Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is pleased to announce our participation in Art Basel’s Hong Kong debut, which opens from May 23-26, 2013. Our publisher Art & Collection will have a booth at M24. We look forward to seeing you there!

About Art Basel | Hong Kong

From emerging talents to the Modern masters of both Asia and the West, the premiere edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong will trace twelve decades of art history across its four sectors: Galleries, Insights, Discoveries, and Encounters. On display will be the highest quality of paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, video and editioned works from the 20th and 21st centuries, by more than 2,000 artists from Asia and around the globe.

The show will also offer extensive opportunities for intellectual discovery, through discussions and presentations, creating a platform of cross-cultural exchanges for artists, gallerists, collectors, and visitors.

Open to Public: May 23-26, 2013

Venue: Booth M24, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

https://www.artbasel.com/en/Hong-Kong

You are cordially invited to the book launch of Zheng Shengtian’s four-volume collected essays on visual art, cultural exchange, biennales and art fairs since the 1980s. The Collection also features a memoir of his personal story and contains over 500,000 words and more than 300 coloured images to provide a first hand observation of thirty years of development in contemporary Chinese art. We hope to see you there!

鄭勝天新書發布會邀請: 五月五日（星期日）下午三時半，艾米莉卡藝術大學和溫哥華華人藝術家協會將舉行鄭勝天先生的新書發布會，希望大家撥冗參加。

《鄭勝天藝文選》

1) 藝壇漫遊 • 點擊藝術風景線

2) 文化交錯 • 遊蕩者沒有檔案

3) 視覺盛宴 • 雙年展＋藝博會

4) 偶遇人生 • 把自己掃描一遍

Address: Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design

1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island, Vancouver BC V6H 3R9

Time: May 5, 2013, 3:30pm

About Zheng Shengtian:

Zheng Shengtian, Managing Editor of Yishu, is a scholar, artist, and independent curator. For more than thirty years he worked at China Academy of Art as Professor and Chair of the Oil Painting Department. He was a founder and board member of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian from 1999 to 2011. He has been a board member of Asia Art Archive in North America since 2009 and a Trustee of the Vancouver Art Gallery since 2011. As an independent curator, he has co-organized numerous exhibitions including the Shanghai Modern at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and Art and China’s Revolution at Asia Society in New York. He is currently the Senior Curator for Asia with the Vancouver Biennale. He contributes frequently to periodicals and catalogues about contemporary and Asian art.

鄭勝天先生是國內外知名的藝術家、策展人和學者。曾任兩屆溫哥華華人藝術家協會主席。現任《Yishu》（典藏國際版）英文和中文版雜誌的總策劃，溫哥華美術館董事，溫哥華雙年展資深策展人和美洲亞洲藝術文獻庫董事。艾米莉卡藝術大學將在五月四日授予他名譽博士學位。他多年來在海內外中文媒體發表有關藝術的文章最近由杭州中國美術學院出版社集冊出版。共四本一套，約50萬字和300多張圖版，包括對當代藝術、文化交流、展覽和市場等方面的觀察和論述，及作者個人的回憶和散文，提供了三十年來中國藝術發展的親身見證。

For more information about this book series, visit: http://www.caapress.com/index.php?m=Newsinfo&a=show&id=13

Editor’s Note:

Yishu 56 is a special issue devoted to an edited selection of lectures and case studies that were presented at the World Biennial Forum No 1 Shifting Gravity from October 27 to 31, 2012, in Gwangju, South Korea. This event brought together numerous distinguished individuals who have been involved in the histories of biennials as these exhibitions have evolved over the past few decades, as well as more recent participants in this global phenomenon. The focus of this Forum was on biennials and triennials in Asia and the fact that the rapid economic, social, and cultural development that increasingly characterizes Asian nations in the twenty-first century is resulting in a shift of attention to this part of the world.

Various themes and issues were addressed at the World Biennial Forum. On a broader level, keynote speakers explored issues of social and cultural equality, ideas about what constitutes cosmopolitanism—something many biennials aspire to—and questions of what a biennial represents culturally and how it can better serve its constituents.

Through a series of case studies representing the Asia-Pacific region, architecture and design, emergent and alternative biennials, biennials in South Korea, and “Asia” and its margins, many shared concerns arose: In what ways can biennials affect, or even nuture, local art production? What is the influence of state, corporate, or institutional support on curatorial integrity? How can one produce something meaningful with only a limited budget? The selection of presentations in Yishu represents not only some of the more established biennials in Asia, but also newer models that may be overlooked due to an emphasis on the local or access to only a modest means of production, even though the objective is also to reach out and include an international community.

Yishu would like to thank the writers and presenters for their contributions to an important and timely discourse, the World Biennial Forum No 1 co-directors Hou Hanru and Ute Meta Bauer for inviting Yishu to participate in this important event, Olga Hatzidaki of the Biennial Foundation, and Sohl Lee of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, as well as all the others who have assisted with this publication. In May 2013, the Biennial Foundation, initiator of Shifting Gravity, is releasing a book co-published by Hatje Cantz and the Gwangju Biennale Foundation that will serve as a lasting document of the Forum.

Keith Wallace

image (top): Maro Avrabou and Dimitri Xenakis, Kitchen Garden, 2012, site-specific installation. Courtesy of the artists and Land Art Mongolia.

This two-day symposium explores Pop beyond the mainstream. Organised in collaboration with the Royal College of Art, London, this event engages with new research in different fields and geographies to rethink orthodoxies as well as develop new interpretations of ‘Pop’.

Of particular importance is the often critical nature of these global engagements with Pop. Reacting to the increasing dominance of the American post-war economy and media around the world, Pop art sometimes took the form of a destabilizing reversal of the normative messages associated with American culture and consumerism. This dialectic was effectively and memorably put to use by feminists, political groups and independence movements in order to simultaneously critique the hegemony of the West while drawing on its aesthetic mass appeal and graphic clarity.

To date, the history of Pop art has tended to affirm the hegemonic position of New York. In an attempt to challenge the simple linear trajectory of influence that has dominated most accounts, this symposium will explore Pop beyond the mainstream and open the definition of Pop to critical re-thinking.

image (top): The Front of New-York, 1974, oil on canvas. Collection of Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole. © Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, cl. Jean-Loup Mathieu

To download the symposium programme, visit: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/conference/global-pop-symposium

Editor’s Note: The majority of the texts in Yishu 55 focus on exhibitions and exhibition-making strategies, opening with reviews and observations on the Shanghai Biennale and Taipei Biennial—two important Asian events that demonstrated very different curatorial approaches. The other exhibitions (and one performance festival) reviewed were presented in Australia, China, Germany, Singapore, and the US, and among the topics they addressed are the question of what makes Asian art Asian, the possibility of what might constitute a portrait, new perspectives on representations of gender and sexuality, the gap between the poetic and the pragmatic in performance art in Chengdu, and how increased exposure to the global arena has left its mark on the work of Beijing-based artist Yin Xiuzhen.

Aside from the specific exhibition thematics or artists that are the subject of these texts, what repeatedly becomes apparent are references to tensions embedded within the complex relationships between regionalism, nationalism, and internationalism as well as our capacity to understand—or not—the initial intentions behind an artwork’s conception either in its place of creation or when exhibited in other contexts around the world. This can happen within a variety of conditions—from one Asian country to another Asian country, from China to Europe and Australia, from Canada to China, from the artist to his or her viewer. The conundrum that arises is whether the misinterpretation that might result from what Chang Tan refers to as “transcultural illiteracy” does the artwork a disservice or becomes richer through the addition of new layers of meaning.

Intrinsically rooted in the discussion of nationalism is the issue of identity, even as globalization gradually erodes the idea of fixed identities as artists travel and exhibit in other parts of the world, as the possibilities for the expression of gender become ever more fluid, and, especially, as the independence and specificity of place and culture become increasingly tenuous. We conclude Yishu 55 with features on artists Miao Xiaochun and Ming Fay, and, as it turns out, the irresolution of nationalisms and identity are alluded to here as well.

Keith Wallace

image (top): Yin Xiuzhen, Thought, 2009, clothes and steel, 340 cm x 510 cm x 370 cm. © Yin Xiuzhen. Courtesy of Pace Beijing.

Yishu’s editor Julie Grundvig just finished her iBook–an adaptation of a Chinese ghost story from the largest collection of strange tales called Tai Ping Guang Ji (太平廣記). This multi-touch eBook, The Bewitched Wife, will be released on iBook Store on Feb. 28, 2013.

For book trailer, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZUqDL44Y0bQ

A scholar, artist, and independent curator, Zheng Shengtian is the managing editor of Yishu, a journal of contemporary Chinese art. He has curated numerous exhibitions, most recently Art and China’s Revolution at the Asia Society Museum, New York. For this program, Zheng discusses the provocative work of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu.

In conjunction with Hammer Projects: Sun Yuan and Peng Yu

To view the lecture, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0GGgrgxCeo&feature=youtu.be

Date: December 11 2012, 07:30pm

Venue: Billy Wilder Theater, The Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024

The staff at Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art would like to wish all our contributors, supporters, and friends a joyous and peaceful holiday and all the very best for the new year.

Thanks to you, Yishu is now in its eleventh year of publication. We look forward to many more years of encouraging ideas and discussion about contemporary Chinese art.

Warmest regards,

Keith, Sheng, Julie, Kate, Lara, Debra, Carol, Ping, Chunyee

Editor’s Note:

Yishu 54 opens with texts by recipients of the Third Yishu Awards for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art. They are Lü Peng, recommended by Wu Hung, and Chou Yu-Ling recommended by Chia Chi Jason Wong. Lü Peng has been writing for many years and Chou Yu-Ling represents a younger generation, exemplifying that this award honours a range of writers who have made a strong contribution to the discussion of contemporary Chinese art. In his text, Lü Peng takes stock of contemporary Chinese art in the first years of the twenty-first century, while Chou Yu-Ling builds upon her in-depth study of the work of Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen.

In addition to this study of the work of Chen Chieh-jen, we are presenting three other artist features. Amjad Majid looks at specific artworks by the lateChen Zhen to coax out their complex transcultural references. Patricia Eichenbaum Karetzky writes about Wang Qingsong’s frequent use of Buddhist motifs and his growing skepticism towards the rectitude of religion in contemporary society. Voon Pow Bartlett turns to a younger artist, Han Feng, to show how the aspects of emptiness and solitude that inhabit his painting and sculpture are in fact signs of hope.

Nikita Cai and Carol Lu, whose on-going platform, Curatorial Inquiries, introduces its twelfth installment and it will become a regular feature in upcoming issues of Yishu. In Yishu 54 they emphasize the lack of a systematic account of exhibition histories in China and abroad, and propose that our understanding of the contemporary should not be ahistorical but, instead, be based on its connection to such histories. Complementing the concern to keep history vital, Elizabeth Parke talks with Karen Smith about the fate of her extensive personal archive, which serves as a valuable document of contemporary Chinese art from the 1990s into the 2000s.

In conclusion, Stephanie Bailey reviews exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art presented in two diverse cultural contexts—Istanbul and London—and their attempts to illustrate the vast changes in China and its contemporary art during the past three decades. Ryan Holmberg reviews one of the first Chinese graphic novels to be published in English, a memoir by Li Kunwu, and checks in on a life lived through the Cultural Revolution as expressed in this popular genre of publishing.

Keith Wallace

image (top): Chen Zhen, Six Roots/Memory, 2000, fabric, iron, ink, 300 x 400 x 200 cm. Courtesy of Faurschou Foundation.

Yishu was honoured to be invited to attend the World Biennial Forum No. 1: Shifting Gravity, which took place in the city of Gwangju, South Korea, from October 27 to 31, 2012. It was a marvelous international get-together for curators, art practitioners, and biennial organizations to discuss practical and actual issues concerning biennials. Yishu is going to publish the forum proceedings in a special issue in 2013.

The World Biennial Forum No. 1 was directed by Ute Meta Bauer and Hou Hanru.

About the Forum:

The World Biennial Forum No 1: SHIFTING GRAVITY co-directed by Ute Meta Bauer and Hou Hanru took place in the city of Gwangju, South Korea, from October 27 to 31 2012.

The World Biennial Forum No 1 was an international convention, the first of its kind for biennale practitioners and related professionals, on the occasion of the 9th Gwangju Biennale: ROUNDTABLE.

The World Biennial Forum No 1 served as a meeting point and forum for exchange, providing an opportunity for critical reflection upon the fact that over one hundred-fifty biennials for art and related disciplines are currently being organized all over the world: a world with many cultural centres that are characterized by rapidly changing socio-economic, and political certainties. This reality creates new challenges in the field of producing and curating contemporary art while it has affected various societies across the globe. The World Biennial Forum No 1 dedicated special attention to Asia as its context and as a continent.

The World Biennial Forum No 1 was aimed for all those who are involved in curating, organizing, and supporting international biennials. Conceived as an informal meeting point, the World Biennial Forum No 1 presented keynotes speeches by well-known speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and fields, and also offered Case Study discussions in order to address matters that concern those who engage with biennials on a professional level, including those who represent and fund them.

Details of the program can be viewed at: http://www.worldbiennialforum.org/about/