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.

SELECTED EXHIBITION/PERFORMANCE

2021

Tailwhip, Empty Gallery, HK

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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2021-09-11	Tishan Hsu in TECHNO at Museion, Bolzano
	Tishan Hsu’s new wall installation and accompanying QR-linked video piece, “Grass-Screen-Skin: Bolzano” is now on view at Museion, Bolzano, Italy, as part of TECHNO. The exhibition is on view until 16 March, 2022. Articulated through three themes— *Freedom, Compression* and *Exhaustion* — the exhibition TECHNO puts the techno experience center stage, adopting it as a lens through which to capture a contemporary human condition and social order. Museion invites an international group of artists, thinkers and producers to explore how cultural phenomena related to techno have become interlaced with the ways we experience our identities today. Artists: Riccardo Benassi, Paul Chan, Nicolò Degiorgis, Karin Ferrari, Massimo Grimaldi, CC Hennix, Tishan Hsu, Mire Lee, Ghislaine Leung, Isabel Lewis, Piero Martinello in Zusammenarbeit mit/in collaborazione con/in collaboration with Franco Ruaro, Sandra Mujinga, Nkisi aka Melika Ngombe Kolongo, Emeka Ogboh, Yuri Pattison, Daniel Pflumm, James Richards und/e/and Steve Reinke, James Richards, Jacolby Satterwhite, Leander Schwazer, Sung Tieu, Jan Vorisek among many others. TECHNO is curated by Bart van der Heide, Director of Museion, in collaboration with an international research team including Francesco Tenaglia, art critic and curator, Florian Fischer, stage director and author and Frida Carazzato, curatorial assistant at Museion. Read more …
2021-09-03	Xper. Xr in ArtAsiaPacific
	In Issue 125 Sep/Oct of ArtAsiaPacific, Editor at large HG Masters profiled Xper.Xr after his exhibition Tailwhip at Empty Gallery. “Though the show featured an abundance of archival materials—cases of magazine clippings, album covers, old correspondence, articles and zines that Chris published, musical scores, and various noise-making props including a megaphone and angle grinder—it can still be difficult to comprehend that Xper.Xr’s multipronged creative life really happened, and with such intensity.” Read more …
2021-09-02	Jes Fan in Camp Fires at Last Tango
	CAMP FIRES is a polymorphous project that centers around the exhibition of some twenty video works by international artists, dancers, singers, performers, and activists exploring the body as a performative interface to resist the normative gaze over dissident bodies—that which is queer in the broadest sense of the word. The project defends the idea that identity is not a definitive state but a continuous negotiation between the ontological self and the rest of the world, a form of constantly becoming rather than being. The exhibition opens on 2 September and runs until 23 October at Last Tango. Artists: Fatima Al Qadiri & Khalid Al Gharaballi, James Bantone, Básica TV, Lukas Beyeler, Emilio Bianchic, Lex Brown, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Tianzhuo Chen, Jes Fan, House of Ladosha, Ivy Monteiro, Javier Ocampo, Tyler Matthew Oyer, Signe Pierce & Alli Coates, Bhenji Ra & Justin Shoulder, Florencia Rodríguez Giles, Jacolby Satterwhite, SOPHIE and more Curated by Simon W Marin and Violeta Mansilla Hosted and co-produced by Last Tango Co-hosted by Tanzhaus Zürich and Shedhalle Read more …
2021-09-01	Cici Wu in Seoul Mediacity Biennale
	The 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, One Escape at a Time, is slated to open from September 8 to November 21, 2021 at the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) and other locations across the city. One Escape at a Time will present works and projects—many of them new productions—by 41 Korean and international participants: Bani Abidi, Monira Al Qadiri, Amature Amplifier, Richard Bell, Johanna Billing, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Chang Yun-Han, Chihoi, Minerva Cuevas, Brice Dellsperger, DIS, Hao Jingban, Hapjungjigu, Sharon Hayes, Jinhwon Hong, Hsu Che-Yu, Geumhyung Jeong, Eisa Jocson, Kang Sang-woo, Kim Min, Sarah Lai, Oliver Laric, Li Liao, Life of a Craphead (Amy Lam and Jon McCurley), Lim Giong, Liu Chuang, Mackerel Safranski, Tala Madani, Henrike Naumann, ONEROOM, Yuri Pattison, Paul Pfeiffer, Hansol Ryu, Pilvi Takala, TASTEHOUSE × WORKS, Wang Haiyang, Ming Wong, Cici Wu, Chikako Yamashiro, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, and Tobias Zielony. One Escape at a Time builds on ideas of escapism in relation to currents in today’s popular media—especially the US sitcom One Day at a Time (2017–). First produced and made available for streaming worldwide by Netflix, One Day at a Time is a contemporary update of the 1970s sitcom of the same name. It charts the life of a three-generation Cuban American family sharing the same roof in Los Angeles. Despite its seemingly conventional format, the sitcom flips the norms of media representation and disguises its central concerns with laughter while tackling some of the most urgent and human questions today: racism, gender, class, sexuality, identity, migration, gentrification, and violence, among others. Read more …
2021-08-27	NOISE IN THE DARK: A CONVERSATION ON XPER.XR
	For Spike Art Magazine, contributing editor Jaime Chu and art researcher Michelle Wong teamed up to explore Tailwhip, Empty Gallery’s exhibition of pioneering Hong Kong noise musician, Xper.Xr. “NOISE IN THE DARK: A CONVERSATION ON XPER.XR: Active in Hong Kong’s underground for three decades, Xper.Xr defies description. Fanzines, experimental sounds, and hammers all come together under one roof for the multifaceted (and more than occasionally dangerous) artist’s first retrospective.” Read more …
2021-07-27	Tishan Hsu with Chris Lew & Daniel Chew, VeniceW on CFGNY's Made In Radio Program at Auto Italia
	On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 3:00 PM EST, Tishan Hsu will be in dialogue with Chris Lew & Daniel Chew, VeniceW, as part of Montez Press Radio and Auto Italia’s day-long broadcast of new discussions and music led by CFGNY and their wider community of friends, family and collaborators. Here, Tishan Chris and Daniel discuss oral histories of being an artist of color in the 80s/90s in New York and Germany. Then Venice W, fashion designer from Bangkok, educated in New York (and now back in Bangkok) talks about her experiences. Since the mid-1980s, Tishan Hsu’s prescient artistic practice has been probing the cognitive as well as physical effects of transformative technological advances on our lives. Through the use of unusual materials, software tools, and innovative fabrication techniques, his enigmatic paintings and sculptures explore and manifest poetic new ways to engage and reimagine the human body. Read more …
2021-07-20	JES FAN IN THE FIFTH NEW MUSEUM TRIENNIAL
	“Soft Water Hard Stone,” the fifth New Museum Triennial, brings together works across mediums by forty artists internationally, including Jes Fan. It recognizes artists reimagining traditional models, materials, and techniques beyond established institutional paradigms. Their works exalt states of transformation, calling attention to the malleability of structures, porous and unstable surfaces, and the fluid and adaptable potential of both technological and organic media. The Triennial will be on view from 27 October, 2021 to 23 January, 2022. Curators: Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at The New Museum, and Jamillah James. Read more …
2021-07-14	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork named LACMA Art + Technology Lab Grant Recipient
	The Art + Technology Lab at LACMA has announced its 2021 grant recipients. Emphasizing iteration and risk-taking over the completion of a finished work, the Lab continues to support artist projects that engage emerging technology. Selection criteria includes artistic merit, opportunities for public engagement, and the suggested forms of data, methods, and/or models that might be of interest to other artists. LACMA issued the 2021 Request for Proposals in December of 2020 and received over 900 submissions. Among the four winning projects: Jaqueline Kiyomi Gork and Rhett LaRue will develop a multiplayer game space that uses sound as its main modality for navigation and interaction. Giving consideration to empathy and intimacy, they will disrupt the traditional structure of gaming experiences, developing an experience based on collaboration and listening. Gork and LaRue’s project is called Inhabit360. Read more …
2021-07-10	Jes Fan Joins Collection of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
	We are pleased to announce that two recent sculptures by Jes Fan, Diagram IX (2021) and Diagram X (2021), have joined the Collection of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Empty Gallery would like to thank the team at MHCAM who made this possible. A work from Fan’s ongoing Diagram series exploring the epidermis, Diagram X (2021) features two undulating forms of aqua resin fused in three points, above which a glass globule is situated in a custom-molded form. The organic geometry and fluctuating joinery of this piece evoke the permeable, semi-transparent layers of skin covering human bodies. In his deliberate openings and closings of skin-like waves, Fan questions where a body begins and ends.
2021-07-03	Tishan Hsu in Zeroes + Ones at KW Institute for Contemporary Art
	The group exhibition Zeros and Ones investigates the ways artists operate within their surrounding institutional structures. Taking the algorithmic paradigm in scripting, scoring, instruction, or command, the works selected systematically complicate these procedures through lived experience. Tools and tasks are mobilized without measurable outcome while always returning to the material conditions of their labor. Through subtle redistributions, infrastructure and the body are both intimately as well as violently situated towards each other. The practices of artists such as Lutz Bacher, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Hanne Darboven, Jana Euler, Jef Geys, Tishan Hsu, Ilmari Kalkkinen, Silvia Kolbowski, Pope L., Louise Lawler, Carolyn Lazard, Lee Lozano, Henrik Olesen, Sarah Rapson, Margaret Raspé, readymades belong to everyone®, Ketty La Rocca, Sturtevant, Otto Wagner, and Martin Wong, prompt us to question the metrics and hierarchies that are being reproduced in the field of art and beyond. The exhibition will be on view until 19 September, 2021. Curators: Kathrin Bentele, Anna Gritz, Ghislaine Leung Read more …