Issue no. 58
(May/June 2008)
ArtAsiaPacific no. 58 keeps pace with the auction records, new institutions and grandiose personalities that continue to fascinate the art world in 2008, while stepping back to examine artists’ relationship with written language and text.
The May/June issue centers around three in-depth portraits of individual artists who employ text in their works. News and profiles editor HG Masters reflects on the innovative concoctions of Yoko Ono, the conceptual artist and early member of the global avant-garde collective Fluxus, who based her early performances and sculptures on simple written instructions collected in her 1964 book, Grapefruit. Following up on the themes in Ono’s oeuvre, Lauren Cornell, executive director of the new media organization Rhizome and adjunct curator at the New Museum in New York, analyzes the ecstatic Flash animations by the elusive Seoul-based duo Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries. Features editor Andrew Maerkle takes a close look at Hong Kong artist Tsang Kin-wah’s neo-psychedelic, pinwheel wallpaper patterns.
This issue also examines the tradition of text-based art from a broader cultural perspective in three regions. From Australia and New Zealand, George Alexander chronicles the tradition of text art starting with Rosalie Gascoigne’s works from 1970s and 1980s then clicks fast-forward to young artists Adam Cullen and Maria Cruz. Eric Wear of Hong Kong surveys contemporary calligraphy from China, moving from Red Emperor Mao Zedong to the late graffiti artist and self-proclaimed King of Kowloon, Tsang Tsou-Choi. Gregory Galligan explores Middle Eastern calligraphy in the expanded field, specifically through the work of Shirin Neshat, Ghada Amer, Emily Jacir, Shirazeh Houshiary and Walid Raad.
Continuing the issue’s art-meets-language theme in Profiles, Eliza Gluckman delves into Sharmini Pereira’s new artist-book publishing venture, Raking Leaves, which releases its first titles this year. Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces’ director Alexie Glass introduces the politically charged text-and-image collages of Malaysian artist Roslisham Ismail, aka Ise, for Projects in the Making.
Returning to the figures who continue to shape contemporary art, ArtAsiaPacific talks with independent curator Lance Fung about his penchant for collaborative experimentation to be displayed at June’s SITE Santa Fe biennial in New Mexico. ArtAsiaPacific also caught up with Frank Cohen in Manchester, England, and discussed his 30 years of collecting, most recently some fine works from China and India.
To round out the issue, Tibetan artist Tenzing Rigdol shares his intimate thoughts on Chinese painter Liu Xiaodong’s depictions of life in the troubled Himalayas. And Barbara Pollack discusses ideas of creativity and originality for The Point, gazing back to the theories of Columbia University professor Rosalind Krauss and leaping forward to encounters with the younger generation of wannabe artists at the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts in Chengdu.
