GOING UP:
Video art
Performance (as ever)
Oil painting (as ever – esp. mid to medium-scale)
Collective practice/introverted group activities
Animation
“Contemporary ink”
Fashion/art/media-ish gatherings
The grotesque (see Ma Ke, Gu Dexin, Ma Qiusha, Cao Hui et al)
Retrospectives (the time has come)
Book art (now in China)
Object-orientated ontology
Art Basel HK (hits soon – invest in protective headgear and alka seltzer)
Private museums (their presence, anyway)
Big group shows with pushy concepts/frameworks (outcomes unknown)
Art district space rental
Randian readership*
Prices
Online art-buying platforms
Quantity
GOING STEADY:
The World (despite threats/aspirations to the contrary)
‘New Aesthetics’ (or is it going down?)
Rivalry
Instability
Complaint
Ambition
GOING DOWN:
The Shanghai scene (MadeIN on the move, SHContemporary on the slide, Shanghai Biennale shambles, attention migrating southwards)
Artists not classed as ‘young’ or ‘emerging’
Photography
Arts festivals in general
Minsheng’s plans
Artistic freedom
Auctions
An experimental attitude
Risk-taking
Refinement
(Good) installation
Flexibility
Quality
*Welcome to our new site, and thank you everyone for your growing support during 2012!
WE LIKED (in no particular order)
“Art of Change” at the Hayward, whatever He said about it; being beguiled by Gu Dexin’s grotesque and incisive conceptualism at UCCA; the fact that White Space did A Book art exhibition; Ma Ke’s screaming narrative paintings; Zhang Hui’s expert “Groundless” at Long March Space; dOCUMENTA. A window on past depictions – “Sketches for Iconic Paintings” chez Hadrien de Montferrand; “circus fun tempered with critical resonance” – Moataz Nasr at Galeria Continua; APT (young though it is); solo exhibitions by He Xiangyu (death of the artist), Chen Wei (the conductor of images), Adrian Wong (rodent-as-authors), Elad Lassry (ontological frames) and Gao Weigang (glorious conceptualism). “ON|OFF” at UCCA – not without its issues, but (and perhaps also because of those issues) an important exhibition.
THE USUAL EXPORTS:
Liu Xiaodong (with “The Process of Painting” at Kunsthaus Graz and the ubiquitous “Fotan Project”), Zhang Huan (“The Mountain is still a Mountain” at White Cube, London), Zeng Fanzhi (Gagosian London: solo exhibition). Liu Wei (multiple outings).
THE NEW EXPORTS:
Yan Xing, Huang Ran, MadeIN, Wang Jianwei, Lee Kit.
WE WILL MISS:
Nataline Colonnello, F2 Gallery, Beijing, Minsheng’s Beijing museum plans.
WE LOOK FORWARD TO:
Clocking the Sigg Collection at M+, the Venice Biennale, Art HK (with some trepidation), the timely first edition of Art 13 in London. Saamlung’s new incarnation as a project space, co-run by artists Nadim Abbas, Joao Vasco Paiva and Adrian Wong with curator Robin Peckham.
WITH AN EYE ON:
The Hong Kong gallery scene; OCAT Contemporary Art Museum, Xi’an (Karen Smith curates), new gallery openings in Beijing, media machinations, The Progress of Ai Weiwei, emerging trends (or the positing thereof), forthcoming retrospectives.
AND WHY NOT?
Bolder thematic exhibitions, less haste, an end to ridiculous wall texts and bad translations, a broader perspective.
