Hou Hanru

On Kawara's project for the 2000 Shanghai Biennale is a very particular one. Entitled "Pure Consciousness", it consists of seven "Date Paintings". The sizes of the paintings are respectively 20.32 x 25.4 cm and 25.4 x 33.02 cm. The dates, from Jan.1 to Jan. 7, 1997, are written in white against black backgrounds. He decides to show the work in a kindergarten instead of the regular venue of the biennale in the Shanghai Art Museum in order to avoid the common audience of art and enter the innocent world of children's lives. Eventually, this project has been realized in Zinlei Music Kindergarten of Jing'an District, Shanghai.

"On Kawara's 'Pure Consciousness' in Shanghai"… (altro)

The rise of globalism has created tremendous challenges to old economic, political, and cultural paradigms, changes that are increasingly reflected in diverse artistic practices across the planet. If disciplinary boundaries are now crossed as easily as geographic ones, how does the new internationalism that we are facing affect aesthetics and artistic production? Is there a link, for example, between the rise of video works and the global availability of digital media? Does the global information age facilitate an international language of art and an alternative reading of history, from art history toward art histories?

From the perspective of a museum of modern and contemporary art--a purely European construct--the art institution has to overcome a major contradiction, one that exists between its mission of permanence and its mission of change. How can cultural institutions contribute to the revamping of their own structures now that the hegemony of Western modernity is being challenged? How can museums connect with new audiences through different practices, different scholarships, and different interpretive strategies that grow out of the sedimentation of their own history?

To invite and encourage such dialogue, How Latitudes Become Forms looks at current scholarship on globalism and changing curatorial practices, and identifies critical models provided by artists themselves, featuring thought-provoking essays and conversations by curators, critics, and cultural programmers from across the world, as well as multidisciplinary artworks by more than 40 artists from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States.
Edited by Philippe Vergne. 
Essays by Paulo Herkenhoff, Hidenaga Otori,and Hou Hanru. 
Introduction by Kathy Halbreich. Conversations with Cuauhtemoc Medina & Vasif Kortun, Kathy Halbreich & Vishakha Desai, Steve Dietz & Raqs Media Collective, Philip Bither, Baraka Sele and Philippe Vergne.… (altro)

Catalogue for an exhibition held at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) from October 16, 2005 to January 15, 2006 and at MASS MoCA (North Adams) from February 19, 2006 to January 8, 2007.

This first monograph to look back over Huang Yong Ping's work to date finally brings the full range of his accomplishments to an international audience. As a contemporary artist in China working with diverse traditions and new and ancient media, Huang has built an artistic universe comprised of provocative installations that challenge the viewer to reconsider everything from the idea of art to national identity to recent history. He was once one of the leading figures of the Xiamen Dada movement--a collective of artists working to create a new Chinese cultural identity by bridging trends in Western modernism with Chinese traditions of Zen and Taoism. He continues to confront established definitions of history and aesthetics with sculptures and installations that draw on the legacies of Joseph Beuys, Arte Povera, and John Cage as well as traditional Chinese art and philosophy, juxtaposing traditional objects, iconic images, and modern references. House of Oracles echoes that blend by binding photographs, essays, and striking sketchbook pages, which are presented with translations of the artist's calligraphy, in a matte soft cover with two facing spines--it opens with the plates on one side and the essays and artist writings on the other.… (altro)