http://philtinari.com my site Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:52:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's a special thing to watch an artistic collective emerge from a single show. In September 2005, I happened to catch the first outing of the Polit-Sheer Form Office, a new constellation of artists Song Dong, Xiao Yu, Hong Hao, and Liu Jianhua, and critic/curator/gallerist Leng Lin. Leng and Song ... http://philtinari.com/2011/09/true-blue/ I DIDN'T SAY too much while he was away, and in fact, with the exception of a brief sighting at his birthday party a few weeks ago, hadn't seen him until this morning. The former was a Godfathery affair, a hundred wellwishers, including two wife-figures and the toddler, lawyers, construction ... http://philtinari.com/2011/09/the-new-normal/ This came across the transom earlier today, and it's so amazing that I have just anonymized and posted it deadpan, à la Harper's Readings. Meanwhile I have been writing a bit about Yan Lei, who has done more work than just about any Chinese artist on the actual mechanisms of ... http://philtinari.com/2011/02/little-thig/ The other night I went for one of those countless lunar-new-year dinners with our extremely Modern upper management, to Bei in the Opposite House, not such a bad place. The subject was an artist, Cantonese like our beloved Chairman, who has a very good exhibition opportunity in front of him ... http://philtinari.com/2011/02/born-at-the-right-time/ [caption id="attachment_270" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Simon Fujiwara, Frozen, 2010. Proposal for Frieze Art Fair."][/caption] Walking out the entrance of a hotel of a city you know only just so well is a very certain sensation, the drag of appearing to all but a very few as a resident of a place you ... http://philtinari.com/2010/10/fictive-premises/ [caption id="attachment_263" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, 2010."][/caption] from a friend: when are you back in china? how was frieze? did you steal a sunflower seed and did you get poisoned by its fumes? are the cool kids in shoreditch/tongzhou going to start grinding porcelain sunflowers and huffing the dust as ... http://philtinari.com/2010/10/the-notes-one-gets/ Dear Diary, Going back isn't quite what it used to be. I alluded to this in the letter that introduces the new issue of our magazine, but there was a time when for reasons of either age or geopolitics or a different information culture or all of the above I ... http://philtinari.com/2010/08/super-short-new-york-visit/ [caption id="attachment_208" align="aligncenter" width="520" caption="Cover, LEAP 1, February 2010. Shown: Huang Yong Ping, Sand Bank/Bank of Sand, 2000."][/caption] In light of Evan Osnos's link earlier today, I'm going to quickly post something to counter LEAP's lame slowness in getting a website up and running. This is the editorial statement (call ... http://philtinari.com/2010/05/manifesto/ [caption id="attachment_202" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Cai Guo-Qiang, Du Wenda’s Flying Saucer D on top of the Rockbund Art Museum, 2010. Photo by Lin Yi, courtesy Cai Studio"][/caption] Of course one sometimes does thought experiments that involve substituting Beijing for New York or London. They've become harder in recent years, but I still ... http://philtinari.com/2010/05/theleap/ On our cover this month you’ll see an image that might not make sense at first. From a corner, our photographer—Shanghai artist Song Tao—captures the workshop in which sculptor Zhan Wang’s stainless steel scholar’s rocks come to life. Under his direction, a team of highly skilled workers bring the unlikely ... http://philtinari.com/2010/04/leap-2-editorial-statement-ways-of-making/