Man Yu: What are the important issues you want to discuss through your latest works? Xu Tan: An important consideration is what art is. When I began to learn art, I thought that art was about appreciation of beauty, that it was about aesthetics or aesthetic construction, and a process of perfection. Recently, I have […]

Wang Jun bid goodbye to Yunnan’s art scene in 2007, where he had worked for many years, with his performance piece Farewell Kunming. A year later, Wang came to Beijing, with his photos, on-site videos, and oil paintings. Performance art has been an accepted art form. When Wang combines ordinary events with his performance art […]

I was born in Paris in 1971 and educated in Tangier. Later I studied history and political science at the Sorbonne, Paris; and photography at the International Center of Photography, New York. My photography and video work have been exhibited at Witte de With (Rotterdam), Fundacio Tapies (Barcelona), the MoMA (New York), Jeu de Paume […]

We all manoeuvre ourselves through life with the help of rational and emotional decisions, trying to find a meaning and a way to deal with the unknown and the inevitable. I too have this pursuit of knowledge, and art is for me the best way to learn. With different mediums, my work is about understanding […]

She looks at me and then back at the photograph. “Is it real?” “Yes,” I answer. “It is.” “No Photoshop?” she asks. No, no Photoshop, no computer involved. All my work is 100-percent analog photography. I do use different films and different ways of development to create extreme contrasts or color changes. “Did it hurt?” […]

There is no authenticity, there is no truth, and there is no interpretation. This is what I believe in art at present. Repeated by borrowing, imitating, and deforming, contemporary art in the 21st century seems difficult to differentiate in between genres, except for a slight hint of visual presentation. The allegorical relation to my work […]

My work ranges from 200-square-meter cardboard palaces you can wander inside, to small paintings I make on my kitchen table, from en-plein-air drawings of cathedrals to sculpture. I have adopted, questioned, and subverted the visual display of those in power and those who aspire to power. From paintings of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I to […]

My diminutive paper creations hover between the mediums of sculpture and collage. Delicately fashioned out of second-hand material collected from junk shops and my own printed media, they create a space where the real and imagined co-exist, where fact and fiction collide. Each piece is a myriad of textures, shapes, and lettering, reflecting my interest […]

The work 45 Minutes as Object takes place in two cities, Cape Town and Paris, on two separate continents. It can be seen as part video installation and part performance piece. The final work consists of ten TV monitors, five playing footage created and captured in Paris facing five playing footage created and captured in […]

In the past, my drawing and sculptural work has dealt with structures and mapping, using a linear perspective and a simplicity that pares down surfaces to create an enhanced pictorial order within the frame of architecture. It is an obsessive treatment of space, meticulously recording every block, passageway, and texture on such a large scale […]