Publication was made possible with the support of the Nguyen Art Foundation

In Ran Dian’s continuing series on going on a walk, we join artist Thinh Nguyen on his current journey across America from Los Angeles to New York, though it involves more driving than walking. We will follow Thinh as he continues on his journey.

all images courtesy the artist

Slab City, California

Moved out of my studio, needing some solitude to work on my addiction, emotional and mental health. Been traveling to see the earthworks that I’ve been wanting to see. So far my journey led me to Slab City Library, an anarchist library with free books for all, founded by the late “Rosalie” now managed by Cornelius Vango – where I came across this insightful book, “Steal Like An Artist” by Austin Kleon. It affirms/confirms my practice, I didn’t know I was/am doing all along…

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, Nevada (near Las Vegas)

Perhaps a Double Negative can make a positive. Such monumental gestures. Yet, this is just one little scratch into the surface of the earth. I feel small and insignificant when I look out into the gandure of the landscape. I am but a single spec of dust in this vastness. I belong to nature, my body belong to nature, nature is nurturing, me. From dust, I will return to dust.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, Utah

I was lost and couldn’t find them at with the stupid GPS. I just follow my instinct and found it. Was setting up to crash in the Sun Tunnel for the night until I heard coyotes howling, and the freezing howling wind was unbearable. Packed everything and left in pitch dark. Got lost driving around and about in circle. Finally, back to the main highway just in time before the gas ran out…it was magical nevertheless!

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Utah

I witnessed a miracle today. The sun came out. I asked, I believed, it would come out upon my arrival at my destination and that it’d be shining on my way. It would be a miracle if it does, I said. It did, it did just that. It glowed and glimmered through the stormy sky, brought me warmth and comfort in the snowy landscape.

Approach to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, constructed 1970

“From your end of the table it’s a 6, for others it’s a 9. But when we come to understanding together, it’s a whole new symbol.” Thinh Nguyen, Turning Table, 2020, Acrylic on found dinning table.

Lunar New Year, LA to NYC

I’m yet again on the road. Heading east bound once more, scheming up new projects while pretending everything is normal…nothing is…

Thinh Nguyễn, Dark Moon, 2021

Thinh Nguyen, “Your Glory Days Are Over”, 2021

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum

I am ever so inspired by Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. I felt like I am a part of this lineage of art history that uses the everyday, the mundane, to be meaningful (is it art or is it trash? That’s not my job to decide), dating back to ancient Chinese art to Duchamp, Rosenberg [Q. Thinh, do you mean Rauschenberg?], Warhol, Betty Saars (b.1926, Los Angeles), David Hammons (b.1943, Springfield, Illinois), to Danh Võ (b.1975, Vũng Tàu), and numerous more…my choice is not only conceptual but economical ( ‘cus I’m cheap and broke) and environmental (not that I’m saving the environment, there’s just too much stuff already).

Thinh Nguyen

Born in 1984 in Bao An, Vietnam, Thinh Nguyen is an artist, educator, curator, cultural critic, whose works investigate the intersections of cultural values. Utilizing various media, they explores and exposes oppressive sociopolitical power structures within those values. Nguyen has performed and exhibited internationally, most recently at The Mistake Room, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Contemporary Irish Art Center Los Angeles. Their work has been written about in Artforum, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic and Artillery Magazine.

Thinh Nguyễn

Lu Yang ‘Debut’

BANK (Building 2, Lane 298 Anfu Road, Xuhui District,) November 9, 2019–January 12, 2020

Lu Yang’s ‘debut’ and Chen Tianzhou’s ‘Backstage Boys’ at BANK stimulate the senses to the point of overload. The gallery is a kitsch carnival where, for instance, the rock star Marilyn Manson is depicted as an ‘enchanting, vicious snake demon’ who resists the fiery attack launched by the Cabalesh Brothers (1980’s Chinese cartoon characters) and the pug running about the room is magnified into a four eyed deity and given heart-gem nipples.

A hypnotic dance track fills the room. The noise is coming from a box TV in a stand encrusted with plastic gems and painted gold. The gold paint flicks onto the tiled floor in slapdash strokes. Inside the box a man performs a tribal dance. The video could be a 1960s documentary film, but then the bangs of his drum are absorbed by a dance beat and the scene erupts into a frenzy of color and fire.

This is a taste of what Lu Yang is primarily known for: outlandish video productions. But we are here to see Lu’s ‘debut’ of paintings. Framed in gaudy gold, we find acrylic paintings of Lu deified and reincarnated as ‘Acala’ (who decapitates muscular young men), the Anime character ‘Pipimi’ (who tortures more beautiful men) and ‘Kaiju’ (who, of course, forms an alliance with Godzilla).

It seemed eerily apt that Lu was held up and Lu Yang the mortal would remain unknown. Instead, I emailed Lu some questions, and Lu responded generously.

Lu Yang,Double Sadness 两倍忧伤，2019 Acrylic on canvas, mixed media 布面丙烯，综合材料 128 ×88 cm (image courtesy the artist and BANK gallery)

I ❤ Manson 我❤曼森，2019 Acrylic on canvas, mixed media 布面丙烯，综合材料
188 ×158 cm (image courtesy the artist and BANK gallery)

Why did you choose the medium of painting for these works? 

This year, I made a new work, a video game, and it took a lot of energy and physical strength to execute the work. For half a year, I worked on it for more than 14 hours a day, day and night without interruption. The huge workload left me with a tremendous anxiety to sit in front of the computer and sapped the joy of making art works. So, I decided to try to work through painting to relieve the anxiety and the pain from overworking.

Although I have been working with multimedia for many years, I have drawn since I was a child. After graduation from the Middle School of the Shanghai Art University, I was admitted to the Department of Fine Arts at Nanshan Road, China Academy of Fine Arts. That said, I still possess some basic painting skills. When I picked up the paintbrush again and started painting, it felt like heaven compared to the intensive work with the computer, I feel like I’m on holiday every day. I find my painter self to be so relaxed, happy and comfortable. I really envy the painters!

Lu Yang, A (Blood) Thirst Trap
给我也喝一口好不好ヾ(>Д<;))))……，2019
Acrylic on canvas, mixed media
布面丙烯，综合材料 180 ×173 cm (image courtesy the artist and BANK gallery)

Lu Yang with friends

What can you achieve on canvas that you can’t on video?

If there’s something that can’t be realized in my video works but is achieved through the means of painting, I’d say it’s the pleasure of the body and the spirit, and this pleasure goes from the conception, to the painting process, to the exhibition. It’s very relaxed and pleasant. It’s like a very important holiday.

Mathieu’s BANK Gallery offered me an opportunity to showcase my paintings. The name of the exhibition is “debut”, which means I want to make my second debut as a painter. If I could, I would like to hold an exhibition every year!

Installation view

You take very violent and disturbing subjects and subvert them in playful and exuberant images. Can you talk to me about the idea of ‘spectacle’ and ‘sacrifice’ in your work or modern society in general?

Although painting is the medium of this exhibition, the thinking behind it is the same as my works in other mediums. The content of the work is a mixture of all the themes I care about and issues that interest me. Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated by taboo and the bloody themes of violence and death while also being enamored by the lovely, dreamlike and fantastical. Although I am more convinced by the philosophy of non-binary opposition, my hobbies seem very extreme to others. It’s hard to make legible the specific connection these works have with society, and I don’t think ‘society’ is the ‘reality’. In any corner of the globe, the whole universe may just be an illusion. Rather, my painting is closer to the catharsis of my personal hobbies, a combination of the bloody violence and extremely abnormal loveliness. Those blood drops, skeletons, innards, and evil smiling faces, they all make me feel satisfied and happy!

Cross-culturally, art began as a means to connect with a higher, spiritual realm. Now, art struggles for a purpose/ or against purpose in a more secular world. Why do ancient myths and religions appeal to you and what relevance do they have in a digital, commercial world?

If you look far away in time, say hundreds or even thousands of years are just a glimpse in the infinite universe — that’s why I don’t like to divide time into categories like ancient, historical, modern, or future. Maybe in the eyes of intelligent life forms of some other planets, our era is in the same duration of another cultural history of thousands of years. The influence of the so-called “ancient religious history” continues to interest me. These sources of wisdom are not limited by timelines constructed by human beings. Being later or newer does not necessarily mean better or more advanced. Material advancements can easily be destroyed in the universe and nature, and our brainpower and wisdom may be far inferior to those who lived thousands of years ago. I want to think about everything in a broader perspective. I want to try and break all these labels with reference to time and space in my works.

Each painting is a busy collision of ideas, cultural allusions, and colors. How do you choose what to put together?

I like all cultures; and so based on what I like, I then create my own world. If I don’t set boundaries for cultures in my heart, I am free to understand and love them. For example, I like the traditional religion of Southeast Asian culture, some Western psychological ideas, and I also like animation culture, games and virtual idols. I am extremely fond of Rock and Roll as well as ACG music. There are no boundaries in my eyes, which to others is an extreme idea.

Lu Yang, What a Snack! 惊叫美味!炮烙美少年!，2019 Acrylic on canvas, mixed media 布面丙烯，综合材料
180 ×144 cm (image courtesy the artist and BANK gallery)

Lu Yang, Chili Eyes! Old Man Reading Smartphone!
辣眼睛!老人看手机!，2019
Acrylic on canvas, mixed media
布面丙烯，综合材料 138 ×138 cm

Do you ever worry about cultural appropriation or being insensitive about sacred subjects?

I do have some taboos, some contents and subjects I dare not go into, because I am too in awe of their wisdom, but I can’t help contacting and recreating some interesting cultures beyond my own. I’ve found an excuse for myself: all comes from the mind, so they should not be colored and categorized. One ends up being haunted by things if one comes up with categories by observing things by their color, sound, fragrance, and touch.

You take on many different personalities in your work, like avatars of different video games. Is your art a form of ‘escapism’ from the real world?

You can say it’s a form of “escapism”, can’t you? When I create a work, I am constructing my own world. I am very happy to immerse myself in this world, just like I usually am to stay at home and indulge myself in the environment where my body feels very safe, and my brain can go wild. I can abandon all identity labels, forget about age or gender, forget that I have a body fixed on the earth, even forget that I am a person altogether. That’s nice to say, but many people are in fact just serious “otakus”. The otaku in the traditional sense is someone who immerses himself in the world created by others, such as animations, games, books, etc., while I may be an otaku who likes the world created by others but prefers to create their own world.

What’s next for you creatively?

Soon I will be working on the “BMW Art journey” project this year, for which I will travel around Asia. The continent of Asia is my biggest inspiration!

Alice Gee is a writer. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English, Alice moved to Taicang, a city just north of Shanghai, where she writes and teaches part-time. 

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Yes I would, if I could, why wouldn’t I rather be a hammer? El Condor Pasa and Comandante Che Guevara, two songs roaring above the lands of South America, soars up across the seas, spreading its sounds all over the Eurasia. They stand for the resistance of the South American peoples against colonization, and their yearning for independence. The spiritual strength transferred is inspiring, and the reminiscences of the history of revolutionary culture and the left movements are touching. It has become a bugle call of resistance against oppression all over the world.

The exhibition starts with “Firing”. This first part, consisting of 162 pieces of target paper, as if cobblestones along the river of war, forms a path leading to every corners of the whole show. Since 2013, Zhang Yue has made a series of works about guns via investigation and research, displaying the shooting experiences in shooting ranges, veterans’ actual combat experiences, criminal cases, catalogued certificates for taking guns from different periods, and gun cants in vernaculars and local code words

靶纸, 2016 – 2017, 印刷品, 54 × 38 cm × 162
Target Paper, 2016 – 2017, Printed matter, 54 × 38 cm × 162

朝鲜, 2017, 钢笔纸本, 41 × 32 cm
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 2017, Paper, pen, 41 × 32 cm

In the second part of the exhibition, the entrance is a tent set up between the two rooms. In 2015, Zhang Yue stayed in a refugee camp in the Myanmar battlefields for 65 days. Here gun shots are no longer bullets holes on target paper, but are embedded in every wall;  the shooting scores are counted only by lives. The fragile shack-tent is people’s only safety house. There lived tea peasants, tobacco growers, guerrillas, drug dealers, prostitutes, and casino bosses. Two months later, Zhang Yue and Bao Xiaowei went to Kokang again with 50,000 jin (25,000 kilograms) of rice for which they had exchange their works in Beijing, and distributed it among over 6,000 refugee households. Nothing is more important than surviving

War and suffering have never found a solution, but are only substituted by renewed happenings. The core of this exhibition represents this constantly repeated tragedy which has now erupted along the Tropic of Cancer in this globalized world. Zhang Yue began with Asia. By reading books and Internet documents, he analyzed the arms trade of the Kim Dynasty, satellite-guided weapons of North Korea, its uranium ore detector, and its trade of parts of war vehicles and submarines. His work Empire Plan re-explained the 1961 Cuba missile crisis.

At the end of the Cold War, the history encountered an East Europe moment.  Inspired by some sci-fi plots of gene editing, Zhang Yue fabricated a story in which Serbs revise and rule the English pronunciations of Albanians out of the hatred of one nation toward another’s language. After the 911 terrorist attack, a new “global anti-terrorist war” began. Focused on the Boston terrorist explosion, Zhang Yue analyzed its mystical relations to several other attacks in 2013 in the form of 20 freehand blueprints. Seeking facts is not a work that an artist can do by himself. But such an independent investigation provides fresh approaches for analysis. It is like mosaic tiles, or an ever-running fax machine, piecing together a richest historical picture.

In the third part of the exhibition, various violent events took place in a “city” of a e-game. As a player, Zhang Yue became a 24-hour surveillance man, hiding himself behind the hundreds of CCTV cameras, and drawing up plans to take criminals under custody. There is a big screen too, which displayed another scenario: Zhang Yue played an opposite role, a killer in the city of “Los Angeles”, a “thug” who could be arrested at any time. The switch of role gives us a warning: who really are we? One who constantly surveil possible violence, or who are under surveillance? A victim of violence, or a potential gunman?

The facts are never transferred faithfully. We have to find out the “possible information” neglected by the history, put it into an alternative framework, and then think, doubt, criticize, and imagine. It is only by this way that we can approach as close as possible to the complicated reality, and form a personal view of history. This is the unique way of Zhang Yue’s work, and its meaning and value.

The last part of the exhibition is a description of Zhang Yue’s jail life, one of his most critical personal experience. His 80 drawings drawn in prison quietly shows his reminiscences. Outside the hall is the neat white courtyard. There the sonorous sound of a future war (from the artist’s work “Tomorrow”) is played, and the sky is defenseless as always. It will be played around-the-clock, as the sound of El Condor Pasa is ever soaring above the lands of South America. The spirit of the song is still inspiring, but we know very well that while we can choose between sparrow and snail, hammer and nail, forest and street in the game world, the real world can never be controlled by keyboard and mouse.

Curator: Cui Cancan
March 14, 2018

Welcome, 2017, 多频视频, 尺寸可变
Welcome, 2017, Multi – channel video, Variable size

缅甸民族民主同盟军军事委员会通告, 2017, 钢笔纸本, 37 × 29 cm × 15
Announcement of the Military Committee of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Arm, 2017, Paper, pen, 37 × 29 cm × 15

地图 Map

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Zhang Yue was born in Jinan in 1985. His solo exhibition includes You Miss the Truth (Gallery Yang, Beijing, China, 2014). His project includes: About the War in Northern Myanmar (Gallery Yang, Beijing , China, 2015). He has participated in group exhibitions at a number of institutions and galleries, including MAXXI Museum(Rome, Italy), White Rabbit Gallery (Sydney, Australia), Minsheng Art Museum (Beijing, China), Today Art Museum, Klein Sun Gallery (New York, America), Whitebox Art Center, LIN & LIN Gallery (Taipei, China), and Pace Gallery (Beijing, China).

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Cui Cancan is an active independent curator in China. He was awarded the CCAA China contemporary art review youth award, “YISHU” contemporary art review award. Curated theme exhibitions including HEIQIAO Night Away (2013), Countryside Fashion (2013), FUCKOFF II (2013), Unlived By What Is Seen (2014), Between the 5th and the 6th Ring Road in Beijing (2015), Ten Night (2016), etc. Curated solo exhibitions for many artists including Ai Weiwei, Xia Xiaowan, Shen Shaomin, Wang Qingsong, He Yunchang, Ma Ke, Xia Xing, Zhao Zhao, Qin Qi, Li Qing, Chen Yufan, Chen Yujun, Li Binyuan, Feng Lin, Zhang Yue, Song Ning, Jiang Bo, MUer, etc.

During the four days of previews:

786,323 selfies were taken on vaporettos (ferryboats) while passing next to a pair of gigantic white hands coming out of the Grand Canal to prop up a palazzo. The hands were awkward and useless, and so were all selfies.
2,347,732 times the word “sorry” was uttered by people bumping into one another.
45,752 people stopped to check maps, take selfies, or say hello to one another in the narrowest passages, causing traffic jams.
734 times I got lost trying to get from this place to that place. Thankfully I was using Google Maps; the number would have been much higher otherwise.
72,003 people stopped for over 30 seconds at the entrance of rooms where videos were being played, holding the curtain open and shining light on the projection screen.
347,743,482,657 USD made by property owners renting palazzi (or storage rooms) to the naive crowd of art dwellers.
7,756,832 people whom other people pretended to recognize at events and in the streets.

HIRST

“Oligart” I think when I land in front of one of Hirst’s gargantuan things just outside Palazzo Grassi, and I resolve not to see his show. Though I sympathize with all people who struggle with midlife crises to resolve their past—such as IT guys well in their forties who take up parkour and pop their kneecaps dreaming of themselves as ninjas—I can’t accept someone’s unresolved teenager issues to generate this much speculation and above all to monopolize both Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, which are usually dedicated to real shows.

由达明·赫斯特造的那些庞然大物中的一个，我不喜欢
One of those really big things by Damien Hirst that I don’t like

VIDEOS

While video demands attention and commitment, unlike performance it allows for sitting down and taking a rest; plus there is no peer pressure to applaud at the end—which is why I have a strong appreciation for video. And in fact it is the videos which partly redeem the main exhibition, “Viva Arte Viva” (curated by Christine Macel), a show which I find otherwise tame and under-researched because it throws up a narrative so nebulous as to embrace every artwork on the planet (and no, that’s NOT a good thing). Both in the Giardini and in the Arsenale, the show is structured around a pointless separation into smaller thematic pavilions (Pavilion of Artists and Books? Pavilion of Shamans? Dionysian Pavilion?), each introduced by wall texts so simplistic they could have been written for children books or Hollywood scripts.

Here are three of the videos that rescued the show,

1. Marcos Ávila Forero’s “Atrato” documents an event the artist organized in 2014 on the river Atrato in the Amazonian forests of Colombia. A dozen locals face each other in a circle, submerged in the river up to their waist, learning how to rhythmically beat the surface of the water with their hands as though it was an instrument. The artist learned that “playing the water” was an Afro-Columbian ritual lost when the area became embroiled in a perennial armed conflict, but also that a similar technique still survived in Congo. Though the video is just a window showing a single moment of a much more complex endeavor, it brilliantly captures its essence. I listen to the beat and the splashes, I witness how joyful is the locals’ effort to reconnect to a lost tradition that bridged two continents, and the relevance of such a re-appropriation becomes very easy to grasp.

2. Hilarious and extremely political is Guan Xiao’s “David” (2013), a three-channel video in which we see myriad kitsch appropriations of Michelangelo’s statue that are celebrated with an extremely annoying pop song throughout the video.

3. Also on the humorous side (I think Ms. Macel was too earnest to include a Pavilion of Humor?) is Søren Engsted’s “Levitation” (2017), the video documentation of a performance in which the artist, who is sitting crossed-legs on a plinth, discusses the ability to hover above ground.

墨西哥Ávila Forero的《阿特拉托（Atrato）》，在军械库的主题展中
Marcos Ávila Forero’s “Atrato”, in the main exhibition at the Arsenale

关小，《大卫》，2013
Guan Xiao, “David”, 2013

Søren Engsted，《漂浮（Levitation）》，在贾尔迪尼的中心场馆
Soren Engsted, “Levitation”, at the Central Pavilion in Giardini

THE UK AND CANADIAN PAVILIONS

UK: Phyllida Barlow is 73 years old, and for over 40 years she held an honorable yet unglamorous position as a teacher at the Slade School of Art in London before retiring in 2009 to dedicate herself full time to her sculptures. The Swiss colossus Hauser and Wirth took notice, and her career began to fly. Now she’s representing her country at the Venice Biennale. In my opinion, her tenacity wins hands down against the instant success of a supposedly rebellious youth such as Sarah Lucas, who represented the UK two years ago. Of course, my judgment wouldn’t be as positive were it not supported by a strong liking for Barlow’s practice and for her show in Venice. I truly admire the gigantic shapes that populate the space, made with materials as unassuming as plywood, concrete, foam, and cardboard. They are playful and they are spontaneous, but at the same time they look ancient and menacing—if left unguarded, they might at any moment knock down the pavilion walls and squash all the people queuing for the German Pavilion…and then take a sip from the Canadian pavilion fountain.

Canada: Incidentally, the Pavilion is great, as it was two years ago. The artist Geoffrey Farmer decided to take advantage of the renovation the pavilion is undergoing for its 60th birthday and opened up the central room to turn it into a fountain that sprays water a few meters above the ground. In older times fountains were a ubiquitous sight throughout Europe. As architecture and fine art were considered overlapping disciplines, fountains, decorated by sculptural elements, became the meeting ground for visual aesthetics and spatial functionality, and were commissioned both privately and publicly, But seeing fountains in an art festival nowadays feels refreshing (I couldn’t resist saying this), as for some reason they are a rather unpopular medium among contemporary artists. (Ed. –Renata Lucas “fontes e sequestros” 2015?) Possibly, socially conscious artists fear fountains convey a sense of colonialist grandeur, or something similar. In general, the ratio of neon and mirrors to fountains in the art world is truly unacceptable.

由家菲里达·巴洛(Phyllida Barlow)造的那些庞然大物中的一个，我喜欢
One of those really big things by Phyllida Barlow that I like

英国馆
UK Pavilion

英国馆
UK Pavilion

加拿大馆因杰弗里·法莫（Geoffrey Farmer）的《镜子的出口（A Way Out of the Mirror）》而成为了一个喷泉，该作品受到一系列日期为1955年的摄影所启发，而这些照片展示了一辆撞上火车的运木车 The Canadian Pavilion turned into a fountain for Geoffrey Farmer’s “A Way Out of the Mirror”, inspired by a series of photographs dated 1955 showing a lumber truck colliding against a train

在加拿大馆的作者
Yours truly, at the Canadian Pavilion

VIVA ARTE VIVA

A prejudice I wasn’t able to overcome: I find the title of the Biennale unbearable. It literally translates as “Go Art Go” (okay, also “Long Live Art”, but still). While I understand—though do not fully agree with—the necessity of choosing an immediate, non-controversial title, and while the curator and the communication team went to great lengths in affixing all kinds of readings, the fact remains that the title is terrible, far beyond the reach of any irony.

ERNESTO NETO

I hear someone addressing an audience inside Ernesto Neto’s organic tent at the Arsenale. I can see that people are sitting comfortably on cushions and rugs, and I decide it’s worth going in to rest for a second. When I begin to take my shoes off, though, I realize that both my right and left sock have giant gaping holes. I take it as a sign from above, and decide to move on, without even bothering to read the caption. Later I find out that inside the tent, called “Um Sagrado Lugar (A Sacred Place)” hosts members of a Brazilian tribe named Huni Kuin, and that they perform shamanic rituals that involve the intake of ayahuasca (a strong psychoactive drug). Hallucinogens in the Arsenale? No, please no!

为什么我不敢进入Ernesto Neto位于军械库的神圣帐篷
Why I didn’t dare enter Ernesto Neto’s sacred tent in the Arsenale

“绿光（Green light）”——一间在奥拉维尔·埃利亚松（Olafur Eliasson）工作室附近的艺术作坊，位于军械库的中心场馆。我是真的迷惑于，为什么这个该在那或在任何的艺术展中
“Green light”, an artistic workshop by Studio Olafur Eliasson, in the Central Pavilion at the Arsenale. I’m really puzzled as of why this should be there, or in any art exhibition.

VOLUME

All the video works in Venice are played at a very low volume; I “hear” this is the result of some artist’s intervention aimed at making us all feel like we are turning deaf—a powerful comment on our deteriorating ability to sympathize with “the other”, on the makings of our identity, on the notion of agency, and all that.

(Okay, it’s not true, I made that up. It’s no one’s work, but it might very well have been.)

RAN DIAN VS GERMANY

Everyone is raving about the German Pavilion, and they’re probably right, but unfortunately Ran Dian cannot express an opinion on it. Though numerous attempts were made by all members of the team in Venice—neither the editor-in-chief nor myself could overcome the line in front of the pavilion’s entrance. Daniel suffered the last defeat on the morning of his departure, when he bravely showed up to the Giardini at the opening time so as to be first in line, and was told that performances would only start 60 or more minutes later. He then ran swearing all the way to the other side of town to catch his flight. While we apologize for failing to report on the artwork that won the Biennale prize, we are also confident that you’ll find plenty of reviews written by others who managed to spend a few minutes suffocating inside the pavilion, or waited next to the pavilion’s exit to gather opinions from those who were leaving it.

我能够在德国馆看到所有安妮·伊姆霍夫（Anne Imhof）的“浮士德”
All I could see of Anne Imhof’s “Faust” at the German Pavilion

策展人李大衡（Lee Daehyung）介绍Lee Wan为韩国馆造的作品。他给我们带来了一场非常愉快的旅行。他是策展人兼艺人，众多天才中的一位
Curator Lee Daehyung introduces Lee Wan’s work for the South Korean Pavilion. It is a really enjoyable tour he gives us. He’s a curator and an entertainer, a man of many talents

SWISS PAVILION

I decide not to visit the Swiss Pavilion when I read that all works are inspired by Giacometti. I am so tired of Giacometti. My respect goes to the Swiss for making such an extraordinary effort of promoting his work, and ensuring that a good 8% of all art exhibitions on the planet at any given moment are of his work. But I have to say this, his work to me is not that good; it’s just sticks.

God, I feel so liberated having said that! Yes! Enough with Giacometti! And Frida Kahlo.

CHINESE PAVILION DINNER

At the Chinese Pavilion dinner, held in the serene cloister of a palazzo near the Fondamenta Nove, a conversation at my table goes like this:

Gallerist: “I’ve been based in Beijing for quite a long time, now almost 15 years; the art scene has been evolving and changing so much it always feels vibrant and there is so much to…”
French collector: “Ah China! The pollution!”
Gallerist: “Yes it’s bad, you have to take precau…”
French collector’s Lebanese wife: “Can’t the Chinese deal with their pollution? It’s so bad!”

I struggle to accept that people who supposedly had an education fail to recognize the link between pollution in China and almost all of the inexpensive and expensive goods they possess, including the botox on the woman’s lips, so I contemplate retaliating, but then decide the issue is too banal and I’d much rather concentrate on my delicious risotto with scampi, which was possibly the best dish I ate during my venetian week. A few moments later, anyway, we all leave our seats to go see the puppeteers who performed in Qiu Zhijie’s Pavilion, who spontaneously begin playing traditional instruments at their table

The pavilion itself, which I had seen in the morning, is not my favourite, though I certainly like it much more than those of the past two or three editions. My first instinct would be to say that it was overcrowded, but then I think it probably was not overcrowded enough. There is a kitsch element to some of the work and certainly to the way they have been installed, but it lacks exaggeration and thus feels too polite. Such feeling is exacerbated by the fact that much of the work is strongly rooted in craftsmanship, leaning too much towards embracing tradition rather than subverting it.

A room in the Pavilion kept me mesmerized though: four videos (videos to the rescue!) by Tang Nannan. Shot between 2013 and 2016, the videos are all connected to water; one was shot on a river, two at sea and one, Billenium Waves, portrays mountain crests as waves. While visually the most captivating was probably Odyssey Smoking, where a train makes its way on the open sea, reminiscent of a gigantic undulating spine, all of the videos are successful in being rooted in mythologies and ancient wisdom, which they bridge to our times thanks to a refined use of the filmic medium.

中国馆的表演者自发地开始在晚宴中演奏
Performers of the Chinese Pavilion exhibition spontaneously begun to play during the pavilion dinner

中国馆
Chinese Pavilion

来自汤南南的《刺船（Odyssey Smoking）》截屏，黑白影像，2013，中国馆
Still from Tang Nannan, “Odyssey Smoking”, Black and White Video, 2013, Chinese Pavilion

SHIMABUKU

Shimabuku, an artist whom I hadn’t previously heard of, deserves a paragraph of his own: his work is that good. He presents three videos and accompanying objects in the main Arsenale Pavilion: in one, he sharpens the edge of a Macbook as if it was a knife; in another, he puts a pack of monkeys living in Texas whose ancestors lived in the snowy peaks of Japan in front of a snowdrift; and in the last one, called “Oldest and Newest Tools of Human Beings”, a group of people are given prehistoric stone axes in exchange for their iPhones. His anthropological, historical and environmental interests are mixed with a sense of how everything in our existence is intertwined, unaffected by the constraints of space and time. Such serene wisdom is dispensed through simple and inherently funny actions, and it’s so calming that upon spending a few minutes with his work, I finally relax my fists and jaw, which have been tightly clenched since taking sight of a dozen sneakers filled with plants displayed under a shiny purple light, a couple rooms earlier.

岛袋道浩（Shimabuku）的《人类古老的和新晋的工具（Oldest and Newest Tools of Human Beings）》，在军械库的主题展中
Shimabuku’s “Oldest and Newest Tools of Human Beings”, in the main exhibition at the Arsenale

FRANCE

I like architecture, I like music, I like participation, and I got very excited about the French Pavilion when I first read about it, as it promises a variety of unscheduled jam sessions between visiting musicians who’ll play on purpose-made instruments in rooms designed for perfect acoustics.

How disappointing, though, to walk into a space full of wooden structures and wooden instruments, the functionality of which seems secondary to their very debatable aesthetics. I eavesdrop on a brief conversation that the curator is reluctantly having with a visitor, and I hear that all the instruments have already been sold.

法国馆
French Pavilion

法国馆
French Pavilion

SATURDAY DEPARTURES

I wake up on Saturday morning to the clanging of trolley wheels on the street below. It is an unpleasant sound, loud and vulgar. But in it I can also perceive a deep longing, and with my face squashed against a synthetic pillow, I imagine the herds of art people making their way out of town, to migrate by boat, train and airplane to the next art appointment, to meet again in other hotel lobbies, in other VIP after parties or press previews, to greet each other with surprise and take selfies together, and to graze pensively on artworks and canapés.

由Nathaniel Mellors和Erkka Nissinen为贾尔迪尼的芬兰馆做的作品《阿尔托的土著（The Aalto Natives）》。这是最可爱的场馆之一，因为由电子动画和移动投影机做成的装置，播放着以未来的芬兰为背景的奇异的动画，它既具有独创性的又运作的相当不错
“The Aalto Natives”, by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen for the Pavilion of Finland in the Giardini. This is one of the most beloved pavilions, as the installation, made of animatronics and moving projectors that play a grotesque animation set in future Finland, is both clever and well executed

一场行为表演，由穿着白色衣服的那些瘦弱的女人所演绎，他们赤脚坐在地上并玩弄着红色的果实或花朵
A performance, one of those with delicate looking women dressed in white, sitting barefoot on the floor and playing with red fruit or flowers

LIU JIANHUA

A friend and I stare, hands in our pockets, at Liu Jianhua’s installation in the Arsenale, a 2014 piece named “Square”, made of 64 steel sheets with gold glazing. My friend asks: “Do you think so many Chinese artists make these hyper-sleek works to revive China’s former glory as a purveyor of the finest silk and porcelain, and redeem it from its embarrassing reputation for cheap low quality products?”

刘建华的作品
Works of Liu Jianhua

TOILET PAPER PARTY

Though we manage not to get into the Pace Gallery party (only 3 names on the guest list for 10 uncool people at the door), to arrive too late for the Spanish Pavilion party first and the Scottish one twenty minutes later, we decide not to go to the one organized by Maurizio Cattelan for the Italian Pavilion. This is partly because it’s a long way from where we are, and it looks like it’s going to rain, but mostly because we all agree we don’t want to go to a party named “Toilet Paper”; not even when it’s because Cattelan runs a magazine with that name, organized an exhibition and a party called “Eat, Shit and Die” two years ago in Turin, and installed a golden toilet at the Guggenheim Museum in New York last year. Scatological jokes are only funny when they’re quick and spontaneous. This is just boring.

我去了一场派对，那里有大约四十人并且他们看上去令人讨厌，音乐是死气沉沉的，鸡尾酒35欧元、啤酒35欧元且水要5欧元。为此，我离开了
I went to a party, there were about 40 people and they looked obnoxious, the music was stagnant, cocktails were 35 euros, beer was 35 euros and water was 5 euros. So I left.

在古巴馆派对外像停滞不前的僵尸一样摇晃的人们，他们没有受到邀请。像我一样。但是我从里面拍了张照片，且另一只手拿着我的莫吉托
People swaying like stalled zombies outside of the Cuban Pavilion party to which they’re not invited. Like me. But I’m taking a picture from inside while holding my mojito with the other hand

ANTARCTICA PAVILION

The Antarctica Pavilion is hosted in yet another splendid palazzo, on the southern part of the main island of Venice, facing Giudecca. It hosts a number of works by international artists, some of whom had the chance to travel to Antarctica and produce work over there. I enjoy the way works are presented on top of photographic tripods and the overall balance between lyricism and science.

My favorite work is by LA-based artist Jasmin Blasco, a sound piece you can listen to on portable FM radios out in the garden. At a short distance from the solar powered radio transmitter and antenna that feed my radio, I sit near the canal and listen to about fifteen minutes (the total duration is an hour and a quarter) of Blasco’s improvised narration. The artist recounts a story of South Pole exploration in the early 20th Century from the perspective of the leader of the mission, but also from that of bacteria and other life forms trapped in the ice since millennia ago. The work is eerie; sentences find their way through long moments of silence, when one can hear the interference in the radio signal as well as ethereal synth chords. There are many references I connect with, from the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft to John Carpenter’s The Thing and the music of Vangelis. The piece is immersive, and I lose all sense of time and place very quickly; it’s only that annoying feeling I get in Venice, urging me to see more art and meet more people, that pushes me to come back from the Pole.

南极洲馆的展览现场
Installation view at the Antarctica Pavilion

南极洲馆中，站在个人的作品《In From the Cold》前的艺术家Jasmin Blasco
Artist Jasmin Blasco in front of his piece In From the Cold, at the Antarctica Pavilion

TOTE BAG COMPETITION

One of the prime reasons to go to events such as the Biennale is to stock up on tote bags, so it seems absurd to me that no award is given by the Grand Jury for the Best Tote Bag of the Biennale. In the hope that, upon reading this, an official award will be set in place for the 58th edition, I will informally give a first prize to the bag of the Australian Pavilion: elegant, resistant and very spacious. Many people queued at the Pavilion entrance just to get it, and some even went in to see the show. It sports on one side the simple message “refugee rights” and on the other “Indigenous rights”. Most people opted for showing the “Indigenous rights” side while wearing it; more exotic, less committed, in Europe.

A special mention goes to the Luxembourg Pavilion tote bag, my personal favorite. I feel lucky that I get lost and accidentally ended up at the press breakfast of the pavilion, which is hidden at the end of a narrow street. Now I can pride myself of this colorful bag that says “Thank you so much for the flowers” on it.

ITALIAN PAVILION

For the first time in many years, the Italian Pavilion is good, and I don’t feel embarrassed by it.  Out of the three works, one is actually pretty bad, and it is, to everyone’s surprise, a video; but the other two are very good. “Untitled (The End of the World)”, by the Venetian artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò, is a large pool of water balanced on scaffolding 3 meters above the floor and reflecting the ceiling above. The third piece is “The Imitation of Christ”, an elaborate installation by Roberto Cuoghi, where images of the Christ are moulded on agar-agar, and then cast once again into final sculptures, after they have been deformed by mold and spores grown upon them during the intermediate stage.

Such a success truly is not a banal achievement, for the Italian Pavilion is usually compromised by mismanagement, interfering politics, and favor exchanges—an exquisite reflection of the country at large. Witnessing this little miracle in the Arsenale makes me feel optimistic: entropy can be reversed.

罗贝托·阔奇（Roberto Cuoghi），《耶稣基督的仿制品（Imitazione di Cristo）》，装置细节，意大利馆 Roberto Cuoghi, “Imitazione di Cristo (Imitation of the Christ)”, installation detail, Italian Pavilion

DAY OUT

When my tolerance for art, for crowds, and for mediocre food reaches its limit, I decide it’s time to take a break from Venice. I take the no.1 vaporetto to Lido, rent a bicycle, and pedal all the way down the island, for the first time admiring how green and nice it is, and how beautiful some of the architecture is. At the southernmost point, I take another ferry that also loads cars and, to my surprise, a bus, and cross to Pellestrina, the narrowest island in Italy, The day is beautiful and my intention is to pedal all the way south to Chioggia, at the other end of the Laguna, with a generous lunch break on the way.  After another 40 minutes riding through villages and fantasizing about living in one of the little fishermen’s houses facing the sea, I arrive at a restaurant a friend of mine had recommended; thankfully I had booked in advance, as most restaurants seem to be packed with families. I ask for a quarter liter of the house white, but it turns out to be an undrinkable sparkling thing and I send it back asking for a bottle of Pinot Grigio instead. While my idea is to drink a bit and save the rest for later, by the time I leave the table at the end of my glorious meal comprising a variety of lagoon fish and seashells and ricotta cake for dessert, the bottle is empty and I’m completely drunk.

I sit down on a bench in the village square to ponder whether it’s a case of sticking to my plan to head further south or not. The decision is taken for me, as I fall asleep on the bench and wake up feeling like a disaster an hour later, the sun having turned me into a giant fluorescent lobster. I drag myself to a nearby beach where a family is playing near the water. I’m glad a fat guy starts talking to me about football, not that I understand anything about football—in fact I don’t like it at all—but occasionally I perceive a sense of community among football supporters that is much stronger and much more ancient than any that will ever develop in the art world. When I run out of generic comments on the upcoming Champions League final, I take off my clothes and jump in the water for my first swim of the year. It feels marvelous; it washes away my intoxication and all the tension I had built up in the previous days in Venice.

I come out and say goodbye to my temporary friends.

“Say hi to the Pope when you get back to Rome,” says the fat guy, and I laugh.

The ride back feels surprisingly easy, and as I enter Venice again with the vaporetto in the soft light of the late afternoon, I’m once again at peace with all of the bad and the good art on display for the biennale, all of the good and bad people who came for the openings and the spritz, the hordes of tourists who couldn’t care less about any of this contemporary art nonsense, and the Venetians who have been forever enduring the permanent invasion of their city, contenting themselves with charging foreigners hundreds of euros for a cup of coffee they prepared scooping water from the nearest canal and boiling it in their kettles made of gold.

在小岛上的休息日
A day out in the Laguna

威尼斯，不差
Venice, not bad

Girolamo Marri is an artist currently based in Rome and working throughout Europe and Asia.
His practice consists of talks that never begin, interviews where no question is asked or answer given, texts meant to be forever corrected, precarious installations, and all sorts of disquieting interactions with audiences and passers-by.

安迪·沃霍尔| Andy Warhol
奈良美智 | Yoshitomo Nara
领衔五月富艺斯香港春拍
Phillips Announces Spring Highlights
Led by Andy Warhol and Yoshitomo Nara
2017年5月28日盛大开启
May 28, 2017

Phillips is pleased to announce highlights from the 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale, which is led by some of the biggest names in international modern and contemporary art, including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Anselm Kiefer, Danh Vo and Peter Doig. These are presented alongside highly sought-after Asian artists of the contemporary age including Yoshitomo Nara, Zhang Enli, Christine Ay Tjoe, and Zeng Fanzhi. The selected group of important design works includes examples by Ron Arad, Finn Juhl and Shiro Kuramata. Comprising 60 lots, the sale is expected to realise in excess of 100 million HKD. Taking place on 28 May, the Evening Sale will be preceded by Warhol in China, a standalone auction of over 200 photographs, taken by Andy Warhol during his pivotal trip to Hong Kong and Beijing in 1982.

《安迪·沃霍尔於萬里長城》 估价 HK$120,000-180,000

安迪·沃霍尔，《中國服務生》
估价 HK$80,000-120,000

安迪·沃霍尔，《中文字體：科學》
估价 HK$300,000-500,000

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale — May 28, 2017, 7 pm

The 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale will lead with a masterwork by the artist Yoshitomo Nara, ‘Last Warrior / The Unknown Soldier’, as well as masters of contemporary painting, such as Andy Warhol, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Doig, among others.

Jewels and Jadeite Auction—May 29, 2017, 2:30 pm

Phillips is pleased to unveil two star lots from the upcoming Jewels and Jadeite auction, taking place on 29 May at the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong. The leading lot is The Secret Pink, a Fancy Vivid Purplish Pink, Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond and Diamond Ring (estimate: HKD45,000,000 – 55,000,000), comprising two extremely rare vivid pink diamonds in a remarkable and unique design.

The Hong Kong Watch Auction: FOUR
— May 30, 2017, 1 pm & 6 pm

名表荟萃——香港 IV——2017年5月30日，13:00 & 18:00

A special section of our Hong Kong Watch Auction: FOUR presents 43 watches from the Laurent Picciotto Collection, with pieces by Hublot, Alain Silberstein and Urwerk, among other watchmakers.

《名表荟萃——香港 IV》精选多款珍罕古董与现代名表,包括 43 枚国际钟表界权威 Laurent Picciotto 私人收藏的当代名表。

Auctions: 
Warhol in China, 28 May 2017, 6pm HKT
20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening Sale, 28 May 2017, 7pm HKT
Jewels and Jadeite, 29 May 2017, 2:30pm HKT
The Hong Kong Watch Auction: Four, 30 May 2017, 1pm & 6pm HKT
Location: Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, 5 Connaught Road, Central, Hong Kong

ABOUT PHILLIPS
Phillips is a leading global platform for buying and selling 20th and 21st century art and design. With dedicated expertise in the areas of Art, Design, Photographs, Editions, Watches, and Jewellery, Phillips offers professional services and advice on all aspects of collecting. Auctions and exhibitions are held at salerooms in New York, London, Geneva, and Hong Kong, while clients are further served through representative offices based throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. Phillips also offers an online auction platform accessible anywhere in the world. Visit www.phillips.com for further information.

How does love appear as a pretext in artistic works? Romance on Lushan Mountain, a Chinese film made in 1980 and fashioned as an early international prototype, was once popularly embraced and viewed as “adult movie” by young men and women in its time when the screen was laden with rigorous political implication. It is based upon the “first screen kiss” scenario in this movie that ZHANG Lehua created his work Highway to Hell on Valentine’s Day, wherein the artist initiated a live painting performance as a ritualistic process to re-activate and transform memories, dreams and tales that had been uploaded and inscribed onto the screen as well as other daily objects and artifacts that are obsolete today. After his bodily intervention, the resulting images, which in the artist’s own terms are like “mummies” or “zombies”, are eventually displayed as a series of hybrid forms of painting, video and projection in the gallery. 

Various locations, Bergen, Norway, through end September, 2016

It rains in Bergen. A lot, and all the time. It rains so much that when it doesn’t it feels somehow wrong. In a city where it pours down on you religiously, irrigation and drainage are key—and Bergen has one of the most advanced systems in the world. But whichever local you talk to about it will, on the one hand, think you’re weird for asking about irrigation and, on the other, brush it off as nothing out of the ordinary. Yet it is. This lax attitude toward the formidable funneling of so much water so that the whole county doesn’t flood is because they’re used to it, and likely fed up with each and every visitor being (like me) astonished at how people settled and continue to live in a place so hellishly wet. That said, it has its perks. Aside from clean air, a certain communal feeling develops when everyone’s so soaked. A bond emerges between people. Kind nods, affectionate shrugs, and genuinely polite smiles are exchanged more here than probably anywhere else. We’re all in the rain, and so it comes to seem as if we’re in something together.

The relevance of this to the Bergen Assembly on which I am about to report is that this year’s theme is (partly) “Infrastructure.”

Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning, “Spirit Labour”, Bergen Assembly, 2016 © Hugo Glendinning

The question “to biennial or not to biennial” shepherded the first Bergen Assembly in 2009. Whoever was in the position to choose chose instead to triennial, and the Bergen Assembly has since been understood to be a more discursive sort of art event. Most often, it is an exhibition abutting a sizable summit, conference, or such like. So it is this time, organized by three groups. None are “curators” but rather “conveners.” Freethought—a loose collective composed of Irit Rogoff, Stefano Harney, Adrian Heathfield, Massimiliano Mollona, Louise Moreno, and Nora Sternfeld—is responsible for a summit on “infrastructure” as well as an exhibition in a ramshackle former office building and café housed in an adjacent old fire station. Praxes—a group of two, Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel—curated one exhibition at the Bergen Kunsthall and another show at a place called Kunstgarasjen, in addition to organizing a small presentation of works in the foyer of the municipality offices. The artist Tarek Atoui, together with Council (founded by Sandra Terdjman and Grégory Castéra), organized a presentation of a multitude of things —including an installation, film-program, and “sound-café”— that came together as a social space/exhibition/concert hall at a disused indoor pool. In the spirit of convening, all these people have, in turn, involved a teeming mass of other people, too many to mention here.

Nowadays, a lot of great art comes down to questions of how people move about in the world; it also sees that different people move in different ways through what are, by all means, different worlds. The attempt to parse something like infrastructure is therefore nothing less than ingenious. My personal authority on all things infrastructure is Keller Easterling, and her Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (2014) is an extraordinary book. What is immediately laid out is that infrastructure “typically conjures associations with physical networks for transportation, communication, or utilities.” Yet it is also “the rules governing the space of everyday life.” Easterling ponders the places where we live, like skyscrapers, garages, and free zones, and writes, “In the retinal afterglow is a soupy matrix of details and repeatable formulas that generate most of the space in the world—what we might call infrastructure space.” It’s a way of talking about different people moving in different ways in different worlds, and seeing that they don’t move, but rather are moved. Infrastructure doesn’t make up the condition of our lives; it is the condition of our lives.

As with any exhibition, there is a lot to say—and this one convenes three organizing groups and comes with a jam-packed summit. It might come off as cursory, but I will try to account for many of the bits and pieces that made up the Bergen Assembly. I will also try to convey why I think it was mostly very good.

The projects by Tarek Atoui and Council were housed in a stunning indoor pool facility that is no longer in use. At the entrance, side rooms, and empty kids’ pool, Council organized a film program, a café, and a presentation of objects associatively intertwined, tied to an idea of sound beyond hearing and hearing beyond sound—anyone who has listened to the apparent echo of the ocean in a seashell will understand. In the deep end of the big empty pool stood nine instruments, each developed by Atoui in collaboration with others and then tested and improved by people who cannot hear. It’s a project that Atoui has worked on for years, and will continue to work on. The space is a space of production where workshops, concerts, and the like will happen throughout the exhibition. And what’s great about it all—especially Atoui’s contribution—is precisely the question of people moving about in the world, which, as I’ve already argued, is one of the fundamental concerns of much of the best art of recent years. The meeting of the hard-of-hearing and deaf with those who can hear is a meshing of perceptions. The project isn’t intended to make someone who can hear feel sympathy for someone who doesn’t, nor is it to allow the deaf some sense of what it might be like to hear. Nor does it try to make the two meet halfway between hearing and not. Instead, and rather successfully, it attunes people to an entirely different tenor by tapping into frequencies and modes of sound that all can take part in.

Tarek Atoui, “WITHIN Instrument”, testing, Sentralbadet, Bergen Assembly 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Lynda Benglis, “On Screen”, installation view, Bergen Assembly 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

The exhibition by Praxes at Bergen Kunsthall seems, on the other hand, largely concerned with how people move around in the art world. It’s terribly museological and firmly set within art-institutional practice—a group exhibition with works by Nairy Baghramian, Olga Balema, Daiga Grantina, Sterling Ruby, and Kaari Upson that circles around the artist Lynda Benglis, whose work is also on view. Now, while Benglis is a remarkably interesting artist, the work here is shown as art-historical artifacts. It is telling that there’s a documentary on Benglis screening in another room, casting a very long shadow and practically exhibiting all of Benglis’s work “as documentary,” flanked by other artworks to illustrate its place in the annals of history. It is unfortunate that wild, fluid, very-much-alive artworks have been tamed into a mode of archival display. Its immaculate installation somehow makes it worse: had the placement of works at least been a little quirkier, then perhaps something interesting might have happened. Alas, everything is placed exactly where it should be placed. Let me say this: I’ve seen this show before. Not literally of course, but it’s textbook enough to seem as though I have. Sure, Praxes had engaged Benglis in a long-term project with several stages before my visit, and there are things that will happen yet, and part of their work is really quite interesting. All this is stuff that I’ve been told; what I see is this model show. The issue is beyond whether it is wrong or bad—it’s more, does it do any good?

There’s a similar tendency with the Marvin Gaye Chetwynd exhibition at Kunstgarasjen. A few videos of performances surround props from a few other performances. Like the documentary on Benglis, what is revealing is the low-riding, elongated pedestal on which all props are placed. Chetwynd’s work, which is meant to be enlivened, vigorous, and fun, instead becomes museological, archival, and documentary. Propped up, as it were, against traditional modes of display, a practice that had worked on breaking with such terms by taking from amateurish theater loses some of its pitch. There was a performance, too, in another off-site garage-like tunnel. They’re often billed as carnivalesque, anarchic, and just totally crazy. Perhaps it was the sangfroid of the Nordic audience, or perhaps my expectations were too high because I’d never seen one before, but this performance seemed pretty controlled and meek. Much more interesting was Chetwynd’s display of works in the foyer of the municipality building, a bijou exhibition of bat paintings—that is, paintings that depict bats—entitled Are You Bats, which I took to be a sly nod toward the municipality.

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, “The Iron Age Pasta Necklace Workshop”, installation view (Landmark/Bergen Kunsthall), Bergen Assembly, 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Freethought developed a multifarious project that really warranted its own review: too much, I realize now, to expound upon in detail. While everything stood out, what was particularly noteworthy was The Partisan Café, a play on “the Partisan Café House,” a site in London set up by Raphael Samuel, Stuart Hall, and other members of the journal New Left Review in the late 1950s. Apparently, it was also called an “Anti-Espresso Bar”—something I am sympathetic to. The Bergen remake was a space for talks, seminars, and debates, but also—and equally importantly—just for hanging out. In the exhibition, one of the nodes in the constellation was the Anectoded Archives, a series of filmed interviews with people speaking about exhibitions that had meant a lot to them. None mentioned the canonical exhibitions taught in curatorial courses, but rather shows that, for each interviewee, had been significant on a more personal frequency. Remarkable, too, was the exhibition within the exhibition that had developed from a conversation between Stefano Harney and Ranjit Kandalgaonkar called Shipping and the Shipped, which featured work by Kandalgaonkar, as well as collaborations between Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman and between Fred Moten and Wu Tsang. In the introductory text, Harney writes that “a history of shipping cannot be separated from a history of the shipped” and “shipping remains as much at the center of capital’s infrastructural imagination as it was in its first gruesome mobilization.”

In many ways, this exhibition ran parallel to the “Infrastructure” summit: two days of talks, films, and music around a question of infrastructure in times of economic disparity, ecological catastrophe, expulsion, and forced migration. I was enlivened by Elizabeth Povinelli, moved by Tom McCarthy, and taken in by the conversation between Wu Tsang, Stefano Harney, Hypatia Vourloumis, and Fred Moten on the not-so-easy subject of friendship. I encourage everyone to listen to recordings from the summit, which are generously provided on the Bergen Assembly’s website.

I will say, though—as my word limit draws near—that if we’re being moved, the question arises of how we might move differently. Not necessarily in direct opposition, but somewhat more out of sync with the given beat. And it would seem that this would have to happen with one another, along the lines of what da Silva calls a “difference without separation.” I’ve probably come off as exuberant and corny (because I am), and I might as well end on an even more rhapsodic note. So much of what these kinds of events can impart, when they’re done well, happens outside the scheduled activities and performances—in the simple meeting of people at lunch, on walks, in bars. On the last day, I trekked halfway up a mountain (for embarrassing reasons, we didn’t make it all the way) with someone I will consider a friend from now on. Speculating on what we’d seen, heard, and experienced, I had a sense similar to that of being in the rain. Outside the exhibition and summit, we found ourselves still in something, together, and I can think of no bigger compliment to give to this assembly.

Bergen Gamle Brannstasjon, Bergen Assembly 2016 venue. Photo: Linn Heidi Stokkedal

Tarek Atoui & Council, “WITHIN/ Infinite Ear” production shot, Bergen Assembly, 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning, “Spirit Labour”, Bergen Assembly, 2016 © Hugo Glendinning

Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, “Home In the wake of Shipping Infrastructure”, giclee prints on canvas, 2015. © Ranjit Kandalgaonkar

“The Museum of Burning Questions”, Bergen Assembly, 2016 © Isa Rosenberger

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, “Bat Opera, oil on paper; 15.5 x 20.5 cm, 2014. Courtesy Massimo De Carlo, Milano/London/Hong Kong. Photo: Alessandro Zambianchi

Tarek Atoui, “WITHIN Instrument”, testing, Sentralbadet, Bergen Assembly 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

“Infrastructure of Feeling”, Bergen Assembly, 2016. Copyright: Paul Purgas

Lynda Benglis, “Something Else, handmade paper over chicken wire, coal dust, paint, acrylic, glitter, 2015. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Lynda Benglis, “Head”, 2015. Photo: Kobie Nel

Lynda Benglis, “Glacier Burger”, installation view, Bergen Assembly, 2016. Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Lynda Benglis, “Primary Structures (Paula’s Props)”, 1975. Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York Photo: Thor Brødreskift

Lynda Benglis, “Female Sensibility”, video still, 1973. Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York

EMERGING AND MID-CAREER ARTISTS ON SHOW AT THE 9TH ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART SHOW NEXT MONTH
Including original paintings, editions, photography and sculpture

The 9th edition of the popular Asia Contemporary Art Show opens in just over a month, again at the convenient, 5-star Conrad Hong Kong. Featuring more than 2,500 works of art from over 80 local and international exhibitors, the Show opens with an invitation-only VIP Collectors Preview on Thursday September 15th, and is then open to the public and invited guests on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the 16th, 17th and 18th.

FEATURED ARTISTS AT THE 9TH EDITION OF THE ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART SHOW

“Run the World” by Francesco Lietti, Macey and Sons Auctioneers and Valuers Limited, Hong Kong, Rooms 4026, 4226

Francesco Lietti (b.1971, Lecco) combines memories and imagination in bringing to life work that focuses on travel and discovery. Using distorted shapes and bright colours to provide a caricature-like representation of the energy of the cities he has visited, the artist repeats basic elements which create a simpler more direct image, compelling the viewer to complete the image with their own visions rather than focusing on a particular area. The result is work that incorporates both the artist’s contribution and the viewer’s perspective.

Lietti studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He also studied photography at the London College of Printing.

“Lai Yuen” by Water Poon, BLINK Gallery, Hong Kong, Room 4121 (bottom)

WATER POON, HONG KONG BLINK Gallery, Room 4121
Water Poon (b.1944) is a multifaceted man – he is an artist, photographer, designer and film director. As an artist Poon is an inspired man, seeing through his singular perspective a world full of stories to be told. Whether it’s watercolour paintings of Rose, the protagonist of Yi Shu’s Hong Kong-inspired romantic novels, or mixed media pieces of cities that capture his heart, the artist punctuates his work with expressions of emotion, thoughtfulness and love.

Poon graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic College with a degree in Graphic Design. He has worked as a photojournalist for various newspapers and magazines and has published many photography albums, art books and travelogues as well as exhibiting his works internationally.

“Art Blossom – Solid Series 151071″ by Jang Seunghyo, space bm, South Korea, Room 4217

JANG SEUNGHYO, KOREA space bm, Room 4217
Jang Seunghyo’s (b.1971) photo-collage sculptures transform two-dimensionality into three-dimensionality via a calculated use of photographs associated with his everyday experiences. The quotidian images – logos, advertisements, Internet images – reflect the artist’s individual memories, as well as the shared reality of collective associations. Fragments of plastic and photographs are transformed into a hybrid configuration that challenges pictorial convention but unites the collective-memory imagery into a single expression. Jang received his BFA and MFA in Sculpture from Hongik University, Seoul, and an MFA in Sculpture from New York University. He has exhibited his work in solo and group shows across South Korea, and in New York, Paris and Hong Kong.

“Showcase – Ceramic Korea” by Moon Joo Ho, CK. Art Space, South Korea, Room 4106

MOON JOO HO, KOREA CK. Art Space, Room 4106
Moon Joo Ho places his critique of disposable consumption and waste culture on display. With his “Showcases” series, the artist articulates through fragments of plaster cups the remnants of an era of wealth and waste, of debris emptied of its value. He arranges the fragments as if they were centuries-old artefacts, superimposing them upon comics representative of the “kitschiness” of popular culture. The cup, empty and broken, is a symbol for the internal void that cannot be filled with material wealth.
Moon Joo Ho received both his BFA and MFA in Fine Art from Chung-Ang University in Seoul, and he is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Hongik University. He has taken part in several international art fairs.

”ABOVE/Chater Gardens” by Martin Lever, Hong Kong, Room 4317

MARTIN LEVER, HONG KONG – Room 4317
Martin Lever has lived and worked in Hong Kong for 36 years, drawing inspiration from this unique city he calls home. The vertical life aspect that is singular to Hong Kong – we sleep on the 30th floor, work on the 20th floor and eat on the 10th floor – ensures that much of our time is spent up in the air; we are simultaneously connected to both street and sky. Lever probes the relationship between land and sky in a series of powerful abstract ‘groundscapes’, inspired by some of Hong Kong’s most emotive locations – celebrating our home from a new perspective.

Lever’s artwork has been exhibited in a number of solo shows in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. His work adorns the walls of private and corporate collections.

“Falling in Love with The Banyan Tree” by Ala Leresteux, Lithuania, Room 4023

ALA LERESTEUX, LITHUANIA – Room 4023
Ala Leresteux’s (b.1987) work is inspired by research that cites the ability of trees to communicate through a fungal network – mycelia, or so called “wood wide web.” Through this network, trees can share information and nutrients with each other. The artist aims to connect her tree-focused series with Taoist teachings about befriending trees and communicating with them through meditation. Her paintings depict different species of trees, including banyan, pine and sycamore, and their role in mythology and everyday life.

Ala studied at Moscow State University and the Ecole National des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her work has been exhibited in select European cities including at the Grand-Palais of Paris in 2012 and at the Florence Biennale IX in 2013.

“Untitled” by Tian Xutong, Artists in Taiwan, Taiwan, Room 4312

TIAN XUTONG, CHINA – Artists in Taiwan, Room 4312
Tian Xutong (b.1962, Beijing) takes great inspiration from the paintings of the Song Dynasty, where painters retreated into nature to find the moral equilibrium that was lacking in the human world. Adapting the most simplified of symbols, the artist seeks to represent the stillness, perfection and co- existence of everything as expounded by Zen philosophy. With his bold and spontaneous brushstrokes, Tian’s work resonates minimalism yet reflects profound Zen wisdom in which “one sees colours amongst distant mountains and hears no sound when beside a flowing stream.”

Tian graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts & Craft in 1985 and is currently an art professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“Wing Beat” by Tomoko Konno, Giant Year Gallery, Hong Kong, Room 4021

OMOKO KONNO, JAPAN
Giant Year Gallery, Room 4021
Tomoko Konno is a highly acclaimed ceramic sculpture artist who is inspired by the organic world – natural shapes and textures synthesize with her own imagination. Using the nerikomi technique of layering different coloured clays to form unique patterns, the artist layers one piece of clay over another until the form sprouts organically resembling a moving, breathing entity. Her use of soft tinted hues gives her work a gentle complexity, a textual softness and an otherworldly expression.

Konno graduated from the Bunka Gakuen University in Tokyo in 1989. She studied ceramics in Tokoname, a centuries-old ceramic art production centre. The artist has exhibited in solo and group shows in Asia and Europe.

“Networking-M” by Park Ji Sook, Fabrik Gallery, Hong Kong, Room 4315

PARK JI SOOK, SOUTH KOREA – Fabrik Gallery, Room 4315
Park Ji Sook’s (b.1963) series of organic and linear motifs represent the interwoven lines of life, endless connections between body and nature, on the universal continuum of birth, death and rebirth. Natural processes such as breathing and circulation found in organic forms are rendered on canvas as a galaxy of circuitous intersecting fronds emanating from multiple centres of life. Working with pencil, pen or ink in combination with acrylic, the artist believes in allowing creative freedom to flow freely onto her canvas, following the dynamic energy of life.

Park has an MFA and a Ph.D. from Hongik University in Seoul. She has exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in Korea and around the world.

“At the Top of the World” by Xie Ke, Beijing Central Art Gallery, China, Room 4307

XIE KE, HONG KONG
Beijing Central Art Gallery, Room 4307
Xie Ke (b.1955, Hong Kong) creates sculptural work that combines images from the past with those in a modern context. He portrays fragments of history in a humorous yet thought-provoking way, combining them with his own critique of today’s world. Heroes from Chinese martial arts stories and the golden age of kung fu films defend those in need, returning balance and order to society. In combining Western innovativeness and traditional Chinese design, the artist aims to raise a culturally reflective awareness in the viewer.

Xie studied at the First Institute of Art and Design in Hong Kong and at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Xie has exhibited his work in many solo and group shows across Asia.

The Asia Contemporary Art Show would like to acknowledge and thank arts patrons Macey and Sons Auctioneers and Valuers Limited, the Wall Street Journal Asia Edition, Fiji Water and Langton’s East Asia; as well as hospitality partners Samuel Adams and Leaf Tea Boutique for their support.

Tickets for the Asia Contemporary Art Show are now available for HK$220 (buy one and bring a friend for free) at www.asiacontemporaryart.com. Tickets at the door are HK$220 per person.

EXHIBITORS AT THE 9TH EDITION OF THE ASIA CONTEMPORARY ART SHOW

OPENING HOURS

Monday 13–Sunday 19 June, 10 am – 8 pm

Monday 20 – Sunday 26 June, 1 pm – 5 pm and by appointment

Positions of Chinese contemporary art and Western building traditions will cover the baroque spaces of the former Cistercian monastery of St. Urban starting this June 12th. With “The Crocodile in the Pond”, curator Alexandra Grimmer introduces a radically new mind-set and proves primarily one thing with the works of 11 artists from ShanghART Gallery: This young generation does not want to fit into a certain image or an aesthetic school anymore.

Similar to the metaphor of the crocodile that is put in the pond and lies inert and motionless but still makes fish swim faster, the art scene in China has changed. Chinese contemporary art does not hide behind role models and masters anymore. A new mind-set has found its way into the studios and thereby into art production. A mentality in which artists no longer define themselves as Bohemian, but rather as innovators and successful think tanks for society. They have something to say and they say it loud and clear. They use technologic innovations of the 21st century, comment on social conventions with a twinkle in their eyes, and they work fearless in vast dimensions.

In this way a new sense of self-confidence has been established, one that is reflected in the contemporary art production and is all but compliant: adaptation would be the complete opposite of this attitude.

The complete opposite of adaptation: idiosyncratic and venturesome

This radically new art now encounters the calmness of the plain white baroque architecture of the Cistercians. In this exceptional atmosphere the exhibition “The Crocodile in the Pond” expands in a tour from the staircase past the representative baroque stairs into the banquet hall through the rooms of the St. Urban Monastery.

None of the artists of this exhibition fear innovation in their works. Rarely have so many different approaches been seen. And nevertheless, they all carry a common handwriting. This young generation does not want to fit into a certain image or tradition anymore. Absolute individualism is key, paired with reflection and talent.

Artists and critics from the west often have their reference points towards the evolution of global art in their own history. But the view from history that tries to judge current developments here leads to nothing. While works used to often be reproduced over years, with careful considerations of every innovation, experiment or change of direction, China’s art scene of today works with a lot of risk.

Sun Xun has been celebrated as a rising star since his time at the academy. He has been showing noteworthy rigor in his work for years now. Hardly any artist has been represented in as many prominent exhibitions and acknowledged as extensively in solo exhibitions as he.

A group of drawings in light boxes from “People’s Republic Zoo“ will be shown at St. Urban next to the corresponding animated movie. In Sun Xun’s work “Jing Bang Country” it is possible to the visitors to acquire a citizenship with a complementary package of basics for a new identity. The guest refectory in which the genealogical tables of bishops appointed to St. Urban are documented, serves as ideal space for this installation.

Xu Zhen stood out early on through his idiosyncratic works broaching ruthless issues like violence and sexuality. At the same time he was soon part of important international collections. Today, he wows with colossal sculptures. Much like in “Eternity” presented at “The Crocodile in the Pond” in front of the baroque staircase, in which he combines western and eastern artistic traditions ruthlessly.
Once known as an “enfant terrible“, the most elitist collectors of China have in the last few years cherished Xu Zhen. Shanghai’s Long Museum dedicated a retrospective to the 1977 born artist in 2015. His comprehensive solo exhibition was shown by UCCA Beijing the year before that. Currently, his works are to be seen in an exhibition with 6 other artists at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.

Call for innovation
Zhang Ding attracted attention with barefaced and un-adapted projects throughout the first ten years of his work. His method therefore never repeated itself. Every work challenged the viewer’s approval time and time again—the viewer being at the outset of the Chinese audience. In recent years, large scale solo presentations in which he created installations as stages for rock musicians followed.

Zhang orchestrated his performances in 2015 at the K11 Shanghai and at ICA London. For the opening of his solo exhibition at ShanghART Gallery Beijing in 2014, he re-enacted the legendary “Monsters of Rock” Concert of 1993 at the military airport in Moscow and demanded communication instead of rigid systems.

A performance by Zhang Ding will be held within the Party by ShanghART on June 17th in the 200 year old cellar of the monastery.

The aspect of constant innovation of the own work also applies to Yang Zhenzhong. The video artist born in the 60s is regularly invited for collaborations with his younger colleagues. The distinct and focused look of the artist is captivating: It lets the audience dive into his world through his works. For the exhibition at St. Urban Monastery his work “Passage” with object images and a video has been chosen. Also “Disinfect”, a 6-channel- video created for the exhibition, will be seen. In the sense of Kierkegaard’s lasting Augenblick (instant), the audience is confronted by mute invective In this projection.

Extreme experiments and the tranquility of the pictures

When drifting off into their work, Jiang Pengyi and Han Feng are similarly focused. Jiang Pengyi obtains the results he wishes for in his photographs through extreme experiments, ones in which he uses singularly the camera as a paintbrush. For example the work “Dark Addiction Series” shown at St. Urban, lets only lighting patterns fall on to the photographic paper during the development process this creating stunning results.

Han Feng’s fine and quiet pictures are reminiscent of the techniques from Chinese traditional ink wash painting. While working, he retires into his own world by creating congruent objects and pictures evocative of common reference points: his large-size canvasses recall fragile paper works and his “Clothes for…”, “Shoes for…” remind of meticulous casings and forms.

Other artists

The artist duo Birdhead attracted attention very early in their career. Some ten years ago their seemingly fugitive but extremely telling inventories of their hometown of Shanghai emerged in the art world. An inner unrest that can also be construed as creative aggression drives their works.

Works involving installations will be seen by respectively Chen Xiaoyun, Lu Lei and Shao Yi at St. Urban. Lu Lei likes to include transistors in his pieces so the observer is constantly being brought to mind a form of movement, where an unstoppable shape takes course of in the placement of things.

Chen Xiaoyun combines different forms of media in his works in which the idea of the artist pulls through like a sharp line. Photography and video are complemented with his objects. His installations are charged with content, their foundation frequently being literature.

“A Bunch of Happy Phantasies” by Shi Yong will be seen above the architecturally unique baroque staircase at St. Urban: An upside down poem in red neon writing that spreads an even more intense atmosphere through its hardly discernible content. Literature also takes an important place in Shi Yong’s creations. He turns texts illegible, which in turn, reduces his works contents to a minimum. And through it, reaches the last consequence of beautiful forms. Shi Yong obtains the unique chancel of Abbey St Urban for an installation from his latest series “Let All Potential Be Internally Resolved Using Beautiful Form”. This time, the Swiss baroque finds a formal minimalist pendant, yet with charged content through the illegible texts, in the work of the versatile artist.

ARTISTS
Birdhead 鸟头 (est. 2004 in Shanghai, Ji Weiju *1980, Song Tao *1979)
Chen Xiaoyun 陈晓云 (*1971 in Hubei, based in Beijing)
Han Feng 韩锋 (*1972 in Harbin, based in Shanghai)
Jiang Pengyi 蒋鹏奕 (*1977 in Hunan, based in Beijing)
Lu Lei 陆垒 (*1972 in Jiangsu, based in Beijing)
Yang Zhenzhong 杨振中 (*1968 in Hangzhou, based in Shanghai)
Zhang Ding 张鼎 (*1980 in Gansu, based in Shanghai)
Shao Yi 邵一 (*1967 in Hangzhou, based in Hangzhou and Shanghai)
Shi Yong 施勇 (*1967 in Shanghai, based in Shanghai)
Sun Xun 孙逊 (*1980 in Liaoning, based in Beijing)
Xu Zhen 徐震/MadeIn (*1977 in Shanghai, based in Shanghai)

Work by Chen Xiaoyun

“Exam Barocktreppenhaus” by Yang Zhenzhong

“Focus Aboriginal Speer and Sony Camera” by Xu Zhen

“Shoes for Bird” by Han Feng

“Passage” by Yang Zhenzhong

“Spread” by Xu Zhen

“Shoes for Bird 2” by Han Feng

“Human Prescription” by Lu Lei

This exhibition selects land-related art projects by five artists generated in Hong Kong in the past ten years, and explores how they relate to land art projects in the 1960s in terms of form and content, as well as respond to Hong Kong’s unique development context of the 21st Century.

Curated by Vincci Mak

Art Projects include:

Kingsley Ng: Spring: homage to Liang Quan (2013)
Wallace Chang: Kai Tak River Green Art Fest “E-Co Habitat”
Sampson Wong @ emptyscape: Emptyscape Art Festival (The 1st and 2nd Festivals, 2013 – )
HK Farm: The HK FARMers’ Almanac (2014-2015)
Hanison Lau: The Hok Shing Yee Ho – Story Telling Boat (2015)

Supported by:
Hong Kong Arts Development Council

Venue Subsidised by:
Hong Kong Arts Centre

Special Talk Sponsor:
HKU Division of Landscape Architecture

Communications Partner:
Cultural Connections

Special Thanks:
The Conservancy Association Centre for Heritage (CACHe)
Osage Gallery

開幕禮 Opening

日期 Date: 2016.04.15 (Fri)
時間 Time: 6:30 pm (茶點 refreshments), 7:00 pm (儀式 ceremony)
地點 Venue: 3/F, Comix Home Base
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展覽細節 Exhibition Details

日期Date: 2016.04.16 – 2016.05.02

時間Time: 10:00 – 20:00

地點Venue:3/F- 4/F, Comix Home Base
主頁: http://bit.ly/landarthk
查詢: [email protected]
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講座 Special Talk

英國的大地藝術 Land Art in Britain
講者 Speaker: Dr. Joy Sleeman

日期 Date: 2016.04.16 (Sat)
時間 Time: 3:00 – 5:00 pm
地點 Venue: 4/F, Comix Home Base

詳情及登記留座 Details and Registration: http://goo.gl/forms/EvCJP3jPT2
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《學成貳號——拖船仔講故仔》工作坊
“Hok Shing Yee Ho – Story Telling Boat” Workshop

日期 Date: 2016.04.23 (Sat)
時間 Time: 3:00 – 4:00 pm
地點 Venue: Room 5, 3/F, Comix Home Base

詳情及登記留座 Details and Registration: https://goo.gl/xYIJJ6
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《香港農民曆》工作坊
“HK FARMers’ Almanac” Workshop

日期 Date: 2016.04.30 (Sat)
時間 Time: 3:00 – 4:00 pm
地點 Venue: Room 7, 3/F, Comix Home Base
詳情及登記留座 Details and Registration: https://goo.gl/xYIJJ6