Shows to See in Asia in May 2024
By The Editors
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Installation view of OLAFUR ELIASSON’s Circumstellar resonator, 2018, prismatic glass ring, color-effect filter glass (yellow), LEDs, ballast, stainless steel, brass, paint (white), cable, dimensions variable. Photo by Joseph Nair. Courtesy the artist and Singapore Art Museum.
May 10–Sep 22
Olafur Eliasson: your curious journey
Singapore Art Museum
Singapore
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s “Your curious journey” is his first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia and will showcase works from his three-decade-long practice that explores themes of embodiment, experience, perception, as well as climate change. Eliasson creates sculpture and installation art using elemental materials such as light, water, wind, and fog. The exhibition will travel to New Zealand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines during the next two years.
Installation view of NICHOLAS MANGAN’s Termite Economies, 2018-20. Photo by Hamish McIntosh. Courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sutton Gallery, Australia and LABOR, Mexico.
Apr 5–Jun 30
Nicholas Mangan: A World Undone
MCA Australia
Sydney
“A World Undone” is a midcareer survey that presents Djilang/Geelong-born, Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan’s eight expanded sculptural works, spanning photographs, films, and 3D prints and electronics. Through “material storytelling” the artist evaluates humanity’s relationship to nature, taking inspiration from coral rubble to cryptocurrency. Reflecting on Australia’s place in the Pacific, Mangan considers how social, political and economic upheaval are connected to material transformation such as extractive mining and the impact of climate change.
HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, Oscar Wilde, 1999, gelatin silver print, 93.6 × 75cm. Courtesy the artist.
Mar 23–Jun 23
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
Beijing
Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s five decade-long career is showcased in a major retrospective titled “Time Machine,” which features 11 photographic series including Seascapes, Theaters, Lightning Fields, and Portraits. Newly created darkroom calligraphy works are also presented to the public for the first time in this touring survey. The exhibition sheds light on Sugimoto’s philosophical and poetic inquiry into our perception of time and memory.
Installation view of "Mirrors of the Portrait" at West Bund Museum in Shanghai. Photo by Alessandro Wang. Courtesy West Bund Museum.
Jul 21, 2023–Nov 5
Mirrors of the Portrait
West Bund Museum
Shanghai
“Mirrors of the Portrait” is the third part of the collaboration between the West Bund Museum and France’s Centre Pompidou and follows after “The Voice of Things” (2021), a presentation about the history of objects in art, and the exploration of modernity in “The Shape of Time” (2019). The Centre Pompidou has loaned a selection of 300 works from its collection, from 1895 up to the present, that showcase various artistic interpretations of portraiture.
MARIO GIACOMELLI, I Have No Hands to Caress My Face, 1961-63, gelatin silver print, 30.5 × 40.3 cm. Courtesy Mario Giacomelli Archives.
Mar 16–Jul 1
Noir & Blanc – A Story of Photography
M+
Hong Kong
M+ and the French May Arts Festival, jointly with Bibliothèque Nationale de France, present “Noir & Blanc – A Story of Photography,” the first exhibition dedicated to the medium at West Kowloon. A thematic presentation of black-and-white images dating from 1915 to 2019, it is the first major public exhibition of BnF’s photography collections in Asia and pairs images with those from the collection of M+.
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE, Cat / Coffee Pot II, 2019, painted steel, 104 × 43 × 32 cm. Courtesy the artist and Willion Kentridge Studio.
May 4–Sep 1
William Kentridge
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Taipei
Organized by Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts of London, the exhibition showcases South African artist’s William Kentridge’s draftsmanship. Focusing on the medium of drawings, the exhibition traces Kentridge’s creative trajectory of over four decades and his dedicated exploration in monochromatic expression, which has developed into a fresh vocabulary of expanded translation from his drawings.
BRUCE NAUMAN, Animal Pyramid, 1989, polyurethane foam, threaded rods, wire, paint, hot glue, hardware, 366 × 213 × 244 cm. Photo by Maris Hutchinson. Courtesy Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; David Zwirner.
May 15–Aug 18
Bruce Nauman
Tai Kwun Contemporary
Hong Kong
Tai Kwun Contemporary presents a major survey of American artist Bruce Nauman, one of the most influential living artists known for his innovative installation and performance art. The exhibition covers aspects of the artist’s entire career from the 1960s to present with loaned from major institutions worldwide, primarily the Pinault Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
THEASTER GATES. Photo by Delfino Sisto Legnani.
Apr 24–Sep 1
Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei
Mori Art Museum
Tokyo
“Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei” is Chicago-based African American artist Theaster Gates’s first solo exhibition in Japan. The exhibition showcases Gates’s sculptures, installations, and multimedia works that demonstrate his concept of “Afro-Mingei,” a term he coined during his two decades of learning about Japanese folk art, and the “Black Is Beautiful” aesthetics in the American civil rights movement.
Installation view of "Unsullied, Like a Lotus in Mud (Part 2)" at Hoam Museum of Art, Korea, 2024. Courtesy Hoam Museum of Art.
Mar 27–Jun 16
Unsullied, Like a Lotus in
Mud
Ho-Am Museum of Art
Yongin,
Seoul
A contemporary curatorial perspective on classical Buddhist art, “Unsullied, Like a Lotus in Mud” looks at classical East Asian artworks through the scope of gender. Through approximately 90 Buddhist artworks from 27 collections, curators look at depictions of women and deities shifted over time, as well as the role women played as patrons and producers of art.
