
2021-01-13	Ocula Insight: Taro Masushio’s Homage to the Uncle from Osaka at Empty Gallery
	Nick Yu writes in Ocula: At the entrance to Rumor Has It, Taro Masushio’s current exhibition at Hong Kong’s black-box Empty Gallery, a giant, meekly illuminated pumice stone is supported by a steel structure—a sparse signifier of a subterranean cave. The atmosphere is mysterious, mythological, almost transgressive; not so much a Dionysian cruising club or a lascivious sauna than a mise-en-scène constructed with restraint. Single rows of framed black-and-white silver gelatin photographs line black walls: still-life captures that include a camera stand, flowers, soap, and erotic hand-drawn sketches. Read more …
2021-01-06	BOMB: Hypnotic and Historical Power: Taibach Interviewed by Alex Lau
	Long in gestation, Taibach’s first recordings were recently released as an LP on Empty Editions, a record label that I run together with my colleagues from Empty Gallery in Hong Kong. Composed of two Asian Americans who wish to remain anonymous, Taibach’s deliberate engagement with the ideological minefield which is US-Taiwan-China relations feels necessary during a moment defined by rising ethno-nationalism and the flattening of complex political narratives. With a nom de guerre that references both the infamous Slovenian proto-industrial group Laibach and their mythologized homeland of Taiwan, Taibach restages the classic thematics and aesthetic strategies of industrial music for a contemporary moment in which shifting balances of power between East and West herald new hegemonies and exhume old grievances. I spoke with the members of Taibach over email, iMessage, and WhatsApp about music, politics, and Asian American identity. Read more …
2020-12-31	Artnet News on Taro Masushio's Rumor Has It
	Andrew Russeth on Taro Masushio’s newly opened Rumor Has It: One recent morning in Hong Kong, while in the last hours of his quarantine, the New York–based artist Taro Masushio recounted a visit he made to a vast, little-seen archive of homoerotic photographs by Jun’ichi En’ya, who had worked as a photo-technician in Osaka, Japan. “I had just never seen anything like it,” Masushio said on a video call, as he recalled flipping through hundreds and hundreds of En’ya’s analog prints. “It was this very surreal and visceral experience.” Read more …
2020-12-10	XPER.XR interviewed by JOSH FEOLA for TONE GLOW
	Xper.Xr is a legendary, if poorly documented figure in Hong Kong’s experimental music scene. He first became active in the late ’80s “after a steep learning curve and gobbling up every piece of musical rebellion [he] could get [his] hands onto,” and put out his debut cassette Murmur in 1989. For the majority of his recording career he lived abroad—mostly in the UK and France—but he returned to Hong Kong in 2013 to open the short-lived underground venue CIA, his “payback to the HK arts and music scene.” CIA put on gigs that would be hard to imagine happening elsewhere in the region, like an Aktion for Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, and a rare Asia booking for Slovenian industrial band Laibach. Read more …
2020-12-03	SOPHIE X. GUO on JES FAN in COURTAULD GENDER AND SEXUALITY GROUP
	(Dis)Embodying the biomolecular sex: The lapse of identity in Jes Fan’s hormone works (2017-2018) by Sophie X. Guo now on the Courtauld Gender and Sexuality Group blog: To borrow the terms of the American feminist Donna J. Haraway, the twenty-first-century body is a technoliving system, the result of an irreversible implosion of modern binaries (female/male, animal/ human, nature/culture). — Paul. B. Preciado, 2013^[1] The contemporary condition of the body as a ‘technoliving system’ is meticulously mapped onto Jes Fan’s precarious sculptures, through which the artist wishes to challenge binary conceptions of gender, race, and identity. In their 2018 sculptural series titled Systems, Fan isolates testosterone, estrogen and melanin from the human body and lets them float freely in their hand-blown glass globules. Rendered in biomorphic shapes recalling human organs and drops of body fluids, the limpid glass objects slothfully hang on a piping system which the artist called ‘lattice’, as if in the process of leaking, or seeping out (Fig. 1). Not dissimilar to lattice normally used as a support for climbing plants, the vine-like pipeline used in Fan’s works is, for them, a ‘living shelf’— or at least, a semi-living one, for the sex hormones and melanin contained in the glass vessels are perpetually in flux. Read more …
2020-12-01	Elaine Scarry and Jeannine Tang on Tishan Hsu’s 1980s
	Online event with SculptureCenter: Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11am–12:30pm. Tishan Hsu’s work appears prescient and influential for younger artists working today, which we can now understand (at least partially) as a product of his idiosyncratic and forward-reaching relationship to the aesthetics, media, and theory of the 1980s. Referencing the work of scholar Elaine Scarry, Tishan Hsu has remarked that while the critical theory of the 1980s interrogated the subject and saw its autonomy emptied out, pain remained the nagging anchor that kept it from dissipating into thin air. In other words, it was pain that kept the genie in the bottle of embodiment. In Hsu’s work, the body in pain, administered through the institutions of modern life (the office, the hospital, the prison, the factory), manifests itself as fragmented, sundered, and wounded. Read more …
2020-11-27	HENRY SHUM in Hong Kong Spotlight: Six Artists to Watch
	Stephanie Bailey writes in Ocula, “Showing in partnership with Fine Art Asia at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre between 27 and 30 November 2020, Hong Kong Spotlight is Art Basel‘s first physical presentation in 2020. Ocula Magazine highlights six artists on view among the curated booths of 22 participating galleries. Empty Gallery‘s black box was the perfect setting to showcase the impressive hand of Hong Kong-born painter Henry Shum, who graduated with a BA in fine art from Chelsea College of Arts only in 2020.” Read more …
2020-11-26	HENRY SHUM \| Vortices in ArtAsiaPacific
	OPHELIA LAI writes in ArtAsiaPacific, “The vortex-as-portal is a recurring motif that conjures the irresistible yet terrifying pull of the unknown. For poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827), it takes on a spiritual dimension as a symbol of transfigurative passage. These mysterious connotations suffuse painter Henry Shum’s “Vortices,” a fever dream of perilous journeys and mystical awakenings in Empty Gallery’s darkened sancta.” Read more …
2020-11-21	JAMES T. HONG in TAIPEI BIENNIAL 2020
	James T. Hong’s work The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend is in the 12th Taipei Biennial, on view at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum from now until March 12, 2021. Curated by Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard with Eva Lin, it is titled “You and I don’t live on the same planet” and explores how “people around the world no longer agree on what it means to live ‘on’ Earth.” Hong’s work is a series of concept art storyboards for a speculative science fiction film set in the near future. The film presents a military conflict in Taiwan which involves forces from China, the USA, Japan, Taiwan, and other nations. Read more …
2020-11-13	TISHAN HSU in Diaries: Era of Good Feelings at 47 Canal online
	Diaries: Era of Good Feelings is an online exhibition curated by Mark Pieterson with an essay by Rizvana Bradley, featuring Antoine Catala, Julien Creuzet, Tishan Hsu, Heesoo Kwon, Christopher Meerdo and Philipp Timischl. On view now until December 20, 2020, this special online presentation brings together various works by six artists that extend the affective possibilities for empathy, care, and connection through the haptic. Also featured is a newly commissioned essay “The Vicissitudes of Touch: Annotations on the Haptic” by Rizvana Bradley. Read more …

Archive


	current
•	2020-12-23 . . . 2021-02-20	Rumor Has It	Taro Masushio current
past
	2020
•	2020-09-26 . . . 2020-11-21	Vortices	Henry Shum past
•	2020-06-20 . . . 2020-09-05	Oax.D.F.L.A.N.O.H.K	ektor garcia past
•	2019-12-14 . . . 2020-02-01	The Thing	James T. Hong past
•	2019-12-14 . . . 2020-02-01	Reoccurring Afterlife	Diane Severin Nguyen past
	2019
•	2019-09-28 . . . 2019-11-23	The Bare Life	Philippe Grandrieux past
•	2019-06-22 . . . 2019-09-07	New Molecules & Stem Cell Retinoid Screen	Sean Raspet past
•	2019-03-26 . . . 2019-06-06	Unfinished Return	Cici Wu past
•	2019-03-26 . . . 2019-06-06	delete	Tishan Hsu past
•	2018-12-15 . . . 2019-01-26	The Pearl Of Tailorbird	Rei Hayama past
•	2018-12-15 . . . 2019-01-26	Memento Stella	Takashi Makino past
	2018
•	2018-09-22 . . . 2018-11-24	Gravitational Currents & The Life Magic	Susanne Winterling past
•	2018-06-30 . . . 2018-09-08	Thresholds of Perception	Catherine Christer Hennix past
•	2018-03-27 . . . 2018-06-02	Ruthless Logic	Xavier Cha past
•	2018-03-27 . . . 2018-06-02	Mother Is A Woman	Jes Fan past
•	2017-12-09 . . . 2018-02-03	Shocking Asia	C. Spencer Yeh past
	2017
•	2017-09-09 . . . 2017-11-18	Everything Visible Is Empty	Toshio Matsumoto past
•	2017-06-17 . . . 2017-08-26	Catchy	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon past
•	2017-03-22 . . . 2017-05-27	Infinite Doors	Takeshi Murata past
•	2016-12-13 . . . 2017-02-17	Kaya Cynara	Hans-Henning Korb past
•	2016-12-13 . . . 2017-02-17	CINÉMA CONCRET	Takashi Makino past
	2016
•	2016-03-24 . . . 2016-05-20	Ancestor Bone Hug	Amit Desai past
•	2015-11-07 . . . 2016-02-06	The Man Who Sleeps On His Breath	Edward S. Curtis, Valerio Tricoli past
	2015
•	2015-09-11 . . . 2015-10-21	Sonorous Objects	Rolf Julius, Tomoko Sauvage, Rubén D’Hers and Marc Hurtado past
•	2015-03-05 . . . 2015-08-15	Transcendance	Amit Desai past


past
	2020
•	2020-10-03	Tours of Henry Shum 'Vortices'	Henry Shum past
•	2020-09-05	ektor garcia, Ruth Asawa and a brief history of crochet	ektor garcia, Ruth Asawa past
	2019
•	2019-12-15	Screening \| John Carpenter's The Thing	James T. Hong past
•	2019-11-30 . . . 2019-12-01	The Body Electric	Xper.Xr., Die Angel, Fiesta Brass past
•	2019-10-05		Still House Plants past
•	2019-06-23	Human Formats: Recent Developments in Stem Cell Science and the Plastic Arts	Dr. Robert Johnston past
•	2019-03-20	Opening Rave \| delete & Unfinished Return	O YAMA O, DJ PYTHON, CARLOS SOUFFRONT, BILL CONVERSE past
•	2019-01-26	Screening \| Experimental Films by Rei Hayama	Rei Hayama past
	2018
•	2018-12-16		Taku Sugimoto & Minami Saeki past
•	2018-10-27		Taibach, Billy Bao & NYPD past
•	2018-08-31 . . . 2018-09-02		Chora(s)san Time Court Mirage past
•	2018-06-30	Opening Reception \| Thresholds of Perception	Amir ElSaffar past
•	2018-03-31	Failed Celestial Creatures	David Grubbs & Taku Unami past
•	2018-03-30	Opening Rave \| Ruthless Logic & Mother Is A Woman	Ahmed, Cera Khin, Mumdance, Logos & Rob Hall past
	2017
•	2017-12-09	Opening Reception \| Shocking Asia	Violet past
•	2017-11-18	Screening + Closing Reception \| Funeral Parade Of Roses past
•	2017-10-21		Reizen / Morishige past
•	2017-09-09	Opening Reception \| EVERYTHING VISIBLE IS EMPTY	Aki Onda past
•	2017-08-26	Closing Reception \| CATCHY	Errorsmith past
•	2017-06-17	Opening Reception \| CATCHY	Thomas Brinkmann × Seijiro Murayama past
•	2017-05-27	Closing Reception \| Infinite Doors	C. SPENCER YEH past
•	2017-03-25	Green Hour, Grey Future	Reinier Van Houdt past
•	2017-03-23	Une Nuit Sans Sommeil	Lionel Estève, Jean-Michel Distexhe & Zoë-Louise Estève past
•	2017-03-22	Opening Party \| Infinite Doors	Sissy Spacek, Gabber Eleganza, Lorenzo Senni & Rian Treanor past
•	2017-02-18	Endless Cinema	Takashi Makino past
•	2017-01-21	Green Music	Tomoko Sauvage & Francesco Cavaliere past
	2016
•	2016-12-17		Eli Keszler, Rashad Becker & James Hoff past
•	2016-12-09	EG Reopening Party	Terre Thaemlitz, Mark Fell, Rian Treanor & Robert Lippok past
•	2016-05-21		Magda Mayas × Tony Buck, dj sniff & Shane Aspegren past
•	2016-04-23	Dialogues	Ko Ishikawa / Joel Ryan & Jean-Luc Guionnet / Daichi Yoshikawa past
•	2016-01-09		Keiji Haino × John Butcher past
	2015
•	2015-11-21		Masayoshi Urabe past
•	2015-10-24		Peter Brötzmann past
•	2015-09-25 . . . 2015-09-26	Editions Mego 20th Anniversary	Fennesz, Klara Lewis, Ilpo Vaisanen & KTL past
•	2015-08-15	[email protected]	III人 past
•	2015-06-07	[email protected]	Mark Fell × NHK’KOYXEN past
•	2015-05-09	[email protected]	Suishou No Fune past
•	2015-03-14 . . . 2015-03-15	[email protected]	Ninos Du Brasil, Eli Kezler, Rashad Becker, NHK’KOYXEN, Lorenzo Senni, Gábor Lázár & Mark Fell past


past
	2020
•	2020-11-26 . . . 2020-11-30	Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel	Cici Wu & Xiaofei Mo, Henry Shum past
•	2020-11-11 . . . 2020-11-15	Art021 Shanghai	Tishan Hsu, Diane Severin Nguyen, John Wu past
•	2020-08-20 . . . 2020-08-31	June Art Fair	John Ziqiang Wu past
•	2020-02-13 . . . 2020-02-16	Felix Los Angeles	James T. Hong past
	2019
•	2019-11-07 . . . 2019-11-10	ART021 Shanghai	Elliott Jun Wright past
•	2019-03-29 . . . 2019-03-31	Art Basel Hong Kong	Tishan Hsu past
	2018
•	2018-05-03 . . . 2018-05-06	Frieze New York	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon past
•	2018-03-07 . . . 2018-03-10	The Armory Show	Tishan Hsu and Takeshi Murata past

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