Empty Gallery – Xper.Xr

XPER.XR (born 1970) is a Hong Kong-based artist, performer, and provocateur belonging to the city’s first generation of experimental musicians. After releasing Murmur (1989), arguably the first industrial noise recording in the territory, he went on to release and perform alongside such names as Otomo Yoshihide, Merzbow, and Whitehouse. Characterized by a constitutional irreverence, deliberate courting of failure, and self-effacing aesthetic, Xper.Xr.’s practice represents a crucial moment of the city’s artistic counter-history. From 2012 to 2015, he ran the seminal underground exhibition and performance venue CIA in Kowloon, organizing shows with like-minded artists Kago Shintaro, Vagina Dentata Organ, New Noveta, Hermann Nitsch, Laibach, and Olivier de Sagazan.

EDUCATION

1995

BA (Hons) Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University of London

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION

2022

TheCube, Taipei (Upcoming)

New Paintings, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong ( Upcoming )

Curated by Olivia Shao, Loong Mah, New York ( Upcoming )

Bad Timing, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong

2021

Tailwhip, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong

SELECTED EXHIBITION/PERFORMANCE

2021 - 2022

The first Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial research exhibition series PROJECT #4：Sounds as Silence: The Academic Value of Life, Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou

The Principle of Hope, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing

2000

Because I'm Worth It, Club Integral at Southwark Playhouse, London

1998

Shit Happens, radio show curated by John Peel, Royal Festival Hall, London

1997

Sonic Sushi, Club Integral at The Spitz, London

1996

Songs Of Pray' at Les Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, France

New Aura Series 3: After Music, Live at "Conway Hall", LMC, London

1994

The Inflation Saints, Shad Thames, London

Fix Spin Mix, Exhibition, I.A.S., London

1991

Installation and concert, The Quart Society Gallery, HK

1990

Fringe Festival, Installation / Performance with Soundtrack, The Man & Earth Gallery, HK

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

2020

MEIN CORONA

2006

70 MPH / 73 MPH

2002

… … …. ..

2001

Because I'm Worth It

1997

Lun Hsiao Shuai!

1995

I Love Music

1994

Golden Wonder

1993

Recycle Music

1992

Voluptuous Musick

1991

Entombed Vol. 2

1990

Entombed Vol.1

1989

Murmur

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

2021

"Maximum RPM, ArtAsiaPacific, Issue 125, print

"Noise in the Dark: A Conversation on Xper.Xr" , Spike Art Quarterly, print

2007

Review, ‘70MPH’, Intersection magazine

2003

Reviews, "The Wire" No 236 (U.K.) by Dave Mandel

Disc review, "Jet Magazine" No 006 (H.K)

Disc review, "Dazed & Confused" No 97 (U.K.) by Mark Russell

2002

Disc review, ‘The Guardian" (U.K.), John L Walters

Disc review, ‘Resonance" Vol. 9 No. 2 (U.K.) by Simon Lucas

2001

Interview "Revue et Corrigée" No 47 (France) by Michel Henritzi

2000

Review, "Peale Warriors" No 9 (France)

1999

The owls are not what they seem, “Tofu” No 1 (H.K.) by F. Decombe

1998

En long et en large, "Les lnrockuptibles" (France) by Philippe Robert

Resonance 107.3 fm, Royal Festival Hall in London

Mad in Hong Kong, "The Wire" No 168 (U.K.) by Ed Baxter

1997

Disc Review, "Revue et Corrigée" No 33 (France) by Jacques Debout

1996

Disc Review, "Revue et Corrigée" No -d9 (France) by Jacques Debout

Music Preview, "Time Out" No 133 (U.K.)

1994

Soundings, "The Wire" (U.K.)

Special Japan Issue, "The Wire" (U.K.), 1994

Disc Review, "REMIX" (Japan)

Interview, Noise Fanzine No 6 (Taiwan)

1991-1993

Reviews (in various issues), "Youth's Weekly" (Hong Kong)

1992

Review, "Cross Over" (Hong Kong)

XperXr_selectedpress_Sep2021
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2022-06-21	Tishan Hsu in The Painter’s New Tools at Nahmad Contemporary
	Opening Wednesday, June 22, 2022: “Nahmad Contemporary is pleased to present The Painter’s New Tools, an exhibition organized by Eleanor Cayre and Dean Kissick. If you woke up today after twenty years asleep, you’d find the physical world hasn’t changed a great deal. You’d probably notice how everyone’s looking at their phones all the time, and how images are everywhere. How everyone’s making and remaking and communicating through images; and have, in a sense, turned into images on screens themselves. This is a moment of great transition. Your experience of the world is mediated by images, and increasingly takes place within the pictorial space of those images. It’s disorientating. This has changed the way to think about painting: How can you make a distinct image in the face of this glut of images, this constant distraction, and is that even important? What are the painter’s new tools, and what can be done with them?” Artists: Ei Arakawa, Darren Bader, Kerstin Brätsch, Alex Carver, Kate Cooper, Aria Dean, Harm van den Dorpel, Urs Fischer, Wade Guyton, Kate Mosher Hall, Rachel Harrison, Camille Henrot, Tishan Hsu, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jacqueline Humphries, Alex Israel, Jesse Kanda, Scott Lyall, Helen Marten, Ezra Miller, Julien Nguyen, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Seth Price, Richard Prince, Rachel Rose, Sarah Sze, Tojiba CPU Corp, Jessica Wilson, Jordan Wolfson, and Anicka Yi. Read more …
2022-06-16	Jes Fan in Retrograde at Galerie du Monde
	Jes Fan’s Mother is a Woman (Cream) (2019) will be on view at Retrograde, a group exhibition opening at Galerie Du Monde tonight (16 June 2022, Thursday, 5-8pm) , curated by Cusson Cheng. The exhibition period is 16 June – 13 August 2022. “Galerie du Monde is delighted to present the group exhibition Retrograde curated by Cusson Cheng. Different from other LGBTQ-themed exhibitions that emphasize the pride and visibility of sexual minorities, Retrograde raises questions on the costs of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. The exhibition contests the dominant heteronormative logic of desire, the homogeneous models of gay modern identities, and proposes alternative ways of thinking that allow one to radically reimagine queer histories, subjectivities, and futures.” Participating Artists: Ivana Bašić, Jes Fan, Dew Kim, Green Mok, Naraphat Sakarthornsap, Tseng Chien-Ying, Floryan Varennes, Luis Xertu, Xu Guanyu, Rachel Youn, Stella Zhang Read more …
2022-06-02	Tishan Hsu in Future Bodies from a Recent Past at Museum Brandhorst
	Opening June 2 2022 through 15 January 2023: “The exhibition Future Bodies from a Recent Past—Sculpture, Technology, and the Body since the 1950s at Museum Brandhorst brings to life a hitherto little-noticed phenomenon in art, and more particularly in sculpture: the reciprocal interpenetration of body and technology. With more than 100 works and several large-scale installations by around 60 artists—primarily from Europe, the United States, and Japan—the exhibition focuses on the major technological changes since World War II and their influence on our ideas of the body.” Read more …
2022-05-31	Tishan Hsu in Biennale Arte 2022 Meetings on Art
	On Thursday June 9th, 5 to 7PM CEST: Between the Enchantment of Technology and Technophobia “When asked about her birth, Carrington once said she was the product of her mother’s encounter with a machine, in the same bizarre union of human, animal, and the mechanical that marks much of her painting and writing. This event will discuss the convergences between individuals and technologies, asking what’s at stake in today’s theories of transhumanism and technological optimism that oppose the dread of a complete takeover by machines via automaton and artificial intelligence. Keynote by Yuk Hui, philosopher and author, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Technology and Media, SCM, City University of Hong Kong. Conversation between Yuk Hui; Tishan Hsu, and Jacqueline Humphries, participating artists at the 59^th International Art Exhibition; moderated by Matthew Biro, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Michigan.” Read more …
2022-05-06	Jes Fan in Breaking Water at Contemporary Arts Center, OH
	May 6 – August 14, 2022: “Breaking Water is a group exhibition bringing together works in installation, video, photography, painting, sculpture, and performance that offer a range of approaches to the subject of water, liquidity, and feminism at the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, Ohio. The exhibition will debut four new commissions by Paul Maheke, Josèfa Ntjam, Claudia Peña Salinas, and a collaborative work by Calista Lyon and Carmen Winant, after which the exhibition is titled, alongside new and existing work by an international group of artists whose work explores themes of fluidity, connectivity, and resistance, and addresses timely concerns including water rights, climate change, and the effects of natural disasters. The exhibition will be accompanied by a parallel film screening program and catalogue that extend the exhibition’s central themes.” Read more …
2022-05-01	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and at Laetitia Sonami at Human Resources LA
	Tuesday May 3rd & Wednesday May 4th, 5:00 – 9:00 PM Sound artists Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and Laetitia Sonami set up in residency at Human Resources for their fourth collaboration. For Fingers caught in a field of moss they scale down natural growth events to rhythms of sonic saturation and rarefication. The synthetic textures created in real time by the artists evoke an organic unfolding of layered scales of time. The ten-channel audio installation incorporates loudspeakers, subwoofers, directional speakers and anechoic sculptures to manipulate the natural resonance of Human Resources architectural acoustics, turning the gallery into an instrument. Both artists would like to acknowledge the pervading influence of Maryane Amacher’s groundbreaking work in their own unique practice. Read more …
2022-04-05	Cici Wu in Loong Mah Exhibition Entre Centre Et Absence
	Cici Wu is amongst the artists exhibiting at a new exhibition at Loong Mah titled Entre Centre Et Absence. She is exhibiting one of her recent new works on paper, titled Accepts Forgetting, As Well As Remembering 01 (2022). Read more …
2022-04-01	James T. Hong in e-flux Staff Picks
	James T. Hong’s Apologies (2016) is presented on e-flux Video & Film as the April 2022 edition of Staff Picks. “Originally designed as a video installation, Apologies is a compilation of modern political apologies and a timeline of political progress as unrepentant recidivism and contrite repetition. It is a continuing work-in-progress, and this version ends with 2016. Dozens of apologies are collected every year, and they will be added as time permits. The passage of time does not heal all wounds; it cannot settle all accounts or resolve all disputes. But the identities of the perceived perpetrators can change, and a national apology’s task is to document, to put on record, a symbolic act as a prelude to possible reconciliation and forgiveness. To achieve these ends, one’s sincerity is paramount, especially when reading from a script.” Watch Hong’s film at the link below. Read more …
2022-03-19	Tishan Hsu in American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts
	The Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts is an annual event for members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to honor contemporary artists who they believe are making some of today’s most important and timely work. The exhibition opens on March 12 through May 22, 2022. The Invitational is an exhibition without a theme or a single author, and yet, certain tendencies emerge in this year’s installment. In many cases, the finished works destabilize, even disregard, old disciplinary questions rooted in hierarchy—is it a painting or a sculpture; art or craft? Instead, they opt for plenitude, for and, and, and. Objects in the exhibition extend the art historical archive to include artifacts of incarceration, migration, and climate emergency. They heighten our attention to color and scale. Artists employ a range of techniques: marbling, weaving, glazing, animation, found-object manipulation, collage, dark-room processing, and more, often in “wrong” or unconventional ways. We witness art’s capacity for surprise, and the enduring pleasure of material experimentation. Artists included in the exhibition: Candida Alvarez, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Andrea Belag, Ellen Berkenblit, Kerstin Brätsch, Cynthia Daignault, Carl D’Alvia, Thomas Eggerer, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Keltie Ferris, Judy Fox, Joanne Greenbaum, Rachel Harrison, Anna Sew Hoy, Tishan Hsu, Jacqueline Humphries, Suzanne Jackson, Tomashi Jackson, Elisabeth Kley, Pam Lins, Rodney McMillian, Laura Newman, Janice Nowinski, Eileen Quinlan, Matt Saunders, Arlene Shechet, Arthur Simms, Michael Smith, Shinique Smith, Martine Syms, Kennedy Yanko Read more …
2022-03-18	Jes Fan in ArtNews
	Josie Thaddeus-Johns’s new feature “Not All Microbes”, Jes Fan’s Systems II is amongst the works cited in the author’s exploration of cellular microbes in contemporary art. “Covid, initially linked in the press to its origins in Wuhan, China, also sparked a dangerous wave of racism, evident in growing numbers of anti-Asian incidents since March 2020. But even before the pandemic, artists were considering how systems of classification such as race are socially constructed through fear about contamination and difference. Jes Fan makes this literal in his work Systems II (2018), a wood and resin sculpture inspired by the networks of fibers that fungi and plant roots create.” Read more …

On Thursday June 9th, 5 to 7PM CEST: Between the Enchantment of Technology and Technophobia

EDUCATION

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITION

SELECTED EXHIBITION/PERFORMANCE

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY