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May 2014

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May 30 2014

Japan

Field Trip: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

by Katherine Tong

Kanazawa, located in northern Japan, was once among the country’s four biggest cities during the Edo period (1603–1867). Fortunately, withstanding numerous bombings during WWII, its historic sites, such as the Kanazawa Castle and Kenrokuen Garden, still stand, and much of its traditional culture and craft remain in practice. With this rich cultural background, it is perhaps no surprise that in 1995 the municipal government decided to build an art complex there. This coming October, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, will celebrate its 10th anniversary. ArtAsiaPacific visited the museum, which is housed in a circular, one-story building designed by Japanese architectural firm SANAA.

May 29 2014

Hong Kong

Concrete Love

by Jen Kwok

May 28 2014

Hong Kong Germany

Carsten Nicolai’s “Alpha Pulse” Lights Up the Hong Kong Skyline

by Kitty van Leeuwen

What could be a better canvas to work on than Hong Kong’s iconic skyline? For this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong, German light and sound artist Carsten Nicolai did just that with Alpha Pulse (2014), a huge installation powered by the light system of the city’s International Commerce Centre (ICC). For three nights during the fair, the 484-meter building, which sits across the harbor in Kowloon, sent pulsating light signals for just under an hour. With an app created by the artist available for download, participants could receive the light and audio signals from the tower on their own phones, and experience a new way of interacting with the city.

May 26 2014

Hong Kong Korea, South Taiwan

Yeesookyung: Piecing It Together

by John Jervis

Piecing together discarded shards of porcelain, and marking joins and bare edges with lines of gold leaf, Korean artist Yeesookyung creates new shapes, often softly curved and anthropomorphic, occasionally jagged and alien. Her ceramic practice, which started with the “Translated Vases” series in 2006, has proved therapeutic for the artist, and the resulting works are profoundly, undeniably beautiful.

May 23 2014

Hong Kong Singapore

Entering The Post Apocalypse with Ming Wong

by The Editors

May 22 2014

Palestine

Untitled Selection: Tanya Habjouqa

by Ann Woo

Untitled Selection is a bi-weekly post of photography from ArtAsiaPacific’s areas of coverage. Created by photo editor, Ann Woo.

May 16 2014

Hong Kong Japan China Korea, North Korea, South

The Melting Pot: Art Basel Hong kong

by The Editors

Despite imminent tropical rainstorms, Art Basel in Hong Kong opened to the assembled VIPs and press on Wednesday, May 14, without a glitch. During the press conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, fair directors Magnus Renfrew and Marc Spiegler remarked that the level of presentation had been substantially raised, with an improved range of exhibitors from both Eastern and Western quarters, alluding to the fact that the vestiges of ArtHK (Art Basel in Hong Kong’s predecessor) have finally been smoothed away.

May 13 2014

China Singapore

Shop Till You Drop: Supermarket by MadeIn

by Marybeth Stock

Shanghai-based MadeIn Company is the brainchild of Chinese artist Xu Zhen, who in 2009, subsumed himself into what is ostensibly a strictly commercial company that produces and sells Art. Established as a saucy rejoinder to all things “Made in China,” MadeIn is also a rebuke to the prepackaged mechanics of the contemporary Chinese art market. Its works are ambitious and conceptually provoking—including performance, sculpture, video, photography, internet art and painting, as well as research and curation.

May 08 2014

USA Korea, South China Israel United Arab Emirates Turkey

Asian Gallery Highlights at Frieze New York

by Paul Laster

The third edition of Frieze New York, which returns to its gigantic white tent on Randall’s Island Park from May 9 through May 12, features a remarkable 18 exhibitors from Asia, including a smart mix of established and emerging galleries from Japan, Korea, China, India, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Israel and Turkey.

May 07 2014

Hong Kong

Concrete Love

by Jen Kwok

May 02 2014

Turkey

Field Trip: Ankara

by HG Masters

Ankara gets a bad rap. From the Istanbul perspective, the Turkish capital is often considered a dull, functionary-filled, landlocked Anatolian city. But Ankara has its own charms and historical interest. In order to fully comprehend the project of the Republic of Turkey (declared in 1922) and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s ambitions to modernize the country (for better and worse), you have to see the city’s unique neo-classical and Bauhaus-inspired buildings, its wide boulevards, and the state institutions that were established there. Whereas Istanbul is steeped in Ottoman culture, Ankara boasts of its ancient Hittite and Roman roots, as well as its Modernist history. On the contemporary art front, the city is home to many artists as well as a pair of 30-year-old galleries, the state art museum, and the one-year-old SALT Ulus, alongside the artist-run space Torun.