🎨 INSTITUTE OF ASIAN PERFORMANCE ART: TOKYO
TOKAS PROJECT VOL.1
October 13th - November 11th 2018
Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo
Tokyo, Japan
ZHANG Peili
PARK Hyunki
Since its opening in 2001, Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) has collaborated with overseas artists and curators, art centers, cultural institutions, and other parties to put on exhibitions and related programs. TOKAS is launching TOKAS Project in 2018, a program to explore various themes such as art and society from a multicultural viewpoint. In TOKAS Project Vol. 1, TOKAS is welcoming Victor Wang, a curator based in London and Shanghai. "The Institute of Asian Performance Art: Tokyo" exhibition introduces three pioneers in video art from Japan, China, and South Korea while considering performance art and media.
Wang, the curator of this exhibition, has researched the history and development of performance art in East Asia. When he took part in the 2017 TOKAS Residency Program, he researched the history of Japanese performance art via the avant-garde art activities, such as High Red Center and Zero Jigen. Artists of that era were investigating performance as a new type of expression that differed from traditional methods. These transient performances were also recorded as videos and photographs, making them into lasting works of art. Afterwards, they skillfully used video--a new technology at that time--for distinct aesthetics and approaches that were not bound by the context of Western art. In this way, they expanded the breadth of their expression, such as by creating works with an awareness of personal and societal transformation. Wang is also planning an exhibition with the same title to be held at the David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF) in London in September 2018. It will include works by Jiro Takamatsu, Minoru Hirata, and Kim Ku Lim, artists from the late 1950s to 1970s. The Tokyo exhibition, which is the second edition, will focus on three artists who are video art pioneers from Japan, China, and South Korea: IDEMITSU Mako, ZHANG Peili, and PARK Hyunki. It will showcase their works from that time while looking at their links to the contemporary era.
Text: Courtesy of TOKAS, press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 EXOTIC x MODERN: FRENCH ART DECO AND INSPIRATION FROM AFAR
October 6th 2018 - January 14th 2019
Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
Tokyo, Japan
Art Deco had been the epitome of its era, flourishing in France in the years between the two World Wars of the twentieth century. Inclinations towards encounters with the arts and culture of regions outside of Europe presented a significant influence on the aesthetics and formative sensibilities of Art Deco. Such as the Ballets Russe’s appearance in 1909, Josephine Baker who sailed to France in 1925, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, Citroen’s La Croisierie Noire and La Croisierie Jaune expeditions with automobiles travelling north to south across Africa and Asia for the first time, and the L'Exposition colonial internationale at the Bois de Vicennes in 1931, various topics had enlivened the streets of Paris.
Japonism, or an interest towards Asia as a whole, came to be reinterpreted as a catalyst for modernity. In the midst of such movements was the presence of Japanese artists such as Seizou Sugawara who had trained architect and designer Eileen Gray and designer Jean Dunand in the traditional techniques of lacquer, as well as the ivory sculptor Eugénie O’kin.
The exhibition introduces approximately 85 works including dynamic paintings and sculptures that draw inspiration from Africa and Asia, centering on those housed in the museum collections of the Musée des Années 30, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and the Mobilier National, which will be presented in Japan for the first time.
Text: Courtesy of Teien Art Museum, press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 MADSAKI - MADSUCKY WUZ HERE
October 5th - October 20th 2018
Kaikai Kiki Gallery
Tokyo, Japan
🌟 Highlight: MADSAKI with his copy of GAD Magazine Issue 01! We included an image of his work for our dossier on Side Core, with who he has collaborated extensively at the beginning of his career.
Kaikai Kiki Gallery is pleased to announce that from October 5th, 2018, we will be presenting MADSUCKY WUZ HERE 2018, MADSAKI’s much anticipated second solo exhibition at our gallery.
Following his fated meeting with Takashi Murakami over Instagram in 2015 and subsequent string of solo shows across Tokyo, Seoul, Bangkok, and Paris, Osaka-born New Jersey-raised MADSAKI has become unmistakably recognizable through his signature spray paint-splattered compositions and his vulgar, satirical take on mass cultural memes.
Although now almost synonymous with spray cans and swear words, MADSAKI originally painted exclusively with rollers and brushes; he had no background in street graffiti, and only began to use spray cans after returning to Japan. The original inception of his spray-can painting techniques began several years ago with his Beyond Words series— canvases with (often obscene) English slang scrawled haphazardly in spray paint, replete with curse words and jokes reminiscent of the kind of American high school banter that hovers between chummy teasing and malicious taunting. What seems at first glance to be crude and thoughtless appropriation, however, in fact stems from his dysphoria of being rejected by the two cultures that raised him, and his continued struggle to find middle ground between Japan and America.
After moving to America as a child and experiencing discrimination because of his Japanese ancestry, his return to Japan paradoxically left him feeling equally as alienated, this time because of his Americanized childhood.
Text: Courtesy of Kaikai Kiki, press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
October 3rd - January 14th 2018
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Paris, France
The work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, one of the most significant painters of the 20th century, is spread over four levels of Frank Gehry’s building.
The exhibition covers the painter’s whole career, from 1980 to 1988, focusing on 120 defining works. With the Heads from 1981-1982, gathered for the first time here, and the presentation of several collaborations between Basquiat and Warhol, the exhibition includes works previously unseen in Europe, essential works such as Obnoxious Liberals (1982), In Italian (1983), and Riding with Death (1988), as well as paintings which have rarely been seen since their first presentations during the artist’s lifetime, such as Offensive Orange (1982), Untitled (Boxer) (1982), and Untitled (Yellow Tar and Feathers) (1982).
Text: Courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton, press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 COLLECTING THE CONTEMPORARY: VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE FOSUN FOUNDATION
September 9th - October 18th 2018
Fosun Foundation
Shanghai, China
Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 ANNETTE KELM - LIGHT DOUBLE
September 28th - November 25th 2018
König Gallery
Berlin, Germany
In the jargon of professional photography, the term “light double” refers to people with whose help photographers optimize lighting conditions before the actual photo session. This method is often used when time is short, with only a few minutes are available for the shoot. In the studio, on the other hand, the method allows photographers to take their time trying out and playing through various lighting scenarios.
The photographic double portrait by Annette Kelm from which this exhibition takes its title shows the artist, musician and publisher Sonja Cvitkovic and the gallerist Johann König. Since they are both wearing the same orange bomber jacket and have adopted a similar pose, it remains unclear whether someone acted as a light double. But the distribution of light and shadow in the lower half of the images actually point to diverging lighting conditions – the difference between hard artificial and softer natural light. In the juxtaposition of two corresponding images, hierarchical constructions and their effects become visible.
Text: Kito Nedo, Courtesy of König Gallery, press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 ALICJA KWADE - ENTITAS
September 6th - November 11th 2018
König Gallery
Berlin, Germany
Everything that surrounds us as human beings—all the things and objects we consider to be solid, firm matter—is, strictly speaking, composed of nothing. The surface of Carrara marble, or a diamond, for instance, may appear to have hard and massive structures, but only a series of atoms form them, which in turn contain: nothing. If you imagine a single atom inflated to the size of a football stadium, it is only the size of a grain of rice in the middle of the playing field—the core nucleus—that has a mass. The remaining area is nothingness. As put forward by Goethe’s Faust, the universal question remains: what is it that “binds together the world's innermost core?” What exactly happens in the midst of infinite emptiness that encompasses everything? If the findings of physics contribute only marginally to the definite understanding of the world, we are left to question a realm only somewhat comprehensible by our limited human senses. We therefore require alternative ways of understanding that reach far beyond the arenas of science. The work of Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade repeatedly explores a transferral of scientific questioning into artistic concepts. Her exhibition ENTITAS offers poetic, intuitively comprehensible responses to the conundrum of what transpires in the invisible plenums of knowledge; what is it that happens between two blinks of an eye, between two glances? Kwade’s exhibition title ENTITAS (Latin: entity) alludes to enquiries about the essence of things: what is the world made of? And further even: what information is available for us to attempt an answer to this question?
Text: Timon Karl Kaleyta, Courtesy of König Gallery. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 IN-BETWEEN EXHIBITIONS
September 2018
Rockbund Art Museum
Shanghai, China
Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 FRANKLIN CHOW - ZIGZAGGING MY WAY HOME
PSA COLLECTION SERIES
August 4th - September 17th 2018
Power Station of Art
Shanghai, China
Power Station of Art (PSA) presents ‘Franklin Chow: Zigzagging my way home’, the Chinese-Swiss artist’s debut solo exhibition in China, from August 4th to October 17th 2018. ‘Zigzagging my way home’ is titled for the diverse experiences and confluences of cultures that Chow has known in his life and art as he eventually meandered his way home to his roots in Shanghai. The exhibition brings together Chow’s representative work of paintings, installations, objects, sculptures and videos from different stages of his career, along with Journal, a series of ink drawings and writings from his daily life. Also on view are four ancient Chinese artefacts from the Shanghai Museum’s collection which greatly inspires his art. They provide a crossover between traditional and contemporary art forms, and the hybridity between East and West in Chow’s work.
Born in 1946 in Shanghai, Chow moved to Hong Kong when he was three years old. At the age of 17, he arrived in Parison a one-way ticket to study art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, beginning his life as an artist. During his time as a student, Chow became acquainted with the abstract art of French artist Georges Mathieu and Chinese-French artist ZaoWou-Ki. The lyrical and abstract works of both artists crossed cultural aesthetics, which resonated with Chow. He travelled frequently between Paris and London where he took on several jobs which included film production, creative and management roles in multinational companies as well as leading his own marketing communications consultancy. Chow has lived in Switzerland since the early 1970s. Swiss culture and minimalist aesthetics have inspired much of his art.
Text: Courtesy of PSA official press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 HON: NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE & SHEN YUAN
August 18th - October 14th, 2018
Power Station of Art
Shanghai, China
Power Station of Art presents “Hon: Niki de Saint Phalle & Shen Yuan” from August 18th to October 14th, 2018. Looking back on representative works from across the careers of Niki de Saint Phalle and Shen Yuan, this exhibition strives to establish a dialogue that crosses time, space, and even medium; highlighting the connections and inner resonance of their creations. At the current time, while gender issues are once again rising to the fore; their works infuse the “Power Station,” a symbol of patriarchy, with an energy that goes beyond gender. Their experiences will inspire us to ponder the various debates revolving around femininity, along with unfolding the complexity of language, identity and immigration.
The exhibition title, “HON” (pronoun of “she” in Swedish language), is a tribute to Niki de Saint Phalle’s 1966 work of the same name. This massive spatial installation of a reclining female form contained facilities of an automatic vending machine, movie theater, gallery, and bar. It also combined the different functions of production, entertainment, education and social interaction. It was open, self-sufficient, all encompassing, and indicative of the enormous potential of women being hidden within the “subordinated sex”. Hon was dismantled immediately, after three months on display. Even though it was never to be seen again, it remains remarkable in history.
Text: Courtesy of PSA official press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 DAVID SHRIGLEY— LOSE YOUR MIND
September 8th - November 14th 2018
Power Station of Art
Shanghai, China
From September 8 to November 14, 2018, power station of Design, a creative extension of the Power Station of Art, and British Council are pleased to present the premiere solo exhibition of British artist David Shrigley. Entitled Lose Your Mind, the exhibition showcases more than 400 pieces of Untitled Drawings, a 1:1 scale inflatable version of Really Good, and other signature works over the past 30 years representative of Shrigley’s irreverent take on the intersections between art, design and popular culture. The exhibition hopes to shake up our assumptions by breaking down existing understandings of contemporary art.
Shrigley is known for his clever use of puns, satirical play-on-words, to present his unique black humour and absurd surrealist depictions of everyday situations. What is behind the seeming cynicism is the artist's insight into the human condition and his criticism of the ‘cliché’. The artist sets up multiple rousing hurdles for the upcoming exhibition. Audiences must enter through a “Death Gate” and a“展覧会” neon sign that is deliberately mis-spelled; adjacent to a wall installation exclaiming "I Am A Person". There are also other playful, misleading signage such as a "No Photograph" sign and an actual photograph which tells the viewer to "Imagine the Green is Red". Even remaining vigilant, it will seem, as the exhibition title indicates, you will have inevitably, “lost” your mind. Perhaps this is the purpose of the exhibition: to allow people to empty the contents of their brain and get enlightened and replenished by the likeness of chaos.
Text: Courtesy of PSA official press release. Photography: Global Art Daily.
🎨 CONDO SHANGHAI
July 7th - August 26th 2018
Various locations
Shanghai, China
On view this month is the first edition of the Condo Shanghai, a new form of international art viewing which has already had past success in London, New York and Mexico City. Condo takes its name from ‘condominium’ and is a large-scale collaborative exhibition of international galleries. The concept, led by Vanessa Carlos from Carlos-Ishigawa Gallery, is fresh and is an alternative to the usual and very commercial art fair circuit. Host galleries share their spaces with visiting galleries – either by co-curating an exhibition together, or dividing their galleries and allocating spaces. As Condo puts it: "the initiative encourages the evaluation of existing models, pooling resources and acting communally to propose an environment that is more conducive for experimental gallery exhibitions to take place internationally."
① A+ CONTEMPORARY亚洲当代艺术空间
Unit 106, Building 7, 50 Moganshan Road莫干山路50号7号楼106室
Tue–Sun 10:00–18:30
hosting JOSÉGARCÍA ,MX Mexico City
② J:GALLERY
Unit 102, Building 17, 50 Moganshan Road莫干山路50号17号楼102室
Mon–Sun 10:30–18:00
hosting PROJECT NATIVE INFORMANTLondon, UK
&GREENGRASSI London, UK
③ GALLERY VACANCY
No. 2, Lane 19, M. Wulumuqi Rd, Jing’an District静安区乌鲁木齐中路19弄2号
Tue–Sat 10:00–18:00
hosting MISAKO & ROSEN Tokyo, Japan
④ DON GALLERY东画廊
Unit 302, 2879 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District徐汇区龙腾大道2879号302室
Tue–Sat 10:00–18:00, Sun 13:00–18:00
hosting GHEBALY GALLERY Los Angeles, USA
⑤ EDOUARD MALINGUE GALLERY马凌画廊
Unit 2202, 2879 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District徐汇区龙腾大道2879号2202室
Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00
hosting KÖNIG GALERIE Berlin, Germany
&ESTHER SCHIPPER施博尔画廊 Berlin, Germany
⑥ MADEIN GALLERY没顶画廊
Unit 106, 2879 Longteng Avenue, Xuhui District徐汇区龙腾大道2879号106室