Chi-Rund Tseng on Wang Ya-hui Wang Ya-hui , a young Taiwanese artist who won the 2007 Loop Award in Barcelona, has worked mainly in video since 2002. In the 2006 Shanghai Biennale, Wang Ya-hui’s work Sunshine on Tranquility was installed on the top floor of the museum. Richard Vine, editor of Art in America described […]

Let Me Introduce Myself is the second line of an email KimSu Thelier received earlier this year from someone claiming to be her younger half-brother in South Korea that she never knew she had. It is the first in a series of five email messages that inspired Thelier’s installation at the White Dot Gallery on […]

Ulrike Münter on Xia Xing In 2004, Chinese artist Xia Xing (born in 1974 in Shihezi, Xinjiang province, now living in Beijing) started a picture chronicle, wherein he paints from front-page photographs from issues of Xin Jingbao (New Beijing News, published since November 2003). These photographs, reporting about remarkable events—more or less faithfully to details—are […]

Jade Franklin on Guo Wei Born in 1960, Guo Wei was six years old when Mao Zedong declared his campaign to rid China of “bourgeois liberalism”—that infamous period in Chinese history known as the Cultural Revolution. He was alive during the material shortages, the dictated restrictions, and the ever-present apprehension that characterized this time, but […]

Jane Tippet on Tu Hongtao What is the essence of contemporary Chinese art? Is there such a thing as a fundamental core in this ever-changing and evolving genre? In 2005, the iconic artist Yue Minjun asserted, “Modern Chinese art devotes most of its attention to reality. And as almost every artist reaches out his antennae […]

Tally Beck on Sheng Qi Beijing-based artist Sheng Qi is probably best known for his act of personal defiance following the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989: he cut off the little finger of his left hand.  Since then, he has incorporated the image and concept of this self-mutilation into his work, which includes […]

My early work in the aquarium involved plaster models of mountains arranged into a landscape, the tank filled with water, various gel covered lights and colored liquid paint dispersed into the water to make cloud effects.  The back of the tank was covered with translucent Mylar and more lights were shining through this layer to […]

Life on a Leaf explores the possibilities of building a personal house as a total artwork. Andersson is interested in the way stories can influence the shape, the ornaments and the interior of a house. The aesthetics of the house is inspired by the Art Nouveau concept of the house as a shelter for an […]

I have always been inspired to an extent by escapism. When I was young I used to lie in bed with my Walkman on. Eyes closed, I would enter a place in my head where I could spend hours creating an ever-evolving world of super heroes, theme park rides and flying machines. I was compelled […]

When I was 18 I was…a girl, hitching across Europe with a friend, another girl, who had an old Rolliflex medium format camera. This impressed me greatly. After 6 months of high adventure, we returned to our small town on the California coast and I decided what I wanted to do with my life. I […]