbul)’, 2013

I had just stepped off a 12 hour flight and finished reading Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception’ when I walked into Jim Lambie‘s first Hong Kong solo exhibition at Pearl Lam Gallery, ‘The Flowers of Romance’. It seemed I’d stepped into the pages of the very book I had been reading. The entire exhibition — a collation of site specific installations and new and older works — is charged with energy. The gallery bursts at the seams with movement and pulses with energy in a trippy frenzy of colour and fun.

Short-listed for the 2005 Turner Prize, Glasgow-born Lambie made his name with his floor installation, ‘Zobop’ that he laid down in the Tate Britain and Modern Art Oxford. His Hong Kong exhibition has echoes of that career-defining floor installation. Spread out beneath your feet is ‘The Strokes’. Drawing on the aesthetic of Chinese ink drawings, it is a dizzying display of blue and white lines and curves covering the entire floor.

Lambie used to play with what is now the Teenage Fan Club and DJs today still. It’s evident that music continues to play an integral role in his art. If music could physically manifest this is what it would look like. Like a successor to Kandinsky and Mondrian, he disassembles and reconstructs line and space, manipulating them as if they are the beats of jazz or punk. The space is alive and active — here the floor is the baseline, atop it sit concrete blocks of albums, symbolic and literal melodies.

There’s a synaesthetic and kinetic quality to his pieces; they draw you into another dimension as if stepping into Oz. “This is work that is very much about environment, psychological as well as physical,” explains gallery director, Althea Viafora-Kress. Apolitical, Lambie uses observations from the quotidian and pop culture to inform his work. It is his ability to transform the mundane into something otherworldly, to transport the viewer and alter perception, that has led at least one critic to refer to the artist as a genius.

Although acutely aware of and well versed in art history and art language, his work is not referential of it. Rather he is able to effortlessly break the rules of art language precisely because he already knows them. “This sets him apart from most artists” says Viafora-Kress. “He’s not appropriating pop art, he’s making it.”

I had first met Lambie in a club during Frieze London a couple of years ago (over a few vodkas), a chance encounter that surprisingly he seemed to immediately recollect upon meeting again. With his shaggy long fringe constantly flopping over his face, downcast eyes and shuffle, and self-effacing nature, he strikes one more as more of a ’90s-era emo rocker than a 40 something successful and critically lauded artist. As unpretentious as his work and remarkably down-to-earth, here he takes us through his exhibition and down the rabbit hole into Lambie Land.

‘The Strokes’, 2013

“I’m dealing with sculpture, with ideas and architecture; these are the things that concern me. I can understand why people bring certain references into my work but that’s not what I concern myself with. I’m happy my work opens up conversation or dialogue. I’m not making work that has hard-edged meaning to it. People are really important to me and their stories can be just as relevant to the work itself no matter where I’m coming from.

The Strokes
This floor piece (above), it’s older brother, called ‘Zobop’, started with a hard edge at the corner of the gallery. I take one piece of tape and follow the whole room and repeat with other widths of tape until I find my way to the middle … it’s about undulation and movement in the room. It goes to the very edge of the gallery wall. It’s a massive piece if you think about it, taking up the whole gallery. It appears and disappears. You can forget you’re on it, that it’s even an art work. I guess it’s a kind of reference to the grooves on a record. I DJ. Maybe when I’m mixing up songs and chopping them up to make new sense, I guess that’s where I take my reference from. These concrete blocks (‘Sonic Reducer’ series), the dimensions of them are taken from record shelves at home, for the same kind of records you pick up in junk shops — the stuff people throw out. But they’re soundtracks to people’s lives as well. They’re scattered throughout the gallery to give you a feeling of drifting through the space … of flotsam and jetsam. In a way I guess it’s the way that music drifts through your room, at home. There’s a gentle undulation to them. Along with the floor it just accentuates the feeling of floating and drifting … I like the way that it puts a skin on to the gallery.

From Musician to Artist
I was a terrible musician. ‘I could have been a contender’ but I wasn’t.[Laughs] I’ve always been around music. My dad was a DJ; he had the first mobile discotheque in town. The house was always filled with records – mainly pop records, chart records. There was nothing exotic — no Handel or Mozart. It was pretty much pop and 70s, all readily available and easily disposed of. My formative years were about that — music was always there. But I’ve always been interested in art, and I get tired of being in bands. The thing about being in bands is you’ve got and other 3 or 4 people there, and I got tired of it. What I wanted to do was take up the whole day for myself. I was getting more and more interested in making art than struggling with being in a band, so I made a decision, and here we are today.

Metal Icons
This piece (‘Metal Box’, 2013, below) was inspired by an observation. When bands come and play posters are put up. In Glasgow it rains a lot and the edges of the posters start to peel away and you start to see parts of other posters come through … I enjoyed the aesthetic of it and thought that maybe there was a way to make a version of a painting, or maybe not a painting maybe a sculpture — somehow maybe do both at the same time. So that’s the backdrop to this piece and that’s how my thinking began. This is sheet aluminium, 2mm gauge, so I can bend it by hand at the corners as a reference to the posters. Each sheet is painted a different colour on each side and they’re layered on top of each other.

‘Metal Box (Hyacinth Orchid)’, 2013

Daydreams and Inspiration
An idea just happens and there’s a moment where art just makes itself. I’m not always completely in control until the very end … Sometimes I start with a space or place, and other times I’m inspired by things that happen — simple observations and things like that, or two objects that are placed next to each other and happen to interest me. For me it’s important to keep looking at the world and filtering that and hopefully keep making new works that other people find interesting. This piece (‘Plaza’, 1999/2013, below), I was standing on a road in Glasgow, dreaming in Lambie land and across the road from me was a woman carrying shopping. She had a hole in one of the red bags she was carrying and walked for a bit without realising that a carton of milk started pouring out of the bag. I was just casually observing but thought it was quite a beautiful thing. That’s the backstory to this piece — it’s a dream piece, you know? Some things happen like that for me, and other things I have to think really hard about and problem solve.

‘Plaza’, 1999/2013

Into the Vortex
The floor pieces take you to the very edge of the gallery, but what I wanted to do with this (‘Vortex’, 2013, below) was extend that beyond, almost as if the floor is getting sucked out of the room. It’s a piece of work that’s going beyond the gallery wall now, taking you further into an imagined space. The hard edge of the work is getting played with, getting softened up and extended and turned into a dream object.“

Jim Lambie standing beside ‘Vortex (Into the Void)’, 2013

Jim Lambie: The Flowers of Romance
16 April- 14 May, 2013

Pearl Lam Gallery
6/F Pedder Building
12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2522 1428

The West Kowloon Cultural District complex may still be four (or five) years away from being completed, but the team at M+ museum of art has nonetheless been busy with a programme of exhibitions designed to bring art to the wider Hong Kong community.

Opening recently is the second of the future museum’s nomadic public art exhibitions – aptly named for the current economic climate – ‘M+ Mobile: Inflation!’. Staged on the site of the West Kowloon Promenade, ‘Inflation!’ is a prelude to the opening of M+ bringing together the monumental inflatable sculptures of six notable contemporary artists in a giant amusement sculpture park. The largest contemporary art exhibition ever mounted in Hong Kong, it includes an inflatable pig by Chinese artist Cao Fei, an irreverent full size inflatable replica of Stonehenge by London-based Jeremy Deller, a Kafkaesque installation by local HK artist Tam Wai Ping, and a large pile of merda d’artista by LA-based Paul McCarthy in what looks like a tongue-in-cheek homage to Piero Manzoni. Also exhibiting is Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, China’s Jiakun Architects, and Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno.

The soft large sculptures offer a stark and surreal contrast to Hong Kong’s urban environment, creating a fantastical landscape set against a splendid view of the Victoria Harbour. Unlike a conventional museum or gallery this fun installation allows members of the public to interact with the large scale works, challenging the way we experience art and removing the white cube and barriers of a gallery space. Bring your kids, or borrow a child. Bounce around ‘Sacrilege’, walk through Cao Fei’s large pig, or participate in the staging of Saraceno’s ‘Poetic Cosmos of the Breath’ at selected times throughout the exhibition. On until 9 June, 2013.

Tam Wai Ping, ‘Falling into the Mundane World’

M+ Mobile: Inflation!
Tuesday – Thursday: 12pm to 7pm
Friday – Sunday & Public Holidays: 11am to 8pm
Closed on Mondays
During Art Basel Hong Kong: 10am to 8pm
Free admission
Venue: West Kowloon Cultural District Promenade.
www.mobile-mplus.hk

Chow Chun Fai, ‘Legend of the Fist: China is not Ruled by the Chinese Anyway’, 2012

Long under-appreciated locally, marginalised socially and overshadowed by the talent on the mainland. That’s the oft repeated lament describing artists and the art scene of Hong Kong. But recognition of Hong Kong artists seems to finally be on its way. On Tuesday at the launch of Hong Kong Eye at ArtisTree in Taikoo Place, iconic curator and gallerist TZ ‘Johnson’ Chang declared, “Hong Kong is the best kept secret in the art world, but now the word is out”. It is a satisfying relief to finally see a show dedicated to Hong Kong contemporary art, and Hong Kong Eye couldn’t have come at a better time given the city’s preoccupation with art spurred on by the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong fair, kicking off on May 23.

Founded by David and Serenella Ciclitira of Parallel Contemporary Art, the Eye project was established in 2009 to help promote local artistic talents on an international scale. This is the third Eye exhibition of Asian art, following Korean Eye and Indonesian Eye, both previously held at the Saatchi Gallery where Hong Kong Eye also debuted last year, drawing over 20,000 visitors over a five week period.

Although a bit of mixed bag and exhibited in a space that seems like an oversized shirt for a few of the works, the larger space at ArtisTree certainly does the exhibition as a whole more justice than last year’s display at the Saatchi, which so cramped that only the most monumental — a wooden interactive army tank by Amy Cheung — was visible. Presented by Prudential Corporation Asia, and curated by Chang, Serenella Ciclitira and Saatchi’s Nigel Hurst, the Hong Kong show is an expanded version of London’s featuring over 60 pieces by 24 Hong Kong based artists, and showcasing works in a variety of media including installation, sculptures, video and drawing.

The only common thread tying the works together is geography. But then, the point of the show is to provide a general introduction to the Hong Kong contemporary art landscape, so to speak. It is an eclectic scrapbook of Hong Kong artists, with works reflecting their experiences and their response to the city, its history, society, and politics. There are works drawing on classic Chinese ink painting, such as Leung Kui Ting‘s unfurling ink landscapes; traditional craft, such as Kum Chi Keung‘s bamboo birdcage; film, as seen in Chow Chun Fai‘s ‘subtitled’ reproduced film-still paintings, which deal with Hong Kong’s culture and identity; and the urban. But the show is not without humour or the absurd. A life-sized distorted red Hong Kong taxi sits just ahead of the entrance, plucked from an Alice in Wonderland dream by artist Amy Cheung. Beside it, a large plush prostrate Mr Potato Head figure, LA-based Adrian Wong‘s ‘In Search of a Primordial Idiolect IV’, emits repetitive bovine moans and dialogue that resound throughout the exhibition space. Portuguese-born Joao Vasco Paiva brings the urban Hong Kong experience into the exhibition space with a kinetic sculpture of MTR turnstiles, reducing the mechanical quotidian experience of commuting on the subway to the abstract. Kingsley Ng‘s ‘Musical Loom’ echoes hauntingly and theremin-like from the other end of the exhibition space. The whole feels like a string of pieced together mini theatre sets where one can visit and get lost in a cacophony of sounds, shapes and colours.

Despite the broadness, the exhibition aims to shine a light on some of the work from Hong Kong and stimulate interest in and discussion about the relatively unknown Hong Kong art scene. But more importantly, it will hopefully foster more support for art and artistic development in Hong Kong, which is very much needed if the city is to have a thriving creative scene. One does leave with a sense of optimism for Hong Kong’s art future. “I hope it makes a statement about Hong Kong art today and the promise it has. But most of all that it gives Hong Kong a sense of identity and character that makes it different from across the border in the north and other parts of Asia”, says Chang.

The ArtisTree exhibition will run until 31 May, 2013 and will be complemented by another smaller exhibition to take place at the Mandarin Oriental‘s Clipper Lounge in Central from 6-26 May.

Hong Kong Eye
1 to 31 May
ArtisTree, 1/F, Cornwall House, TaiKoo Place, Island East, Hong Kong

6 to 26 May
Clipper Lounge, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, 5 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong
Admission to the exhibition is free

Amy Cheung, ‘Down the Rabbit Hole ‘TAXI!’ says, Alice’, 2004

Joao Vasco Paiva with his installation, ‘Counterpoints’, 2011

Kingsley Ng, ‘Musical Loom’, 2005

Angela Su

As published on ocula.com, 9 May 2013

Only two weeks to go before the inaugural Art Basel HK kicks off and it feels like the circus is coming to town. Inboxes are flooded with invites to art-related and art-themed bars, restaurants, new art clubs, pop-ups, collaborations and art retail and luxury events, ready to capitalize on the anticipated flood of international art visitors to the city. Art, art, art everywhere! What a difference a few years makes.

Held from 21-25 May Art Basel HK comes two weeks after Frieze NY and will be followed by the Venice Biennale, with a week rest before Art Basel opens in Basel. It will be an exhausting month of art, and with more and more art fairs and events crowding the annual art calendar, galleries and dealers will increasingly have to become choosier over which fairs to attend. But the importance of having a reach beyond the West, and a presence in a rapidly growing Asian market — particularly for European galleries doing business in an increasingly fiscally austere environment– is not lost on many international galleries, with a number already opening branches in Hong Kong and investing in building an audience in the region.

Demand for booths at the transformed Hong Kong fair has been great and countless galleries didn’t make the cut with the selection committee. The number of exhibitors has been whittled down from a total of 266 at the 2012 Art HK fair to 245 this year, allowing for larger booths and larger works. It will be the “strongest ever line up, anywhere in Asia to date”, says Asia Director Magnus Renfrew, “with works from emerging young artists to the modern masters of the early 20th and 21st centuries on show”. Although the list of galleries reads like the Debrett’s of the art world — lots of familiar established blue chippers and important heavy hitters — there are also a few newcomers this year including Tina Keng gallery from Taipei, New York’s 303 and Peter Blum galleries, and Wentrup and Johnen Galerie from Berlin, OMR from Mexico and Nara Roesler from São Paulo.

Like Art Basel Miami Beach, which emphasises galleries from the Americas, and Art Basel, which largely features European galleries, Art Basel HK will stay rooted in the region and maintain a distinctly Asian flavour. Asian galleries will make up 50% of the exhibitor line-up, and the fair will feature 28 galleries with exhibition spaces in Hong Kong, including Platform China, Blindspot Gallery, Gallery Exit, and Grotto Fine Art as well of course as Western galleries who have recently set up in HK. Art Basel Director, Marc Spiegler, stresses that, “The selection confirms Art Basel’s commitment to Asia. The Hong Kong fair will look very different to Art Basel Miami Beach and Art Basel,” a prospect that many are looking forward to and counting on. “It will be a refreshing treat to Art Basel followers worldwide!” states gallerist Katie de Tilly of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. “There is such a small presence and understanding of Asian art in the Western art fairs.”

The fair will be divided up into four sectors: Galleries, the main wheeling-and-dealing sector of the show with modern and contemporary galleries; Insights, which will present 47 galleries from Asia and Asia Pacific with specially developed curatorial projects; Discoveries, a showcase of solo or two-person exhibitions by emerging contemporary artists from around the world; and Encounters, a presentation of large-scale installation pieces from around the world, which will become a key feature of the fair. This year will include works galleries including ARNDT (Germany) who will present a 120 part sculpture by Jitish Kallat; Long March Gallery (Beijing), who will show a suspended sculpture by MadeIn Company; Edouard Malingue Gallery (HK) who will showcase a neon text installation by Laurent Grasso; and Kerlin Gallery (Dublin) who will showcase a new commission by British artist Liam Gillick.

A parallel program of talks and panel discussions, long a feature of the Art Basel fairs, will also be presented in collaboration with Asia Art Archive (AAA); the Asia Society; and M+, Hong Kong’s future museum for visual culture, which is currently exhibiting an installation of monumental inflatables at the site of the future West Kowloon Cultural District promenade. Para/Site Art Space and Spring Workshop, will offer an associated program of events throughout Hong Kong that will take place during the week of the shows. Hong Kong Eye, a curated group show of contemporary Hong Kong art which opened earlier this month and debuted at the Saatchi gallery in December, will be showing at ArtisTree until the end of May. The Art Basel program will also be supplemented by gallery tours hosted by the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association; Fotan Studios, a complex of industrial buildings housing dozens of local artists’ studios; and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which will be featuring an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art. Meanwhile, for an off the beaten track look at the Hong Kong creative community, check out Chai Wan Mei: Art and Design Weekend, which will take place in the industrial suburb of Chai Wan on 24-25 May. The weekend will consist of exhibitions, performances, pop-up installations, video screenings, design, fashion, and more.

It will be an exciting year not only for many galleries exhibiting at a Hong Kong fair for the first time, but also for Hong Kong which has been itching for greater international cultural visibility. The Art Basel brand’s global reach and reputation will no doubt provide greater exposure for local artists and institutions. Many hope it will also kick-start this city’s cultural evolution, stepping in where Hong Kong’s politicians and wanna-be Medicis have failed to step up. “Art is becoming an international language and at this particular time we’re developing an artistic and cultural scene in Hong Kong,” says HK artist and architect, William Lim. “It’s a great opportunity and a great time.”

Published in FRAMED magazine, September 2011

Angela Su, ‘The Hartford Girl and Other Stories’, 2012. Image courtesy of Hong Kong Eye

Hong Kong artist Angela Su’s intricate anatomical ink drawings attracted scores of admirers at Art HK a couple of years ago. This year she did it again with her contribution to Hong Kong Eye, a group show of contemporary Hong Kong art on now at ArtisTree. Her works in the exhibition, ‘Deliver me from all my automatic reactions and restore me to my true freedom’ and ‘The Hartford Girl and Other Stories’, explore representations of the body in states of pain and distress, both in literature and to her own person; it is her own body in the Hartford Girl covered in the pink welts of ink-less calligraphic tattoos that resemble lashes from a whip.

The diminutive artist is arresting, with a severe black bob and bold oversized glasses; she’s a little bit goth and a little bit S&M mistress– aesthetics that bleed through into her work. With a background in biochemistry, the Hong Kong artist draws on inspiration from old medical books and literature, and the works of de Sade, Deleuze and Octave Mirbeau to create dark gothic hybrids of human anatomy, Victorian medical and torture instruments, and the world of flora and insects. She invents a cabinet of curiosities challenging the way we see the body, enchanting and repelling the viewer at the same time. Previously featured at the Shenzhen Biennale of Art and Urbanism and the Sydney Biennale, at the time of our catch-up the artist had just secured a six-month residency in Penang to continue developing her work. She chatted with Framed over a pot of tea about art in Hong Kong and her beautiful macabre-inspired work.

BOLD BEGINNINGS
“I always wanted to do art. In Hong Kong the system prefers that you study literature, finance or science. I initially chose science, which I love. It was a natural path and also an easy way to please my parents. If I pursued art, my parents would have worried about my inability to support myself. After I did science, I decided it was time for me to take up art, which was my lifetime wish. I worked part-time and paid for everything myself. It was a great switch for me … I was doing representational and figurative paintings at art school and thought that was just what I was supposed to do. Then I came across a book called The Pictorial Archive of Natural Science. It contained all sorts of engravings and woodcuts from anatomy, astronomy, science and botany. It was fascinating. I have always loved anatomical drawings, so that’s what initially inspired my style of work.

WRITING ON THE WALL
I came across Deleuze’s work whilst doing a series and the book seemed to really complement what I was doing. It was about pain and desire without the interference of other organs. I was also interested in de Sade and began to read more about masochism and how it can be subversive and empowering … Much of the writing incorporated in my works is from a book by Octave Mirbeau called ‘The Torture Garden’. It was written at the turn of last century about a couple going to China and witnessing torture rituals. There’s a beautiful garden nourished by the flesh of the people tortured and executed. It was a very intense novel for that time, but a beautiful one and I wanted to somehow incorporate it in my work.

‘My gown is no longer all white lace because in tearing it the son of heaven left a little rosy stain’, 2011

SCAR TISSUE
The first tattoo I got was because I was curious about the pain. I didn’t care what the design was. I went to Ricky’s Tattoos in Wanchai and got it done by this cool 70 year-old guy. It was quite an experience! This new one in white ink, like a scar, signifies the termination of a relationship and I wanted to put something on my body symbolising it.

MOVING PICTURES
I’m looking at experimenting with animation next. I think it would be an interesting transition to develop my drawings into animation. I’ve worked on a short film before, but it was really just a series of stills fading in and out. That work was shown at Exit Gallery last year. Next year I will also be working on another project, but it’s still a secret. It may be a performance piece, or something more experimental. I’m not sure yet. We’ll see.

ART IN HK
Space is a problem for artists in Hong Kong. If you’re working on a video you can get around the issue. But if like me, you work with paintings or drawings, you need a large space. I had a studio in Wanchai and it was rented out to artists at a low rate but the artists get kicked out after a few years to make space for fresh graduates. Rent is so expensive in Hong Kong so studios are a problem. Property prices are sky high so I don’t know what will happen with young artists. An artist’s residency programme would be a great idea to support artists. It can be hard to gauge what’s happening outside Hong Kong in the emerging contemporary art scene. I flip through art magazines to get a sense of it, but it’s not the same. You see a tiny picture and you have to imagine what it’s like. Down the track with West Kowloon, I think the art experience in Hong Kong will change.

GRAVE AMBITION
A friend told me about the Penang residency. It’s for six months in the middle of a tropical forest and I’m looking forward to the change. Maybe I’ll start drawing more insects and plants, but I’d also like to explore some tombstone carvings in Penang. There’s a course where you can be an apprentice to a master carver. I want to look at different ideas, be more relaxed and come back to this intense city with a new perspective.”

Angela Su in front of her ‘Hong Kong Eye’ works

‘Deliver me from all my automatic reactions and restore me to my true freedom’, 2012

‘The Iron Maiden’, 2010

Tsang Kin-wah, ‘MomFDad’, 2013

A record number of art exhibitions are opening in Hong Kong to coincide with this week’s Art Basel HK launch. Among them is Lehmann Maupin who recently previewed their first group show, ‘Writings Without Borders’, by the renowned international curator Herve Mikaeloff.

Featuring the work of 11 artists from around the world, including Barbara Kruger, Tracey Emin, Hong Kong artists Pak Sheun Chuen and Tsang Kin-wah, the exhibition gives a broad overview of working with language and signs. “Hong Kong is a city where the world meets; a city where many languages are spoken, read and written. Streets in Hong Kong are full of signs in different languages. This was the source of the exhibition’s title”, says co curator Pierre Lefort.

Highlights include Kin-wah’s William Morris inspired decorative screen print that draws you in with its repetitive hypnotic florid patterns, only to confront you with a litany of harsh obscenities as you draw closer, designed to challenge and provoke questions about the material obsession of contemporary society. Eli Nugroho, a participant in this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale Indonesian pavilion, created a series of snapshot embroideries drawn from mundane photos of various trips abroad. Hung together as a series they look like pages of a visual diary, documenting his everyday life. Then there’s the work of Kruger whose previous career as a designer and picture editor in fashion magazines left her well equipped for a career as a conceptual artist, using text to criticise mass media and consumerism and explore questions of identity and gender.

Join the Pedder-philes at Pedder Building tonight from 6pm for the official opening of this and a slew of other gallery exhibitions including Gagosian, Pearl Lam Gallery, Simon Lee, Hanart and Ben Brown Gallery.

On view until 20 July 2013

Lehmann Maupin Gallery
407 Pedder Building
12 Pedder Street, Central

Eko Nugroho, ‘The World Words series’, 2012

Zheng Guogo, ‘Hong Kong”, 2009

Co-curator Pierre Lefort in front of Shirazeh Houshiary’s ‘Chasm’, 2012

The entrance to Lee Kit’s Hong Kong pavilion. Possibly one the most popular photo backdrops of the biennale.

Lee Kit is everywhere at the moment. His work has been popping up at art fairs, including several booths at Art Basel HK; international solo exhibitions from Beijing to Palermo, and group shows at MoMA in New York, and the New Museum; and the pages of countless newspapers and art journals. There’s a lot of attention on the 35 year old Hong Kong born and now Taipei based artist, as would befit a representing artist at the 55th Venice Biennale.

Kit made a name for himself in Hong Kong with his hand painted tablecloths and tea towels, incorporating them into everyday activities such as picnics and lunches with friends. In the past decade, the Chinese University of Hong Kong graduate has built an impressive following of collectors, curators, and critics who herald him as one of Hong Kong’s most significant young artists. “He’s been continuing with the same thing and hasn’t changed his work for commercial tastes. It’s quiet, non pretentious, and with no ego,” commented Rotterdam based curator Defne Ayas.

His new site-specific work for Hong Kong’s Venice Biennale pavilion, ‘You (you)’, is a continuation of his exploration of the quotidian. The installation feels somehow quiet and solitary, like walking into a room that has been lived in but recently vacated, with remnants of the previous inhabitant’s life left behind. The experience is a little voyeuristic, an emotional limbo of sorts.

Outside in the concrete courtyard, suspended on an overhanging wash-line, one of Kit’s pastel coloured towels blows gently in the breeze. Before you step into the indoor installation, two security booths and a multi-coloured umbrella complete the outdoor mise-en-scene. They are so obviously Hong Kong (in fact, they were shipped over) yet in the Venetian environment, with the canal framed by a doorway and another multi-coloured umbrella, the effect is displacing. “You are uncertain about the things you’re looking at”, comments Lars Nittve, Director of M+, the pavilion’s co-presenter. It’s difficult to determine where the installation ends and reality begins. What’s part of the installation, and what isn’t? A cigarette bin in the courtyard is stuffed full of visitors’ cigarette butts and has stacks of empty glasses piled atop it on the opening day. Ummm … is it just a cigarette bin, or part of the installation? (The latter, as it turned out). Inside, a vacuum cleaner lies on the floor, as though someone absent mindedly walked away from what they were doing and forgot about packing away the appliance. Objects are scattered seemingly randomly throughout the two rooms; a bed; a table; some napkins left forgotten on the ground; found objects gleaned from hotel rooms and trips overseas. But the whole is uncluttered, modest and simple.

Overall, the work has a painterly composition, betraying Kit’s academic background in painting. “I feel like I’m making a big painting”, Kit explains on the eve of the pavilion’s opening in Venice. “The show itself is like a big canvas. But the way I paint here is by placing objects and making compositions in the space.” The installation prods the viewer to think and engage, rather than impose a particular interpretation. “This is not the type of exhibition that is in your face. It doesn’t give its message right away”, continues Nittve.

It takes several visits to settle into the work to get the emotional gist of the piece, but once you surrender to it, the space becomes a quiet oasis of contemplation, a welcome respite from the heady madness of the biennale.

I caught up with Kit in Venice on an early morning before the crowds descended upon the pavilion, to chat about his work and life as an artist.

Check out the Hong Kong pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, on until 24 November, 2013.
http://www.labiennale.org

INTERVIEW WITH LEE KIT

From Painted Beginnings to Installations
“In this show I used materials I collected from Sharjah, or Italy, Taiwan … I don’t know how it evolved to this stage, but I feel like I’m making a big painting. The show itself is like a big canvas. But the way I paint here is by placing objects and making compositions in the space; they’re not random. Well, somehow they’re random, like those napkins on the floor. I placed them on a small table and the wind from the open door blew them away on the floor. I wanted to bring some energy into this room, because the setting is too regular.

Back in the early days, around 2002, when I was still studying in the university — it was the time I started making those hand-painted fabrics and patterns — I thought, I want to get away from painting. It’s very strange, I enjoy making stretchers by myself, but I don’t want to mount any paintings on it. I enjoy painting, but I just don’t want to see a canvas mounted on a stretcher and then hang them on the wall. So, then I evolved to making stretchers and pantings separately. One is more my hobby, making stretchers, and the other is making the hand-painted fabrics. Then I realized I was concerned about how the frame thinks, because painting is basically a frame (it’s contained). I think what is more important is the mindset, which is also a frame. At the same time I started to use my so called paintings in picnics or lunches with friends, or as bedsheets. It was during SARS in 2003 … The hand-painted cloth to me is like my diary but no one can read it. At most maybe kids could tell whether I was happy or sad in a certain moment from the colour I used.

Being and Nothingness with You (you)
I was curious to explore certain emotional states, like sometimes we feel empty. Sometimes you wake up at night without any reason, and you cant get back to sleep. You sit at home, it’s very quiet, calm, but you don’t feel happy. You don’t feel peace inside … You feel nothing … I want to capture these moments. For example that corner with the empty table, it’s about missing someone, not being able to control that moment. It’s neither happy nor sad … It’s (the installation) not about the historical or cultural content, or the space.

In this project, I had a few elements I already decided to use. For example, the security booth with the umbrella. This was an image in my mind for 8 years. I saw a security booth like this in Singapore. I just stood there staring at it. The image stayed with me for a long time … When I first came here for a site visit, I decided to put the booth here with an umbrella, and then the carpet, because I wanted to do vacuuming here, so I needed carpet. It sounds illogical and silly to do a show like this, to put carpets down just because I want to do the vacuuming. I trusted that there must be something in this activity, that people would feel something when they see a security booth with an umbrella at the entrance.

Hong Kong Art
The Hong Kong art scene is very small. We all know each other and we’re like a family. We seldom thought about how our career should go. We focused more on our own practice and making works rather than thinking about which gallery we should work with. I find it funny that we don’t have that intention to show our works outside or in big name galleries. But at the same time it did happen to us. We started getting more and more shows every year. A few artists haven’t moved out of Hong Kong but work a lot out of Hong Kong, like Tozer Pak. And me, I moved to Taipei … If you work outside and come back to Hong Kong it’s like you become a star. Like several years ago when Tozer Pak represented Hong Kong at the Biennale. He started having a lot of shows outside.

Taipei Times
I had a studio in an industrial space (Fotan, Hong Kong) and I worked and lived there. Now in Taipei I use my apartment as my studio. In Hong Kong I had to push myself to be quiet; I would lock my door to be quiet. I think that’s why in some of my work, even smoking, cooking, or eating my lunch becomes part of my work. I tell myself to slow down… But being an artist isn’t just a career; it’s a practice, and your life. You don’t have a choice, just like if you are a woman, or you are a man. We can’t decide, we can’t change it.

There’s no huge significant difference with the works I produce in Taipei, but the mode of working is different. Maybe I’m the only one who can feel it, because the outcome is the same. But life is better in Taipei. I’m able to have a clear mind looking at Hong Kong from a certain distance. I don’t have to get mad about everything that’s happening in Hong Kong; not just in the art scene, but the society in general.”

Among the guests who attended the pavilion opening were (left to right): UCCA Director, Philip Tinari; Indonesian Gallerist Monica Gunawan; and the pre-Raphaelite lovely, Director of Lehmann Maupin HK, Courtney Plummer

(L-R) Shideh Shaygan; M+ Curator, Tobias Berger; and Jay Parmanand

A Dinner Celebrating Lee Kit
On the eve of the Hong Kong pavilion opening, esteemed art world figures and friends, including collector Uli Sigg; director of UCCA, Philip Tinari; curators Defne Ayas and Kaspar König; and director of Mori Art Museum, Fumio Nanjo, braved the chilly Venetian weather and gathered to celebrate Lee Kit’s work for a magical evening at a transformed Venice Fish Market. The dinner tables and venue were littered with tell-tale Lee Kit motifs and the artist’s hand could be seen all around the beautifully lit venue.

Magical dinner in honour of Lee Kit at the Venice Fish Market

Rugged up against the teeth chattering chill with my entertaining dinner companion, Kaspar König.

With Lee Kit

Rudolf Stingel, ‘Untitled (Franz West)’, 2011

One of my favourite exhibitions during the 55th Venice Biennale is Italian-born, New York-based Rudolf Stingel‘s solo at the Francois Pinault owned Palazzo Grassi.

The exhibition takes wall-to-wall carpeting to a whole new level, as every inch of floor and wall space (that’s 50,000 square feet of floor and 30,000 square feet of wall in case you were wondering) is covered in red kilim rug digitally printed carpet.

It is the largest ever solo exhibition for Stingel in Europe. A selection of over thirty paintings from collections around the world, including Pinault’s, are brought together in the magnificently carpeted three-storey palazzo. In addition to his abstract and textured paintings, a series of Stingel’s photorealist works — portraits, landscapes, and religious iconographic paintings — including a stellar large portrait of friend, Franz West, who died last year, are also on display.

The site-specific installation fuses histories and narratives. Layered atop late 18th century classical Venetian architecture, the Oriental pattern of the carpet references Venice’s history as part of the Byzantine Empire. But it is also an allusion to Sigmund Freud’s study in Vienna, characterised by the collection of Oriental rugs covering every possible surface. The result in the palazzo is intended to inspire a feeling of ‘containment’ as one embarks on “a trip into the Ego with its repressions and illusions, where each painting contributes to forming a topography of the unconscious”, states curator Elena Geuna. In any case, this is art moving beyond the ‘white cube’.

With no point of reference for where the exhibition begins or ends, the effect is overwhelming, and a little disorientating as you make your way through the labyrinthine space, from one room to another. It’s an impressive all-encompassing sensorial, and sensational, experience.

On until 31 December, 2013. Don’t visit Venice without seeing this!

Palazzo Grassi

Palazzo Grassi

Rudolf Stingel, ‘Untitled’, 2013

Rudolf Stingel, ‘Untitled’, 2013

Rudolf Stingel, ‘Rudolf Stingel’, 2013

Mariko Mori. Photo by David Sims

On the two occasions that I meet with Tokyo-born, New York-based artist Mariko Mori, she is dressed in austere white, in fabrics and a cut that looks chaste if not a little severe. It’s her trademark look, white on white, like a living, breathing Robert Ryman work. With her black hair pulled back into two buns, a soft soothing cadence to her speech, and a quiet serenity that governs her every gesture and movement, there is something ethereal and otherworldly about Mori. She resembles a high priestess, or perhaps more deliberately a miko, a Shinto shrine maiden or shaman. There’s a ghostly elusiveness about her too, as if she can slip out of reach at any moment. She is in fact, the embodiment of her work, which often deals with exactly that; the ethereal, the galactic, the impalpable.

Mori’s projects aim to inspire in people a new consciousness that celebrates our existing balance with nature. For her Royal Academy show in London last year, her exhibition, ‘Rebirth’, which included works produced over the past decade, explored death, rebirth, nature, consciousness and the cosmos. She tries to make the invisible visible, the incomprehensible comprehensible, to convey all of existence, our universe, in one exhibition. It couldn’t get any broader. Or any simpler. Her current works are infused with a cold, almost restrained, elegant simplicity.

A former fashion model in Japan, Mori hotfooted it to London in the late 1980s to study art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, later relocating to New York. The early part of her career drew on her experience as a model and involved lots of dress-up performances for transformative self-portraits in the vein of Cindy Sherman. They were the kind of predictable futuristic Japanime cyborg thing that deliberately drew on Japanese cultural and gender stereotypes, such as ‘Play With Me’ (1994) and ‘Birth of a Star’ (1995). But by the late 1990s she moved from performative photography into nonfigurative sculptural installation, juxtaposing contrasting languages of technology and spirituality while maintaining an aesthetic steeped in the tradition of minimalism and conceptual art.

Mori is fascinated with ancient cultures and traditions, both Eastern and Western, using technology to pay homage to these often forgotten lost worlds – from Japanese Jomon culture to Stonehenge to the entire cosmos. Her celebrated work, ‘Tom Na H-Iu II’, a futuristic monolith inspired by the ancient Celts, stands sentry, a 4.5m lone glass standing stone, resembling a left-over part of a stone circle. It pulses with coloured LED light as though it is breathing, transfixing the viewer with its hypnotic rhythm. The source of the coloured light are electronic particles, neutrinos, that are emitted during the explosive death of a star, and transmitted via internet by the Super-Kamiokande observatory at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Cosmic Ray Research in Japan.

The artist’s commitment to the creation of slick technological site-specific installations in nature, has resulted in an ongoing project, a monumental permanent installation, ‘Primal Rhythm’, rooted to the landscape of Seven Light Bay of Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan. The installation consists of a sun pillar and an egg-shaped ‘Tida Dome’ that changes colour with tidal movements. Mori has chosen exact coordinates so that at the time of the winter solstice, the shadow of the sun pillar will cast over the ‘Tida Dome’ — a symbolic union of celestial and terrestrial, and masculine and feminine.

This is work devoid of cynicism, or irony; it’s dead serious, so don’t expect a punch line at the end of it. In an era where there is witty navel-gazing contemporary art aplenty, swelling with absurdities, jokes and references, her work may take a bit of adjusting to. But once you do, perhaps you’ll get that little bit closer to understanding her message of contemplation and communion with nature.

I caught up with her in Hong Kong on the eve of her performance for Asia Society and Kreemart‘s gala dinner during Art Basel Hong Kong week, and chatted about culture, consciousness, and the importance of ‘onesness’.

Mariko Mori, ‘Tom Na H-Iu II’, 2006. Photo by: Richard Learoyd

INTERVIEW WITH MARIKO MORI

post-ism: Your work seems to have moved from performative photography and a preoccupation with technology and cyborgs into nonfigurative sculptural installation and in particular large site-specific installations. What prompted this shift?

Mariko Mori: Around 1996-97 I was creating a work using Buddhist iconography, and I started to do research on Eastern philosophy. And although I was using my own body to produce artwork at the time, I felt that I needed to talk about deeper consciousness. I found when I wanted to express ideas on deeper consciousness I no longer needed a body to create an artwork. I think that was a shift in the transaction of producing non-figurative work.

Technology plays an integral role in the production and creation of your work, yet a lot of the work has a spiritual element drawing from the past, especially ancient cultures. How do you reconcile these elements in your work?

After ‘Wave UFO’, which is an interactive work, my research was to find a universal language and universal ideas. When I visited a prehistoric site I realized that back then we didn’t have any cultural boundaries between different continents; we shared universal ideas. The prehistoric people were deeply rooted in nature and had strong ties with nature. I thought this is something I want to share with people in contemporary society, to remind us how we’re connected to nature, how our ancestors honoured nature and respected nature. But I also wanted to use contemporary language; the universal language of today is science and technology. I wanted to utilise science and technology to remind us of our connection with nature.

You talk about universality as a means for people to connect to you work, yet you’re constantly referred to as a Japanese artist, one of Japan’s most significant artists. But you left Japan a long time ago. How do you see yourself? Is Japanese-ness still important in your work?

Hmmm…. I’ll say yes. I think it’s very important to keep your traditional culture in order to respect other cultures. You recognize a difference, but you also recognize something that we share. On the surface of culture you see the differences, but essentially, on a fundamental level, all cultures are connected. The evidence of that can be witnessed in prehistoric culture and how our culture has evolved from prehistoric culture. We’re all part of the same human species. We belong to this earth. The idea of unity is quite important to remember.

Our society is part of life on earth. It’s a power of 10. The earth is part of the solar system; the solar system is part of the galaxy; and the galaxy is part the universe. This universe could be part of a multi universe … we are all connected. Our consciousness makes divisions between the inner and outer world. It’s only a perception in our mind. Every world is part of a whole. We share the one planet. In that sense we are all connected and we’re part of a whole.

Do you have a specific premeditated idea for a project or do your ideas evolve organically through your research and readings?

I think there’s always a path. When I get to some place, I discover something that leads to another, and that continues. So, it’s an endless learning process.

What’s the symbolic significance of white for you? It’s prevalent in your work and in your image.

I feel it’s the closest to light. Every being seems to me to be light, kind of invisible light. It’s a source of energy. You don’t see it physically, but life equals light.

How would you describe the purpose or message of your work?

I try to remember and remind of the idea of Oneness in my work. The performance at Asia Society is called ‘Oneness’ also. I really want to share this idea to remind us of this.

That performance draws on the tradition of the tea ceremony. Can you tell me why you’ve chosen to incorporate that into your work?

The tea ceremony is something I’ve been studying. It’s a window for me to study my own traditional culture. The most important thing I found in the tea ceremony is respect for the other; in a way it’s like the Buddha serving tea to another Buddha. It’s creating a space where you take out all your preconceptions or social structure and every day life and you enter into this space where you serve tea honoring the other person. It’s a simple gesture, but it’s a fundamental relationship between one and the other. I wanted to utilise this idea, so I invited a tea ceremony practitioner to my performance (Eliza). She’s Hong Kong Chinese but we were in the same class in New York. The ceremony was founded by a tea master in the 16th century, but the form hasn’t changed since. It continued to develop in contemporary society too.

Mariko Mori, ‘Dream Temple’, 1997-1999. Photo by: Richard Learoyd

Mariko Mori, ‘Wave UFO’, 1999-2003. Photo by: Richard Learoyd

Mariko Mori, ‘Transcircle’, 2004

Mariko Mori, performance of ‘Oneness’ at Asia Society gala dinner, HK. Photo courtesy of Stefano Todiglione

Well, Art Basel Hong Kong has been and gone, summer art fair season has ended, and vacation is upon us. There have been plenty of posts on the Basel brand’s inaugural HK fair, so why add another to the pile? Really I just wanted an excuse to post lots and lots of pics of my favourite art works and events (I hear that’s the thing with blogging).

Over 60,000 visitors came in from all over the world to view, and buy, works from over 3000 artists. Paul Kasmin gallery director, Bethanie Brady, noted that there were “a lot more Europeans this year. And they’ve really amped up their VIPs”. Russian collectors Roman Abramovic, Dasha Zhukova, and Maria Baibakova were spotted at the fair, as was the director of Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Jeffrey Deitch, Indonesian collector Budi Tek, and Kate Moss, whose presence caused a frenzy of iPhone activity.

Booths were bigger this year, making room for more works and larger feature pieces, and quality was taken up a notch. “In fact”, commented an artist friend, “quality is up all around. The high end was always good, but now you have the mid range and lower range both taken up several notches too. Problem is, now you don’t have a big pile of c*#p to compare the good works against”. Not the worst of problems to have. There were so many things I wanted to take home, a few already sold by the time I sauntered up to the dealers. There was still a substantial amount of the usual brand artists on offer — Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst — to appease an ever brand hungry Hong Kong and Asian market, but also much on offer from newer emerging artists, both Asian and International. All in all, despite some truly horrific weather marring the collector preview, the five day fair resulted in reportedly strong sales and I hear quite a number of happy gallerists.

If you didn’t make it to what was the biggest and most influential art fair in Hong Kong, here’s my dispatch from Berlin on my favourite pieces, booths and events, plus who attended.

Adrian Wong’s Absolut Art Bureau Bar at Fringe Club
Entering through a bathroom where a liveried attendant spritzes you ceremoniously with perfume, you step downstairs into Hong Kong’s iconic Fringe Club, a former ice factory, and into a fantastical world of animatronic furry creatures playing musical instruments on stage; uniformed actors manning the bar and entrance; a septuagenarian Chinese opera singer; duck infused and monkey picked oolong tea martinis; and tanks full of fish, frogs, and sharks (this resulted in a bloody performance on one night as the sharks devoured the frogs), not to mention a packed crowd of Hong Kong’s artists and designers. This was Wun Dun, Hong Kong artist Adrian Wong‘s immersive art installation bar for Absolut Art Bureau, the brand’s fifth of these experiences. Relocating to Hong Kong eight years ago, Wong has since earned the reputation as the city’s most ‘loveable oddball’. The installation, which drew on Hong Kong’s layered and rich history and blending of cultures, certainly upheld this reputation.

Adrian Wong at his Absolut Art Bureau Bar installation

The Chapman Brothers at Whitecube
I dropped by Whitecube to check out Jake and Dinos Chapman‘s latest offering of tiny Nazis, crucified Ronald McDonalds, cannibals, zombies and defaced decrepit portraits of Dorian Gray. “Are you shocked? Is it controversial?” I asked one visitor. “No, it’s just put me off my cheeseburgers,” was the answer. Ahh, contemporary art. Nothing is sacred, nothing shocks anymore.

As the younger Chapman, Jake, guided the press on a preview of his solo exhibition at the start of the week, he waxed lyrical about existentialism, the Freudian death drive, and why contemporary art is a joke, with the flair and drama of a Wagnerian opera. All present were accommodated with a string of quotable quotes. “The job of the artist is to make people ugly”, he declared, and “happiness is overrated”. However, at the end of one interview, Chapman sheepishly asked, “Was that alright?”. Not so diabolical after all. Even enfants terribles need to be loved it seems.

Jake Chapman peeks through the diorama of ‘The Sum of All Evil’ at Whitecube

Asia Society Gala Dinner
What would Art Basel be without the parties? Well, there were plenty of them this time around compared to the fair’s last few years as Art HK. The week of art parties kicked off with a dinner at the Asia Society in collaboration with Kreemart. Created by New York art dealer Raphael Castoriano, Kreemart marries art with desert to create lavish ‘art happenings’. Previous artist collaborators have included Los Carpinteros (with a cannibalistic feast for those who have a sweet tooth), and Marina Abramovic (it was a Gogolian affair where guests got to walk away with the artist’s chocolate nose), and Maurizio Cattelan. This dinner saw Japanese conceptual artist Mariko Mori present an esoteric and ethereal tea ceremony, with musical accompanied by her composer hubby, Ken Ikeda. Check out the performance below and my interview with Mori in a previous post, .

The gala dinner was attended by an array of art world figures, including Takashi Murakami, Arne Glimcher of Pace Gallery, Chinese artist Zhang Fengzhi, Mori Art Museum‘s Fumio Nanjo, gallerist Paul Kasmin, David Maupin of Lehmann Maupin gallery, and W Magazine editor-in-chief Stefano Tonchi.

Mariko Mori performs ‘Oneness’ at Asia Society gala dinner

Raphael Castoriano (left, back row) with Mariko Mori (front centre) and her performers

Para/Site
Hong Kong non-profit art space, Para/Site, was once again present at the art fair (last year arts patron Yana Peel and I curated Art Flat in collaboration with Para/Site for its booth), this time with an exhibition by Hong Kong artist Ho Sin Tung. The non-profit also held an off-site exhibition, ‘A Journal of the Plague Year: Fear, ghosts, rebels. SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong story’, curated by Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero, which looked at recent narratives and history in Hong Kong through the lens of different artists’ work including Ai Weiwei, Bernd Behr, Natalia Sui-hung Chan, Oscar Chan Yik Long, Yin-Ju Chen, George Chinnery and Megan Cope.

Para/Site Art Space exhibition by Hong Kong artist Ho Sin Tung

Art, Art, Art!
Galleria Lorcan O’Neill from Rome presented a fabulous selection of works from Richard Long, Rachel Whiteread, Kiki Smith and Eddie Peake.

Richard Long, ‘Trastevere Spring Line’, 2012, at Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rome

Chinese sculptor Yang Xinguang draws on minimalist and Arte Povera discourse (and yes, a touch of Walter de Maria too) with this work, which attracted the attention of scores of collectors. The sculptor is among the strongest example of the new young generation of Chinese artists.

Yang Xinguang, ‘Fondle’, Boers Li Gallery

As always, I paid a visit to one of my favourite galleries, Berlin-based Arndt, to say hello to Matthias Arndt and Tobias Sirtl and take a look at their selection of dynamic Indonesian artists, including Entang Wiharso and Eko Nugroho who are also on show as part of the Indonesian pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale.

Indonesian artist Entang Wiharso at Arndt Gallery

Chicago and Berlin-based Kavi Gupta gallery had this fantastic Theaster Gates work on display. Thirty-nine year old Chicago-born Gates is hot right now, with a stellar installation at the Pinault Foundation’s Punta della Dogana in Venice, and a star-studded dinner thrown in his honour at the recent Art Basel.

Theaster Gates, ‘Red Line With Black Soot and Enthusiasm’, 2013. Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Navid Nuur and Adrian Ghenie, exhibiting with Cluj and Berlin based Galeria Plan B in the Discoveries section, were announced as the winners of the Discoveries Prize for their collaborative project. The Discoveries sector showcased twenty-seven solo and two person exhibitions by emerging artists from across the world. The installation, entitled ‘The Possibility of Purple’ encompassed sound, performance, painting and assemblage while engaging with the history of modern painting and the current language of conceptual art.

Adrian Ghenie & Navid Nuur, ‘The Possibility of Purple’, 2011. Galeria Plan B.

Galerie Daniel Templon presented a Miss Havisham-esque kimono suspended in web-like black threads by Japanese-born Berlin-based installation artist, Chiharu Shiota.

Chiharu Shiota, ‘State of Being Boy’s Kimono’, Galerie Daniel Templon

I loved this Piotr Uklański pottery mosaic at Massimo de Carlo gallery, Milan. Polish-born Uklański masterfully appropriates this humble and populist medium, common in post-war Poland, as a tool to explore modernist abstraction.

Piotr Uklański, Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word, 2012

I spotted Diesel jeans mogul Renzo Rosso checking out this piece by Shanghai-based Belgian artist Arne Quinze at Paul Kasmin Gallery, which also had a selection of works by Turkish artist Tanner Ceylan, Walton Ford, and king of gothic kookiness, Mark Ryden.

Arne Quinze, ‘My Home My House My Stilthouse’, Paul Kasmin Gallery

Mark Ryden, ‘Porcelain Meat Dress’, 2012. Paul Kasmin Gallery.

I love Kara Walker‘s work, and this wall piece (selling for USD 550, 000) at Sikkema Jenkins & Co had my pulse racing.

Kara Walker, ‘Auntie Walker’s Wall Sampler for Savages’, 2013. Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York

As Hong Kong pavilion representative at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale, it was no surprise to see local artist Lee Kit‘s work popping up everywhere. His work at China’s Vitamin Creative Space sold in the first hour and his NY gallery, Lombard Freid, dedicated an entire section of its booth to the artist.

Hong Kong artist Lee Kit at Lombard Freid Gallery

Speaking of Gogol, Mumbai’s Volte gallery had this William Kentridge tapestry for sale. The work relates to the South African artist’s 2010 production of the Shostakovich opera, based on Gogol’s ‘The Nose’, at New York’s Met Opera.

William Kentridge, ‘Nose (with Strawberries)’, 2012. Volte Gallery.

As with all Basel fairs, large-scale works were brought to visitors with the Encounters section. Curated by Yuko Hasegawa, the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 17 large scale works were brought together, mixing Eastern and Western artists including MadeIn Company, Liam Gillick, Jitish Kallat, Seung Yul Oh, and Laurent Grasso.

Haegue Yang, ‘Journal of Mundane and Uncertain Days’, Kukje Gallery

Seung Yul Oh, ‘Periphery’, 2013. One and J Gallery, Seoul

Liam Gillick, ‘Complete Bin Developments’, 2013. Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

Seen on the Scene
And look who I bumped into around the fair…

Having opened his solo show at Galerie Perrotin the week of Art Basel HK, Takashi Murakami got ladies’ tongues wagging as Instagram pics circulated of the exhibition’s cartoonish golden sculpture of the prostrate artist, replete with, errr… golden family jewels. Rumour had it that the sculpture was somewhat anatomically correct and ‘left much to be desired’. Here he is, ever obliging with a pose, with his gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin.

Takashi Murakami and Emmanuel Perrotin

Walking past the Whitecube booth (located in the prime real estate sector near the entrance), I spot none other than one of my favourite artists, Mark Bradford, standing in front his large colourful work. I was too shy to ask for a pic, but I managed to snap his super lovely gallerist, Matt Carey-Williams, in front of the large work.

Matthew Carey-Williams, gallerist at White Cube

Hong Kong designer, jam-maker extraordinnaire, and turban queen, Paola Sinisterra added some colour to the sartorial landscape.

Hong Kong designer Paola Sinisterra

Art world fixtures Eva and Adele did not turn up to this fair but there were at least a few head-turning outfits at the first Art Basel HK. Former Director of Shanghai’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Victoria Lu, sporting a Kusama-esque red bob was spotted with designer Xiang Tseng, who was responsible for the pair’s floral concoction.

Victoria Lu

And Hong Kong’s PR and society party gatekeeper, Francis Cheng, was blooming in this outfit while his friend took an art themed approach in this Chinese ink painting-inspired coat.

Francis Cheng and friend

Quintessentially Art‘s (Quintessentially was Art Basel HK’s concierge partner) Rachael Barrett was admiring the work of one of her favourite artists, Eddie Peake at Galeria Lorcan O’Neil with friend and co-founder of Dubai’s Moving Museum, Simon Sakhai.

The Moving Museum’s Simon Sakhai and Quintessentially Art’s Rachael Barrett

Lars Nittve, director of Hong Kong’s future art museum, M+, was doing the rounds of the aisles with architect wife Shideh Shaygan.

Shideh Shaygan and Lars Nittve

One of the nicest curators in the biz, Stephane Ackermann of Istanbul Art International, kept me company around the fair showing me his favourite pieces and chatting with artists.

Stephane Ackermann, Artistic Director of Istanbul Art International and India Art Fair

French curators, the charming Pierre Lefort and Herve Mikaeloff, who recently curated Lehmann Maupin’s Hong Kong show, ‘Writings Without Borders’, sat down with me and chatted about their upcoming projects and the art scene in Azerbaijan (look out for the post-ism interview, coming soon!).

Curators Pierre Lefort and Herve Mikaeloff

Until the next bigger, bolder and better Art Basel HK!

Art world prankster, art entrepreneur, and Belgian Conceptual artist Wim Delvoye has redefined what it means to be an enfant terrible in the art world, which if you consider contemporary art these days is a pretty hard feat to master.

Earlier this year he presented a series of his works at Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong. On display was one of his famous ‘Twisted Dumptrucks’ in laser-cut laced steel; a never-before shown series of bas-reliefs; and new bronze sculptures, Janus-like and drawing on the ideas of Rorschach plates. But it is his more controversial works that have won him accolades and a fair number of critics.

During the 1992 Documenta IX, he stole the show with his tattooed pigs, which incurred the inevitable wrath of animal activists. Delvoye, a vegetarian has subsequently created a pig ‘art farm’ in China where he tattoos and ‘harvests his art products’. More controversial still is ‘Tim’ (2006). Known as ‘the man who sold his body to art’, Tim Steiner, tattooed by Delvoye, was sold as a living breathing work of art.

Delvoye exhibits an almost encyclopedic knowledge of art history and cultures both in conversation and in his work, which has its roots in ironic interpretations of past styles. Demonstrating his mastery of one-upmanship, Delvoye drew on the work of Piero Manzoni and his ‘Merda d’Artista’, when in 2000 he exhibited ‘Cloaca’, a machine that replicates the human digestive tract and reproduces the ensuing waste. The work explores the relationship between art production and human production, yes, but it is also a tongue-in-cheek poke at the art world, of the banality of contemporary art ‘production’, and production-line-like art. Further illustrating his point, over a decade he has constructed a series of ‘Cloaca’ machines and developed a whole spin off production: packed excrement, toilet paper, ‘original drawings’, scale models, and videos. He represents an art production popularised, but by no means pioneered, by certain YBA artists, mocking it while at the same time manipulating and exploiting it. His Disney-themed website features an array of ‘art products’, including: jewellery, tattoos, a ‘Wim action doll’ (for EUR249, it comes with a Cloaca toy, tattoo machine, outfit for ‘art events’ and ‘farm events’), and colouring book. Delvoye seems to delight in making sport of our fetishisation of art and art collecting.

His jokester approach to contemporary art and refusal to take it all too seriously is refreshing in an art world where artists, like reality TV stars and celebrities, are becoming increasingly ‘managed’, feeding one the same sanitized quotes easily found in their press releases. Always ready with an incendiary but informed bon mot, and with a flair for unaffected showmanship, he is quite comfortable with the non-conformist niche he has carved out for himself. In fact, he revels in it.

With an accented gravelly voice that sounds like a packet-a-day smoking habit, and an excitable fidgetiness and expressive gestures that are impossible to contain, Delvoye’s speech is a stream of consciousness, where ideas and several different trains of thought all collide at once. We caught up on the eve of his Perrotin Hong Kong show, chatting indefatigably and distractedly about everything from European politics to the state of contemporary art, Ai Weiwei, his Hong Kong exhibition, and his latest project.

‘Tattooed Pig Series’

INTERVIEW WITH WIM DELVOYE

On Asia and the West
“We’re both Asia lovers. We keep meeting one another in Asia … I’m not doing any of the other fairs, Armory and all that; I prioritise Asia. I have a studio in Shanghai, I worked in the Philippines, and in early ‘90s worked in Indonesia to learn carving, to do these crafts. This was in ’91; using craft then was strange. One of the first things I did was start using traditional craft again (big taboo!), and I got famous because it was a big shock, people thinking, “Look at this guy using ornamental traditional craft and kitschy things!” But there were other people like that too; Jeff Koons started using ceramics, and Alighiero Boetti was doing tapestry in Afghanistan earlier than anybody else, but it still looked very 20th century. So I went to Indonesia and started looking at wood carving. My strategy is to listen to the local craftsmen. It gives you more insights.

I really don’t like the Western culture; from early childhood I felt uneasy with Western culture. I’ve always had an attraction to foreign cultures. My father used to be a teacher in the Belgian Congo, so I grew up with all this African art and masks. I liked African masks … My sister and I, our first stories were with African drums. When we were young we were surrounded by crocodile skins, leopard skins, weapons, and musical instruments that my father had on display … We had our newspapers perched on a taxidermy leg. So there were all these colonial elements to our upbringing.

Globalisation and Art
I went to art school before I really even went to churches … I was always aware of culture and how cultures differed. This whole thing of globalism wasn’t a definition for me. Globalism for me isn’t about everywhere in the world making the same thing. For me its about variety, to be different everywhere. Everything should fall into smaller different cultures … The ideology of today is not that of a Christian society, or a Greek Roman society; the ideology today is that we are a capitalist society and all the values we share with one another are capitalist. Art is expected to have a global message, like products. Galleries and artists are judged as entrepreneurs. And when you read interviews of entrepreneurs, it seems that they see themselves as artists.

20th Century Art
In the 20th century if you want to express your success in life you buy an art piece, or you buy a Ferrari. Both ways people are going to be impressed by you for having this ‘thing’. But, it somehow makes more sense to be impressed by someone who owns a Ferrari, because this Ferrari represents everything we know about materials, aerodynamics, engineering. It’s a trophy based on some good reasons; it accumulates a lot of civilization and it all comes together in this one car. There is a sense of evolution – it will be a better car, a safer one, a faster one … But, what is evolution in art? In the 20th century evolution in art was about just one thing – reductionism! You make an art piece with a few less miles, while this Ferrari is expensive because of the extra miles. You touch the leather and it’s real leather, the dashboard mmmm … smells nice; everything is made of the best materials. If you are looking at jewellery, a diamond, clothes, or bags, you know, it makes sense Hermes is more expensive, you can see it.

The whole 20th century in art was a funny thing, because it was all about less miles. We see terrible art now that doesn’t do the extra miles anymore … you know, the cubists and their, ‘Fuck perspective! Lets just not bother!” attitude. Then the next generation comes: “Oh we want to be famous, let’s not bother about colours, or anatomically correct drawings.” Then another generation comes: “We are the whateverists and we just don’t want to bother too much on this, let’s just do monochromes.” In the 1920s 20th century art got its shape, the rules were written. So I arrive in the late 20th century, and the book-keeping was done! There is the library of 20th century art and I think, how can I be in that book? The book is already printed. So people in the late ’80s who were ambitious enough would not bother; they started questioning instead.

Ai Weiwei interrupts the interview with a call to discuss his jewellery design collection. It seems a timely cue to ask about Delvoye’s friendship with the artist.

On Ai Weiwei
I didn’t know he’d go too much into politics. As soon as we talk about politics we disagree, because I’m into China, with a big admiration for the country. I think that I invested smartly going into China, and then this guy … I say, “You are idealizing Europe and you don’t even know how free you are in China!”, and he says, “But you are idealizing China and you don’t know how bad it is!”

We are really good friends, but we don’t think in line on the political. Whatever he says abut China, the West is so happy to hear that they are better off, which is not true. It’s a big lie. He’s serving their purpose; he doesn’t want to serve that purpose, but he does. He thinks he’s going to change society by criticizing Chinese society? No, he’s just making a lot of success for himself in the West. The West wants to hear again from someone how terrible it is in China, you see? Ai Weiwei says his opinion and he’s one year and a half in jail. That makes the European feel good.

Building a Sculpture Park
I want to build a twenty hectare sculpture park, next to Ghent; Ghent doesn’t have any. It’s huge for Belgium. I bought the property because I really fell in love with it. “Let’s restore the castle” I thought, “and make an unbelievable garden!” I ordered the caterpillars to clear out the moats and do the sculptures around the moats. The moats protect the sculptures from thieves … Anyway, for five years I have been penalized [due to complications with permits and regulations] and have had to go to court, and was treated really badly. I keep saying to journalists and friends, “I’m the Ai Weiwei of Flanders because you’re really putting me in jail.”

Exhibition at Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong
These things on the wall [bas-relief sculptures] are sculptures for the space in the second dimension. There’s a particular influence to them. When Ai Weiwei was in jail I needed a new friend; I don’t have many friends. When I have one friend I’m happy, I don’t change friends. But when Ai Weiwei was gone, I got to know Entang [Wiharso] from Indonesia. I invited him over. I wanted him to do a big piece for the castle, a fence. That would be my first project in Belgium. Entang is making a special kind of work. So I said, let’s also do aluminium and bas-relief, but it will be completely different from what he does; I use computers, and he does his by hand and it looks very third world. He does his aluminium himself in the garden with the neighbours; mine needs to be perfect. So this is like an homage to his work — of course I don’t want to rip off his work. But I also needed to have something to fill the walls.”

‘Chapel Series’

‘Cloaca No.5′

Published in Asia Tatler, August 2013

Marc Quinn’s ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’ at San Giorgio Maggiore island

It’s back, that biannual migration of mega-yachts to the world’s loveliest decaying and sinking city. Curators, critics, collectors and artists assembled from around the world for the preview week of the 55th Venice Biennale. Dubbed the Saint Tropez of the art world by some for all the glitz, glam, big money and big egos on display (to say nothing of the planet sized dinghies moored in front of the main venues), this year’s unseasonably cold, dark and rainy weather saw nary a fake tanned limb in sight. The city, usually bathed in splendid light every summer, had not quite the atmosphere for crisp white linens on water taxis. Instead, art lovers hopped over St Marco’s puddles and rising water and trudged pavilion to pavilion huddled in winter coats and under umbrellas.

The biennale, now in its 55th edition, is this year made up of 88 participating countries, and almost 100 collateral events. Debate rages over the relevance of an art event still organized according to national pavilions. Many see it as a simplistic, reductive and outdated format in an increasingly global world where jetsetting artists, curators and collectors take on many national identities. Yet, this year has seen the inclusion of even more participants,including the Bahamas, Kosovo, Kuwait, Bahrain, Ivory Coast, and the Vatican.

Australian-born painter Lawrence Carroll wiping off the condensation from his refrigerated work at the Pavilion of the Holy See

Pavilion of the Holy See: Lawrence Carroll, ‘Untitled’, 2013

Unlike art fairs where galleries and dealers reign supreme and commerce is king, the biennale technically isn’t a selling even. Instead, one section of the event is dedicated to national pavilions, each presenting the exhibition of a selected artist (or artists). The biennale’s main exhibition this year titled ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’ is curated by 40 year old Massimiliano Gioni, who structured it according to the convention of the traditional museum concept. The exhibition is a taxonomic display of visual history with an esoteric wunderkammer feel to it, and historical breadth spanning back to the 19th century.

With the works of over 150 international artists, the exhibition is intended as an exploration of the quest for knowledge, an encyclopedia of human imagination. Gioni defied expectation by expanding on the traditional canon of art history and including the works of less conventional and ‘outsider’ artists such as Morton Bartlett, Rudolf Steiner, Aleister Crowley, Frieda Harris and Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, whose mystical and spiritually derived paintings and drawings were amongst the first abstract art. A collection of photographic albums from Cindy Sherman are laid out like a cabinet of curiosities along with erotic works (just to make sure you’re paying attention) by Carol Rama, Pierre Molinier and Hans Bellmer.

Hilma af Klint in The Encyclopedic Palace

Evgenij Kozlov, ‘The Leningrad Albums’, 1967-73, in The Encyclopedic Palace

Hans Josephson

Paul McCarthy (left) and John DeAndrea (right), in The Encyclopedic Palace

Over at the Giardini, Venice’s gardens that have been traditionally used as a key venue for the biennale, the Germany and France pavilion have switched spaces. The move commemorates 50 years since the two signed the Élysée Treaty of friendship. Visitors to the last biennale were faced with hours long queues that rivalled Soviet-era bread lines, and this year was the same, with a two hour wait at the French pavilion for Anri Sala‘s video works. Projected simultaneously in two rooms, including in a semi-anechoic chamber, and playing with space and sound, Sala’s ‘Ravel Ravel Unravel’ is like watching a concert up close. But, with one hour of content focusing on the choreography of the left hand of a pianist playing the keyboard, it is not for the impatient, overly caffeinated or time pressed. Fifteen minutes later we were out and faced with yet another queue in the rain for the German pavilion, but amply entertained chatting with performance artists and art world fixtures, Eva & Adele.

An art fan at Jeremy Deller’s British Pavilion

The German pavilion, in an effort to question the relevance of traditional forms of national representation and convey a more complex confluence of influences and identities, exhibited the work of four artists, only one of whom was actually German. Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei was among the participating artists with a lacklustre result- an installation of 886 three legged stools somewhat visually reminiscent of Colombian born Doris Salcedo’s “1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings”. An off site installation of two metal boxes, drawing on Ai’s period of incarceration, proved to be more of a talking point.

Ai Weiwei, German Pavilion

Endless queues at the French and German pavilions

Belgium seduced and haunted with its dark and beautiful installation, ‘Kreupelhout- Criplewood’, created by Berlinde de Bruyckere and curated by author JM Coetzee. In the blacked-out and darkly painted pavilion, a large gnarled, knotted and uprooted tree made of wax lay across the length of the room. Resembling muscles and tendons and forms of the human body, the limbs are scarred, wounded and bandaged. It is a fairytale metamorphosis from tree to man, (or perhaps the other way around), with deliberate echoes of Saint Sebastian (the symbol of Venice) and his arrows. It is a powerful and moving work, inducing a gloomy silence among the visitors shuffling around the installation.

Berlinde de Bruyckere,, ‘Kreupelhout- Criplewood’, Belgian Pavilion

The Russian pavilion was a favourite with many visitors. Recreating the ancient Greek myth of Danae, Vadim Zakharov split the pavilion space into a two-storied installation. The lower hall, reconstructed as a womb like cave, can only be visited by women, who, protected by clear plastic umbrellas, are showered with gold coins from viewers above. It is a reference not just to the seduction of Danae but an allegory of “human desire, greed and the corrupting influence of money.”

Continuing the theme of economic malaise and cynicism is Greece’s ‘History Zero’ by Stefanos Tsivopoulos, which explores the value and role of money in human relationships, with three films. The exhibition also traces the history of alternate forms of monetary exchange through an archive, questioning ‘the homogenizing power of a single currency’. Perhaps apt, considering Greece’s current troubles.

Russian Pavilion: Vadim Zakhov, ‘Danaë’

Tucked away behind the Giardini with a cluster of other ‘Balkanised’ countries, Romania presented Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus’s ‘An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale’. In the bare white room, there are no paintings hanging on the wall, no sculptures standing in the middle of the space. Instead, visitors are presented with a group of young dancers who bring to life and reproduce through movement and stasis, the history of the biennale with 100 staged works. The dancers chant, shout slogans, separate and regroup to create tableaus of an almost absurdist nature.

Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmus, ‘An Immaterial Retrospective of the Venice Biennale’, Romanian Pavilion

Film and sound installations seemed a prominent feature this year, with Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, and Israel showing work that often blurred the lines between fictional and real spaces, past and present, artifice and reality. “It’s the first time that music and sound has been considered seriously as an artistic practice”, says Stephane Ackermann, artistic director of Istanbul Art International.

Gilad Ratman, ‘The Workshop’, Israeli Pavilion

There’s certainly an overwhelming amount of art to see at this Art Olympics. But considering that will continue until 24th November, there’s plenty of time yet to catch the biennale and Venice in all its sun dappled beauty, and then reward yourself with a few Bellinis for getting through it all.

German artist Otto Piene, ‘Lichtballett’, in The Encyclopedic Palace

Walter de Maria, ‘Apollo’s Ecstasy’, 1990.

Icelandic artist, Ragnar Kjartansson’s ‘SS Hangover’ rowing up and down the canal with a small orchestra

Fabio Mauri, Italian Pavilion

Marco Tirelli’s architectural installation at the Italian Pavilion

Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos’ ‘Trafaria Praia’, a floating Portuguese pavilion, installed on a ferry.

Indonesian Pavilion, ‘Sakti’

And what biennale rundown would be complete without the inclusion of a few fabulous pics of the beautiful city itself, its palazzi, parties and people?

Midnight feasts and parties in decadently beautiful palazzi

Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang with his installation ‘Full Body Scan: Next!’, at Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti

Our nomadic art family at Bauer Bar

At Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos’ preview party with pianist Rosey Chan (left) and designer Lara Bohinc (centre)

Russian artists Margot Trushina and Salavat Timiryasov in technicolour

Musical entertainment at the Art Basel party

Beautiful Venetian sunset painting the city gold

Summer holidays are over! That means, thankfully, an end to the summer filler group shows at galleries and the beginning of a new art season.

In the next two weeks, corks will be a-popping throughout Hong Kong’s galleries, and dodgy red wine galore will be spilled down shirt fronts aplenty as new and exciting solo shows open. Aside from newly tanned gallerina legs and cleavages, here’s what else will be on show in the Hong Kong art world.

Bernard Frize, ‘Ploria’, 2013, Acrylic and resin on canvas

Bernard Frize recently kicked off another Hong Kong solo exhibition, following on from his Simon Lee Gallery show earlier this year, this time at Galerie Perrotin. ‘On the Side Where There Is No Handrail’ brings together eight never-before-seen abstract paintings of different series.

Frize creates his hypnotic paintings from a process of adding layers of colour and scraping back paint in one fluid movement, resulting in works that are alive and pulsing with gesture and movement. The layering of translucent colour results in several works (like ‘Ploria, above) with a wonderful jewel-like quality to them, resembling beautiful sliced polished geodes.

Galerie Perrotin
50 Connaught Road, Central, 17th Floor
T: +852 3758 2180
Exhibition dates: 29 August – 28 September 2013

Teresita Fernandez,
‘Epic 1′, 2009

Teresita Fernández’s first solo show in China at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong features large-scale new works which explore traditional landscape painting and the cultural significance of gold. Inspired by landscape and natural phenomena, as well as diverse historical and cultural references, Fernández’ works demonstrate her remarkable ability to transform a multitude of materials and the surrounding architecture into unique perceptual experiences.

New drawings made with Indian ink on reflective chromed metal from her series ‘Golden’, as well as a group of wall pieces comprised of hundreds of small convex glass mirrors and polished black gemstones, will be on show.

Lehmann Maupin
407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder St, Central
T: +852 2530 0025
Exhibition dates: 13 September- 9 November

Florian Maier- Aichen

At Gagosian, Florian Maier-Aichen will also present his first solo exhibition in the city. A photographer schooled on both sides of the Atlantic, Maier-Aichen’s work reflects on the dual influences of the history of photography and the history of painting, whether drawing on such dichotomies as German Romantic painting and the pioneers of German Objective photography, or applying his post-factum experience of American frontier art to his own topographical depictions of landscape subjects.

Gagosian
7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder St, Central
T: +852 2151 0555
Exhibition dates: 14 September- 26 October

Theaster Gates, ‘My Flag’, 2013

White Cube will show new works by Chicago-born artist and social activist, Theaster Gates, in an exhibition titled ‘My Back, My Wheel and My Will’. This will be part of two exhibitions by Gates, running concurrently at the White Cube Hong Kong and White Cube São Paolo galleries.

Gates’ work, which attempts to catalyse social and economic change through direct artistic agency, bridges the gap between art and life. These exhibitions aim to connect two sites, two cities and two continents through a series of artworks that reflect on the poetics of repurposed and salvaged materials. The work in both exhibitions, which includes installation, sculpture and two-dimensional objects, will bring together artworks and materials gathered from Gates’ earlier project entitled 12 Ballads for Huguenot House, realised for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany in 2012.
Very excited about this one!

White Cube
50 Connaught Road Central, Central
T: +852 2592 2000
Exhibition dates: 13 September- 2 November

Jenny Holzer
‘Ribs’, 2010. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay
Courtesy: Sprüth Magers Berlin/ London

Renowned American conceptual artist, Jenny Holzer, presents her solo show of LED works at Pearl Lam Galleries. The centerpiece of the exhibition,’Light Stream’ (2013), is Holzer’s largest gallery installation to date comprising of over 25 LED elements with a selection of phrases from Holzer’s historic series, ‘Truisms’ (1977-79), ‘Living’ (1980-82) and ‘Survival’ (1983-85). Shown for the first time in Chinese as well as English, it will bring to fruition the artist’s long-time desire to produce a swarming mass of texts in one work. Shown alongside the LED works Holzer will present a new series of white marble benches, carved with short poignant statements in Chinese such as ‘MONEY CREATES TASTE’ and ‘DON’T PLACE TOO MUCH TRUST IN EXPERTS’. Indeed.

Peal Lam Galleries
601-605 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central
T: +852 2522 1428
Exhibition dates: 19 September – 2 November 2013.

Nathan Slate Joseph, ‘Silk Route Cuts XIX’, 2008

After a brief hiatus, Sundaram Tagore Gallery will reopen this month newly renovated to coincide with the gallery’s fifth anniversary in Hong Kong. The gallery will launch the autumn art season with a dual exhibition of works by Israeli-American painter and sculptor Nathan Slate Joseph and American sound installation artist Taylor Kuffner. Joseph is noted for his vividly coloured pure pigment on steel paintings, addressing issues of globalization and the environment. Kuffner creates original compositions using Balinese gamelans and robotic technology which result in an all-encompassing meditative and magical experience.

Sundaram Tagore Gallery
57-59 Hollywood Road, Central
T: +852 2581 9678
Exhibition dates: 26 September – 2 November

Adele (left) and Eva (right) at the Venice Biennale

They’ve invented their own sex, sport matching shaved heads and make-up, and ummm … they come from the future. No, this isn’t ComicCon. It’s art!

It’s likely that if you’ve attended any of the major art fairs, biennales and art exhibitions in the last two decades, you’ve probably spotted the identically made-up, gender-bending, frock-wearing Austro-German couple known as EVA & ADELE (ampersand and capitals are imperative) stealing the show. They’re pretty hard to miss. This year, I bumped into and chatted with the couple at the Venice Biennale preview. Dressed in gold sequins with matching parasols, they sparkled like a couple of drag Busby Berkeley showgirls against a background of black-clad vatican priests in what looked like a staged performance (it wasn’t, which made the scene all the more surreal and confusing).

Theirs isn’t an attempt to merely gain celebrity for the most outré outfits in the art world. It’s not just for art events that this couple dress up; their appearance is a 24-hour commitment, a performance in public and private that is thought-out and coordinated every morning upon waking for the last two decades. They eat the same food, dress identically every single day in outfits of their own design (always including a pair of heels), and have never spent a day apart in their 22 years together. ADELE, the smaller and chattier of the two, explains, “It is a lifelong performance and we think it’s one of the most radical works in contemporary art to have made a decision 22 years ago to be a life-long performance. We do this 24 hours a day; it’s ongoing. It’s the biennale, at the vaporetto, at the coffee houses … everywhere.” They are the very embodiment of the term, Lebenskunstwerk, a living work of art.

Visually they have created an outward appearance that is neither male nor female, and of indeterminate age. Although adorned with the trappings of femininity — dresses, high heels, stockings, make-up — hair, that powerful symbol of femininity, has been shaved off, and EVA’s stature, wider and towering over ADELE, lends itself more to transvestism than femininity. Their bodies have become the canvas upon which gender and sexual politics is explored, and also a symbol of the possibility of a constructed self-determined identity beyond social and cultural norms. EVA, who identifies as female despite being born male and still retaining a male body, took their commitment to redefining and inventing their own gender a step further a couple of years ago when she underwent an arduous legal process to change the sex stated on her birth certificate to reflect the female one she identified with. In 2011 the two then married as women, although in previous interviews they have claimed that they are neither male nor female and live beyond the boundaries of gender. “We didn’t want to be a man or a woman”, says ADELE. “We wanted to go beyond the boundaries of gender and open up this space between male and female. We thought we should professionalize this as our work. So, our appearance is a symbol of this big space and we want to use it more playfully, not with a European Christian relationship and all the suffering and all that.”

The Berlin-based couple coined the term ‘Futuring’ to describe their body of work and performance. Claiming that they have come from the future in time machines, they landed in 1989 Berlin before the wall was torn down and brought with them a model of future possibilities of identity and lifestyle, where boundaries and inflexible social conventions and categories are overcome. “Futuring is something we did together parallel to the art”, says ADELE. “It is in the tradition of Dada, Merz or Fluxus. We were thinking we needed another word, a new word in addition to art, and that’s Futuring.” You too can be a Futurist they claim, although exactly what that involves, I’m still not clear about. “Everybody can think or act ‘Futuring’. We are the inventors, the artists. The word is an art work, but people can use Futuring for their personal history, or in their thinking. Every person is different, but I think for Futuring, there are three important things. Freedom, courage, and art!”

Their pink saturated website states in Germanized English, “Wherever We Are Is Museum”. They have most certainly put this statement into practice. Since 1991 they have been appearing in the international art world together, always dressed in their own fantastically eye-popping creations, and always together, like twin smiling colourful Cheshire cats. Public spaces have become their museum where they attract the stares and interest of passersby, ever obliging the curious, the amused, or the admiring with a photo or a chat. Attracting attention is at the core of their appearance; it sets in motion an exchange between artist and viewer but it also confuses the role between subject and object. Whilst countless curious spectators ask for a photograph with the two artists, the artists in turn ask for copies to turn a snapshot of a brief exchange into art works. Their work isn’t all performative, it also encompasses installation, costume, watercolours, gouaches and drawings, the focus of an exhibition, ‘Obsidian’, at MARTa Museum in Herford (Germany) earlier in May this year.

Using play to fight against the rigidity of society and the art world, their mere presence injects fun and happiness into their surrounding environment, and also spreads a message, hopes ADELE. “It’s really funny, this year we are in a schoolbook for high-schoool in Germany. It’s incredible! Students can think about what freedom, luck and courage mean, and how you can do something like EVA & ADELE, and what that means for your life. I think it’s an interesting influence of our work not just on German society, but worldwide.”

Exhibition view of ‘Obsidian’, 2013, MARTa Herford

EVA & ADELE, at ‘Obsidian’ exhibition with vinyl costumes, 2013, MARTa Herford

EVA & ADELE, 1999 at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein

Vinyl costumes, ‘Obsidian’ exhibition, 2013, MARTa Herford

Published in Asia Tatler, October 2013

Theaster Gates is in a cab on his way to Dorchester Ave in his neighbourhood of Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing, when we chat on the phone. “My people are getting hungry … I’m gonna feed my crew,” he says. His crew is the team of builders who collaborate with him to realize the massive projects that have brought him world-wide attention in only a matter of years. Several years ago, 39 year old Gates — installation artist, urban planner, performer, and social activist — was barely able to find a gallery to show his work; then he was wisely snapped up by Chicago based Kavi Gupta. Today, only four years after his critically acclaimed ‘Dorchester Project’, which consisted of the redevelopment and transformation of three neglected neighboring buildings on Dorchester Avenue — casualties of the economic downturn — into a vibrant site of artistic an community exchange, Gates has scaled the highest stratosphere of the art world.

There have been exhibitions, museum shows and long waiting lists for art works, plus rising prices that reflect what all in the art world recognises: that Theaster Gates is a supernova. In 2010, Gates took part in the Whitney Biennial, followed by an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and the career defining 2012 Documenta [13] project, ‘12 Ballads for Huguenot House’. In 2012 ArtReview put him at number 56 on its annual list of the 100 most powerful people in the art world. Last year he signed with mega gallery White Cube, and this month is presenting solo exhibitions with the gallery, taking place simultaneously in Hong Kong and Sao Paolo.

Plenty of artists use their work to comment on political or social issues de jour. Few use art to really make a difference to the community and people around them. What sets Gates apart is this ability to act as a catalyst for social change through his work. His large-scale projects grow organically from the urban and are dependent on the urban environment to exist. They are in fact an extension of community and art objects at the same time. For ‘Dorchester Project’ Gates used his skills as an urban planner, reordering materials to reinvent spaces, transforming disused buildings from poor areas on Chicago’s South Side, where he still lives, into what has been described as a mini utopia with artist residencies, a library, performance venues and cinema — spaces that can once again encourage community progress, culture and inspire hope.

Theaster Gates, ‘Dorchester Projects’, Chicago, 2012. ©Theaster Gates Courtesy White Cube

Conversion of Prairie Avenue Bookstore into a small public library, 2009.
Photo: Sara Pooley

These spaces are repurposed through artistic intervention to better suit the needs of the community, and at the same time are transformed into powerful works that live outside and beyond the gallery space, charged with political and social meaning, but unquantifiable in terms of commercial art value. These buildings are unsellable; they won’t be dismantled piece by piece and sold off. It is through the sale of his more commercial gallery works that Gates can fund these projects. But with ever increasing success comes the pressure to create ever-increasing amounts of commercial works. Gates remains unfazed. “Who’s to say that every move you make is going to be favourable to the market? God, what a horrible life if you just did things that were favourable to the market, because the market isn’t always smart. It can’t be the impetus for inspiration”, he explains. “I need to be active in the world in order to get to the next thing that I want to make.” His work is very much grounded in reality, bringing the viewer back into communion with the real world through his art. It’s quite a departure from the glossy perfectionism that has dominated the contemporary art market for so long, but it is what has put him on the radar of every collector, critic and curator.

Gates’ other defining ambitious project, ‘12 Ballads for Huguenot House,’ (2012), united two disused buildings on two separate sites: one, the large and forgotten Huguenot House built in Kassel, Germany, built in the early 19th century; and the other a dilapidated building in his hometown. Using parts of each to rebuild the other, the project, part of Kassel’s Documenta exhibition, was a commentary on the parallel history of the migrant workers who built the Huguenot House, and the black and Latino builders in his own neighbourhood. In both locations Gates used locally-hired, often previously unemployed workers to achieve his projects, creating jobs in the community. His forthcoming Whitecube shows are a continuation of, and reflection on, his Documenta experience. “That project was so huge for my life, for my growth. And there was more to that work than I could show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which was a kind of formal museum show,” he says.

’12 Ballads for Huguenot House’, 2012.
Photo: Nils Klinger

Underlying every piece is a history of worksmanship, personal biography, American social history and determination to contribute something more than just the sum of his works. In Gates’ art the private and the public selves bleed into one another. White Cube Hong Kong director, Graham Steele, thinks it’s this infusion of the historical and personal that resonates with audiences. “By imbuing in his works a sense of the value of labour and the history of its making, Theaster somehow allows the viewer to truly experience the full weight of his practice in every object he makes.”

Trained as a potter, educated as an urban planner, and now holding a post as arts administrator at the University of Chicago, where he works on improving the institution’s relationships with the less affluent South and West sides of Chicago, Gates set about trying to save cities, spurred on by the inequalities he witnessed growing up between rich and poor neighbourhoods. The use of humble materials in his work — tar, roofing, scaffolding — not only helps create a form of social commentary from the actual building blocks of community but is deeply symbolic and connected to his own personal history. The son of a roofer and the youngest of nine children from a family living in Garfield Park, a poor, mostly black neighbourhood of Chicago, he regularly joined his father at work to help with tarring roofs.

‘Rickshaw for Hardware’, 2013
Wood, metal and wheel

Despite art not playing a significant role in his upbringing, this, and his involvement in the local gospel-church choir, sowed the seeds of Gates’ artistic awakening. “In many ways I trained as an artist before I even knew of the world of the arts. My dad was a builder, and I’ve always had a love for beautiful things. I’ve had a sense of architecture and design from an early age”, he says. Exposure to art or formal training didn’t come until much later in college when he was able to study and experiment with materials such as clay and pottery. “Just the work I did with my dad — building, using my hands — that was a good entrée into the world of creating. Later I could combine the stuff I learnt with my dad with my love of making, to arrive at this crazy place.”

Gates shows no signs of slowing or scaling down. He has been selected by the Chicago Transit Authority, where he once took a job as an arts planner, to create the largest public artwork in its history. The City of Chicago has also given the artist a bank building which he is in the process of restoring. The project will raise even more issues that the artist hopes to address. “If artists are good at creating things, how do we create things that create, systems that generate economic opportunity for the poor? How do we extend our generating beyond our studio? I’m trying to tackle that in really broad and big ways. It’s super exciting.”

Here is an artist who has clearly demonstrated the power of imagination and art to create the change you want. “In some cases, you just have to build the world you wanna funk in,” he remarks.

‘Floor, Dorchester’, 2012, wood and linoleum. © Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley
Courtesy White Cube

‘My Flag’, 2013, Wood and decommissioned fire hose.
© Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley. Courtesy White Cube

Theaster Gates, ‘My Back, My Wheel and My Will,’
White Cube Hong Kong, 13 September – 2 November 2013
© Theaster Gates. Photo: Vincent Tsang. Courtesy White Cube

Lenin meets modernism in ‘A Meeting of Two Sculptures (Lenin and Giacometti)’, 1990, by Leonid Sokov from a private collection

Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture: (left-right) Isabella Prata, Lauren Prakke, me, Derek Blasberg, Sigrid Kirk

Pussy Riot, President Putin in frilly knickers, gallery and museum censorship, to say nothing of the widespread calls for a boycott of the upcoming 2014 Manifesta Biennale in St Petersburg in response to the recent anti-gay laws. These are the headline grabbing art stories coming out of Russia that have attracted the attention of international media. His successful diplomatic brokering between Syria and the US recently may have been a major coup, but there’s no doubt that Vladimir Putin is losing the soft power battle.

However, overshadowed by the sensational news stories is a vibrant and colourful contemporary art scene in Russia that may be less visible, but no less deserving of international attention and support. So, invited by my friend, performance artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, to attend the preview of the 5th Moscow Biennale a couple of weeks ago, I cast aside any reservations I had and headed to Moscow, where I found myself thrown head first into the city’s still thriving and edgy art scene.

Moscow was showcasing scores of art events during biennale opening week, from small artists studio visits, to performances and big name openings, like Vadim Zakharov at TSUM, and John Baldessari at Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture. Our first visit, straight off the plane and still jet-lagged, was to Art Moskva, a smallish art fair now in its 17th year held in the late-Brezhnev Era Central House of the Artist. The focus this year under new Director, Eric Schlosser, was on younger artists from Russia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Works were hung edge to edge in the crammed exhibition hall, vying for the attention of a sadly underwhelming number of people on opening night.

Unlike Chinese, Western or even South-East Asian art, according to Schlosser, Russian contemporary art has remained largely overlooked not just internationally, but locally as well, having only developed since the early ’90s perestroika period. “The main problem for Russian contemporary art today,” he explains, “is accessibility. If you’re not a part of this art world it’s difficult to have access to information, and a lot of people are intimidated by it”. It’s something he tried to address by introducing works priced no higher than USD$5,000 to attract younger collectors (although I did see works priced much higher), younger galleries, and more peripheral non-commercial exhibitions. Some wall sculptures resembling slices of tree trunks made of rolled-up newspapers and magazines by Pavel Brat at Moscow’s Triumph Gallery tickled my fancy, and a kinetic sculpture by Alexander Shiskin-Hokusai at Ural Vision Gallery appealed to my puerile sense of humour and attention deficit love of novelty. On the whole though, the fair was a mixed bag of quality with some less than inspiring paintings.

Schlosser mentioned a boxing match taking place in the exhibition hall downstairs; he wasn’t kidding. In the expansive hall there was indeed a boxing match in action, while perched on pillars nearby were two strapping buff topless boys in boxing shorts standing like Slavic Olympic gods. Umm … I’m guessing this was part of the “making art accessible” plan.

Later, back at our hotel, the historic art nouveau Metropol, we sat down to a welcome dinner with our host, Alexander Klyachin, and had the first of many vodkas with a coterie of Muscovite art-world luminaries including: curator and director of Moscow House of Photography Museum and Multimedia Art Museum, Olga Sviblova; British artist and architect Alex Schweder; and the stylish beautiful art couple, light-artist Margo Trushina and hubby Salavat Timiryasov. In the next room, a great glass-dome ball room that called to mind the imperial grandeur of the early 20th century, GQ Russia was throwing a party for its Man of the Year. Yet more beautiful people (Russia sure knows how to make them), with one glamorous couple upstaging Lisa Stansfield‘s performance with dancing that displayed more verve and sauciness then ever seen on ‘Dancing With the Stars’.

No time for a hangover as next morning it was an early breakfast — blinis and caviar of course (when in Moscow…) — with renowned Russian artist and academic Dmitry Gutov, who then took us on a tour of the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation‘s ‘Reconstruction’ exhibition, an overview of Russian art in the ’90s. It was fantastic and eye opening to see the creative explosion that emerged out of a period of such economic and political chaos. Artists like this year’s Russian representative for the Venice Biennale, Vadim Zakharov, Russia’s preeminent female artist Olga Chernysheva, and performance artist Oleg Kulik, were included in the show, giving us an insight into this influential and dynamic period in Russian art history. Artistically it was the ‘happiness epoch’, with cutting-edge anti-establishment art and performances that pushed boundaries and challenged accepted notions of art. “It was the beginning of an epoch full of hope”, explains Dmitry Gutov. “It was the most interesting time here. It was a new world then. Now we have no hope. We have Putin for another 30 years, no democracy, and not much support for contemporary art here”, he said.

Olga Chernysheva at Ekaterina Foundation exhibition, ‘Reconstruction’

The widely lamented notable lack of government-funded infrastructure and institutions for contemporary art in Moscow and St Petersburg, means that often private individuals — patrons, curators and artists — have had to step up as the main driver in building a vibrant contemporary art scene. Privately funded art spaces such as the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture, and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design have been cropping up in Moscow in recent years. Winzavod, a former wine factory, is now a complex of artist-run galleries. Opened in Moscow in 2007, it was the passion project of advisor to the Culture Minister, Sofia Tretsenko, and her husband, businessman Roman Trotsenko. Until spaces like Winzavod were established, “There were no professionally designed spaces in Moscow where artists and the public could interact, and where contemporary art could be properly exhibited and sold”, states Trotsenko.

Erwin Wurm exhibition at Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art

During the Biennale Winzavod featured a solo show by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, and a dozen gallery shows by Russian artists like Gosha Ostretsov, an artist who represented Russia at the 63rd Venice Biennale in 2009. As well as being an active exhibiting international artist, his gallery also showcases young and emerging Russian artists including Olga Bozhko, Petr Bystrov and Daria Krotova. I snuck out of lunch to take a quick tour of the works with Ostretsov as my guide. I had written a little piece about last year’s Russian contemporary art exhibition at the Saatchi in which Ostretsov was featured, so it was fantastic to finally meet him and chat about Russian contemporary art.

Artist Gosha Ostretsov taking me on a tour of his gallery

On our second evening we headed to Solyanka State Gallery, an artist-run space dedicated to video, performance and animation, now directed by Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich. Fyodor and six other artists were performing at the space as part of performance art collective, Artist’s Zoo, spending four hours every day for a week locked up in cages. When not in his own cage, Fyodor spent the other 20 hours wearing a black ram’s mask for the week in a performance that fused the public with the private. I found myself dining with and walking around Moscow at night with a black ram whose presence around guests at night caused consternation among the security detail of at least one prominent Muscovite.

Despite the various challenges posed by the current political and cultural landscape, the show, and main attraction, must go on. The 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, this year aptly titled ‘Bolshe Sveta’ (More Light), aims to promote “enlightened conversations”, states Belgian curator, Catherine de Zegher, encourage contemplation, and perhaps shine a little more light on contemporary art in Russia in a period that for many seems justifiably gloomy and uncertain. De Zegher pulled together works from over 70 international artists to fill the large appropriately light-filled space. Works by Mona Hatoum (Lebanon), Song Dong (China), Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia/US), and Russian artists like Victor Alimpiev, Valery Koshlyakov, Elena Kovylina and Dmitri Venkov, flowed or were weightlessly suspended throughout the Manezh space, a 19th century neo-classical former riding school. Many of these artists were shown for the first time in Russia.

Some of the installations were not yet finished by the preview night, and identifying some artists and the works was difficult due to the puzzling absence of labels. However, Song Dong’s installation was, as always, pretty hard to miss as the contents of his mother’s home sprawled out across a great part of the upper floor. Mona Hatoum’s delicate glass sphere spider-web was fragile beauty suspended overhead in the Manezh’s dimly-lit ground floor.

Song Dong installation at Moscow Biennale

The space, whose history is one of tension between art and politics, came with predictable limitations on the public curatorial programme, reflected in the notable lack of provocative works. “Overly political subjects or work considered propaganda could not be shown”, explained Daria Khan, Educational Program Coordinator. “It’s very institutional due to the building’s closeness to the Kremlin and the corporate nature of the Manezh”, not to mention sponsorship from the Russian Ministry of Culture, who provided over half the $3 million budget. Organising a biennale under these circumstances brings inevitable compromise. Nonetheless, despite what some have criticised as an anodyne selection of works – – no sex, no violence, no overt politics — some thought-provoking works (must they be provocative?) were still to be found, such as 22 year old Moscow based Chechen artist, Aslan Gaisumov’s series of bullet pierced gates collected from across Chechnya. Irish artist Tom Molloy’s ‘Protest’ (2012), tiny photographic cutouts of protests from around the world — including the slogans ‘Does anybody know where my vote is?’ and ‘God hates fags’ — seemed rather apropos in the current political environment, but given its miniature size it was easily overlooked and got lost in the cavernous space. “Artists at the biennale are addressing controversial issues,” said de Zegher is an earlier interview with The Art Newspaper, “but they are in nobody’s face.”

De Zegher acknowledged references to Russia’s great avant-garde artist, Kazimir Malevich littered throughout the exhibition. As a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Futurist opera ‘Victory Over the Sun’, for which Malevich designed the costumes, was an installation by Valery Koshlyakov, a large cardboard carriage referencing the lines from the opera: ‘From the altitude of skyscrapers, as though uncontrollably, pour carriages’. And there was the curator’s decision to split the exhibition over two floors: one dark (a nod to Malevich’s 1915 painting ‘Black Square’), and one filled with light (‘White on White’, 1918). It was fitting that we also paid a visit to the New Tretyakov State Gallery where we took a detour from the contemporary to immerse ourselves in the work of Malevich and other Russian modern artists whose names are now well known to the Western audience. There was Vassily Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Marc Chagall and El Lissitzky. The focal point of the exhibition was Malevich’s ‘Black Square’, probably the most famous work of Russian art in the last century. “It’s our Mona Lisa”, commented one of my Russian friends.

John Baldessari’s first Russian solo exhibition, held at Garage’s new temporary premises in Gorky Park was a big talking point. In the current show, ’1+1=1’, Baldessari reinterprets iconic art works from the 18th to 20th centuries, mining popular culture for inspiration and playing with the tension between image and text. Fragments of well-known works, like Warhol’s soup cans are combined with other works, and paired with titles from film noir, songs, or other artists’ names. The result is a wholly new work of art (thus the title ’1+1=1′) for which the viewer creates new meaning. There was irony, there was humour, and he stood by his one time declaration that he would “make no more boring art”, as viewers amused themselves with a spot of ‘guess the reference’.

Preview of John Baldessari’s , ’1+1+1′, at Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture

A private tour later that day of the Bolshoi Theatre, recently reopened after a six-year refurbishment that brings the theatre back to its original pre-Soviet opulence, provided a dose of breathtaking beauty and inspiration. It was the highlight of the trip. We had a tour backstage and onstage where the Opera de Paris corps de ballet was warming up for the upcoming performance of ‘Paquita’, and sat in the rarely seen red silk and gold adorned Tsar’s box where historically only the imperial family and guests were allowed to enter.

On the last night we were invited to dinner at a collector’s home where we were met at the door by a bit of tongue-in-cheek Russian humour. At the entry stood a bronze sculpture by Russian artist, Leonid Sokov, one of the original creators of the Sots Art movement (a Soviet version of Pop Art) of the 1970s: Lenin-meets-Giacometti in a clash of Soviet Realism and Western modernism. Inside, works by old masters, religious icons, and Western contemporary names like Anish Kapoor, Gerhard Richter, and John Currin hung alongside works by modern Russian greats like Viktor Popkov and El Lissitsky. It was a nice change from the ‘Instacollector’ phenomenon dominating art collections at the moment.

Contrasting with this sumptuous dinner and its environs was a visit straight afterwards to performance artist German Vinogradov‘s studio. Here we were welcomed by a menagerie of stuffed toy animals lining the hallway leading to the artist’s tiny flat-cum-studio. Stepping into a cluttered, dark, sage smoke-filled room, with nothing but a few candles illuminating it, we were met with a scene that resembled a shaman’s temple. Found-objects, like bits of metal, bones, feathers, figurines of Ded Moroz (Russia’s Father Frost), and car parts, hung from the ceiling, were clustered on altars, or were incorporated into his haunting, hypnotic music and sound performance (check out the video below). We listened in captivated silence as kittens ran underfoot in the darkness. It was an unexpected, surreal and moving end to our last night in the city, and it showed us that despite adversity, art prevails in Moscow, created in the most unlikely environments.

5TH MOSCOW BIENNALE: MORE LIGHT
Manezh Central Exhibition Hall, Moscow, until 20 October, 2013

Art Moskva!

Vadim Zakharov, ‘The Publisher Alexander Pushkin’, 1992, Ekaterina Foundation

Russian art collective AES+F (or -F in this case) in their studio: Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, ‘The Ship of Tolerance’, on Pionersky Pond outside Garage

Dmitry Gutov (second from left) and our art group: Isabella Prata (far left), me (centre), Lauren Prakke, and Sigrid Kirk at the Metropol Hotel

Kazimir Malevich, ‘Black Square’, 1915, at New Tretyakov State Gallery

Walking ‘Above Black Mud’, Dmitri Gutov’s installation in Ekaterina Foundation

Performance artist Fyodor Pavlov Andreevich.
Photo courtesy of Metropol Hotel

Tom Molloy at Moscow Biennale

Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai, ‘Watermelons’, 2013, at Art Moskva

Performance artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich performing ‘My Face is on Vacation’ in the Artist’s Zoo at Solyanka State Gallery

The haunting music and shamanistic performance of Moscow artist German Vinogradov

Following on from a Berlin show that opened a couple of months ago at Sprüth Magers, Californian artist John Baldessari has recently also seen to the opening of his first ever show in Russia at Moscow’s Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture.

Co-curated by Garage’s new Chief Curator, Kate Fowle, and Garage International Advisor, Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1+1=1 features 44 works from the artist’s 2011-2012 ‘Double’ series. In these works, Baldessari transforms fragments of art from the 18th to 20th centuries by artists including: Chardin, de Chirico, Courbet, David, Duchamp, Gaugin, Hockney, Magritte, Malevich, Manet, Matisse and Warhol, in order to create new work and prod viewers to reconsider these familiar iconic works.

It’s a playful double take on the canon of art history and continues his longstanding investigation into the tensions between word and image. Works in ‘Double Vision’ pair one artist’s name with a visual fragment from another well-known artist; ‘Double Feature’ combines an outtake of an Old Master painting with a title from film noir; and ‘Double Bill’ juxtaposes images culled from two works, with one of the artists named in the title and the other not.

Baldessari explains his interest in doubling in Artlyst: “I think the idea of doubling for me issues from asking whether two things that look alike are really the same or if they’re different. It’s a mindset; some people think that one thing looks like another and others don’t. I like that sort of conflict. I play with it a lot.”

In Moscow last month, we had a preview of the art exhibition and visited the temporary Shigeru Ban designed summer pavilion adjacent to the centre. Garage Director, Anton Belov, took our little group on a golf-buggy tour of Gorky Park to see the once famous, now derelict, 1960s Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) restaurant. This will be the site of the future permanent Garage to be renovated by Rem Koolhaas and OMA, and slated to open in 2014. We also spent some time ferreting around the Garage offices to see where all the magic happens! Check out all the photos below.

Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture: (left-right) Isabella Prata, Lauren Prakke, me, Derek Blasberg, Sigrid Kirk

The art gang with Garage director, Anton Belov: (left-right) Isabella Prata, Me, Lauren Prakke, Anton Belov, Derek Blasberg, Oxana Smirnova, Sigrid Kirk

Garage bookshop

Shigeru Ban designed temporary outdoor pavilion

Anton Belov, Director of Garage Centre of Contemporary Culture

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, ‘The Ship of Tolerance’, on Pionersky Pond outside Garage

Garage HQ

A life-like floor installation in the Garage offices

A fragment of Belov’s scientist past displayed in his office

Garage director Anton Belov’s office

The intersection between art and fashion, although not all that new, looks to be a growing trend that isn’t subsiding anytime soon. Earlier this month, Damien Hirst and Miuccia Prada unveiled their Doha desert pop-up juice bar, decked out as a chemist in a reinterpretation of the artist’s late 1990s ‘Pharmacy Restaurant’ (it was accompanied by a Prada shop, bien sûr). Of course, the brand was also responsible for the famous Elmgreen & Dragset’s 2005 ‘Prada Marfa’ store installation in Marfa, Texas, and has developed a strong relationship with the world of art that feeds into its brand identity.

A few weeks ago, for the Spring/Summer 2014 Paris Fashion Week, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld turned the runway into a gallery, replete with tongue-in-cheek art works, in the perfect example of fashion as art. And if you’re not familiar with Louis Vuitton’s collaborations with artists Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse and Yayoi Kusama then you clearly haven’t picked up a magazine or newspaper, walked into a shopping mall, or driven down a billboard-lined road. Then there are the fashion sponsored art spaces and art foundations: Louis Vuitton with its rotating exhibitions at Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton across three different cities; Hermès with its artist-designed window displays and Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, a program supporting young emerging artists; and Prada’s own Fondazione Prada with exhibition spaces in Venice and Milan. The list of art-meets-fashion goes on and on.

However, there is no better example of the collision between the art and fashion world than the 2011 retrospective exhibition, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It attracted an unprecedented number of visitors, with queues around the block in the last days, and demonstrated that fashion can be shown in an art context, and succeed. Fashion is now taking up space in culturally important venues.

Why has this phenomenon developed? One reason is that fashion seeks the legitimacy that the high-brow rarefied art world can offer, and in turn the art world looks for the edge that the fashion world can lend; fashion has an accessibility and mass appeal that the often intimidating art world does not. But really, art and fashion are not such strange bedfellows. The two worlds have influenced one another from the get-go, and ultimately the consumer for both luxury fashion and art is the same in this ever globalised world. Cross pollination is inevitable.

Turn up to any major art fair from Frieze in London to Art Basel Miami, and you’ll find that art is increasingly in fashion; designers, bankable models, fashionista front-rowers and couture VIPs dot the landscape, increasing the eye-candy quotient exponentially, and hanging out with the artist du jour, who has also most likely embraced Margiela or Balenciaga. Gone are the days of holey jumpers and paint splattered sneakers. It’s not for nothing that more and more I’m hearing of major art fairs referred to as ‘the art world’s Fashion Week’.

In Art/Fashion in the 21st Century two Australian writers, Alison Kubler and Mitchell Oakley Smith, look at this brilliant creative collision between the worlds of fashion and art. A contextual introduction explores the 20th-century history that inspired the ‘art as fashion’ and ‘fashion as art’ revolution, discussing ideas of spectacle, commercial opportunity, authenticity and stylistic innovation. Five chapters feature concise essays with profiles of the key designers, break-out stories about the most avant garde projects, and interviews with the leading lights of the art-fashion crossover phenomenon, including collaborative efforts by: Acne, Balenciaga, Walter van Beirendonck, Hussein Chayalan, Zaha Hadid, Hermès, Calvin Klein, Jeff Koons, Romance was Born, Longchamp, Baz Luhrmann, Marni, Issey Miyake, Prada, Henrik Vibskov and Viktor & Rolf. There’s also a foreword by legendary fashion muse Daphne Guinness; who better to introduce the subject?

One for fashion and art lovers alike!

Published through Thames and Hudson, the book is out now and also available in China, Singapore and Taiwan, so keep your eyes peeled for a copy.

Vincent Leong, ‘Keeping Up with the Abdullahs 2′, 2012

Opening today at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center is No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia, the inaugural touring exhibition of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. Featuring recent work by 13 artists from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, No Country presents some of the most compelling and innovative voices in South and Southeast Asia today.

The exhibition was first seen in New York at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (22 February – 22 May 2013) as part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, a multi-year collaboration that charts contemporary art practice in three geographic regions—South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa—and encompasses curatorial residencies, international touring exhibitions, audience-driven educational programming, and acquisitions for the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. All works have been newly acquired for the Guggenheim’s collection under the auspices of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Purchase Fund. Following its presentation in Hong Kong, the exhibition will travel to Singapore.

The exhibition—the title of which was drawn from the opening line of W.B. Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (1928), which was also adopted by Cormac McCarthy for his novel No Country for Old Men (2005)—proposes an understanding of South and Southeast Asia that transcends physical and political borders. The historical narrative of South and Southeast Asia stretches from the era of its ancient kingdoms and empires to that of today’s nation-states. The region is marked by traces of colonization, division, and intervention, events and processes that are inscribed in cultural memory. South and Southeast Asia is also home to numerous influential faiths, religions, and ethical codes, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

Highlights for me include Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s ’1:14.9′, an egg made from a ball of hand-wound string accompanied by a small plaque reading, ’1188.5 MILES OF FENCED BORDER – WEST, NORTH-WEST / DATA UPDATE: DEC 31, 2007.’ The string represents the exact length of the fencing of the border between India and Pakistan. The work comments on the tenuous nature of national boundaries and geopolitical divisions, specifically the genesis of the South Asian partition, which occurred either side of midnight on August 14, 1947, birthing two distinct nations in immediate succession.

Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi has also created an installation referencing partition, in this case Bangladesh’s partition in 1947 from India and again in 1971 from Pakistan, and the unsettled aftermath that ruptured not only the land and the lives of its people, but also the history and representation of the nation. Her bed of stainless steel razor blades, ‘Love Bed’ (2012), reflects on the gendered violence that was rife during both partitions. The bed is a shared space of domesticity, affection, and bliss that glints with both threat and invitation. The blade here represents not merely the violence implied by its sharp edge, but also the object’s function as a basic tool to aid in childbirth in the absence of other medical support, a circumstance that the artist recalls from childhood.

On until 16 February 2014.

Asia Society
9 Justice Drive
Admiralty, Hong Kong
+852 2103 9511
www.asiasociety.org

Tayeba Begum Lipi, ‘Love Bed’, 2012

Shilpa Gupta, ’1:14.9′, 2011–12

Adrian Wong, ‘Chicken Kiss’, 2007, digital print

It’s almost that time of year again when Para Site, Hong Kong’s premier independent organisation and one of the oldest and most active independent art centres in Asia, holds its celebrated and much anticipated annual fundraising auction.

More than 70 artworks by some of today’s most exciting artists will be auctioned off on 13 November to support Para Site’s programming, including pieces by Ai Weiwei, Zaha Hadid, Lee Kit, Ming Wong, Larry Clark, Tseng Kwong Chi, Xu Bing and Takashi Murakami.

The auction serves as a major source of funding for the institution, and makes possible the continued growth of Para Site, which already produces 10 exhibitions, 20 residencies, 20 public programmes, and an international conference each year. Proceeds from last year’s event funded such groundbreaking projects as A Journal of the Plague Year. Fear, ghosts, rebels. Sars, Leslie and the Hong Kong Story, the exhibition that attracted thousands of visitors and received widespread coverage both regionally and globally; and the tour of Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters, an exhibition that has traveled to Istanbul, Singapore, and soon New York.

Auction lots are now available for advance bidding on www.paddle8.com/auctions/parasite until 13 November 2013.

For more information on Para Site visit:
www.para-site.org.hk

Support a home-grown cultural organisation that contributes to Hong Kong’s blossoming art landscape!

Here are some of my favourite works from the upcoming auction (including, of course Adrian Wong’s ‘Chicken Kiss’, above):

Olga Chernysheva,
‘Untitled.Festival.Park’, 2007, black and white silver halide print

Harland Miller,
‘Bondage on a Shoe String’, 2012, watercolour, acrylic, and oil on paper

Angela Su, ‘Coenagrion luella’, 2007, ink on drafting film

Arun K.S.
‘Untitled’ , 2011;
watercolour, carbon ink and pencil on plywood, the surface of which has been prepared with various papers, paper pulp and pages from a Malayalam yoga book and the Holy Bible