randian | 燃点

These days it seems where ever you turn there are complaints about the gallery system. New York has been discussing the “mid-sized gallery squeeze” for years now—to no avail. The cards are still stacked in favor of the heavy-hitting galleries, like David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, you name it. >> Read more

A strong advocate for the internationalisation of art, Nathalie Obadia has been instrumental in introducing Chinese artists such as MadeIn, Ni Youyu and Wang Keping to the Paris art scene. >> Read more

How to present a case study of these two artists who have had such a long career is indeed a challenge. Their practice dates back to the 1950s and their entire work, which spans decades, offers a unique insight into China’s social transformation and artistic revolution from the 1950s to the present day. >> Read more

In cultural representations of artificial intelligence and automated trading, the work of Jackson Pollock has emerged as an unlikely inspiration for the technological innovations that have drastically transformed the economy and, by extension, the world. This lecture will investigate further the connection between one of the most abstract and complex domains of finance, automated or “black box” trading, and the abstract expressionism (ab-ex) of what is sometimes characterized as Pollock’s “automatic art”. >> Read more

Art has no equivalent of the Skyscraper Index, the notion that record-breaking towers tend to be built, hubristically, just prior to an economic crisis. The top end of the art world seems to ignore crises altogether (at least the part that doesn’t invest in tall buildings). Inflationary tendencies are observable in the art world, though, in uppity auction prices, the spread of private museums and art storage facilities and, seemingly, in art itself, no doubt partly to fill all the cavernous museums being built. >> Read more

ShanghART had a standout solo-presentation of Liang Shaoji (museums everywhere take note: we need to see a major retrospective of Liang Shaoji). BANK (Shanghai) was present at Frieze Masters with a presentation of Maryn Varbanov's woven sculptures and Antenna Space brought a series of paintings by Cheng Xinyi. >> Read more

They represent acts of retreat from the world but they are uncertain paradises. Mere escape is not a refuge, and perhaps they doth protest too little. >> Read more

A long while ago—around five or six, or even seven or eight years ago—Yuan Gong came over by himself to talk with me about the idea of setting up an art space. >> Read more

In Han Bing’s new paintings, fragments of urban space appear as portraits. Torn posters and sprayed tags and coils of chain-link fence coalesce into veritable personalities—not faces, nothing recognizable, but the sense is there nonetheless. There’s a whole genre of art and film in which the personification of architecture allows personal dramas to play out […] >> Read more

Reports on the art market are suddenly very hip. The art market is still such a tiny little thing compared with other markets, like pork bellies or copper, but a sufficient number of investment bank clients are involved in it to make the analysis worthwhile. The trouble is that most reports are rubbish, with a few exceptions. >> Read more