リー・アンブロジー

In honor of Evan Osnos’s “Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Pabst Blue Ribbon?” post in the New Yorker blog, I dug up this carefully preserved, very old photo of PBR “兰带” bottled water. Perhaps it is the ideal thirst quencher for those hipsters smoldering in the Beijing heat this week…

The following paper was for a class on contemporary art criticism in China. It discusses the two articles “Globalization” and “Observations on and Predictions for ‘After Postcolonialism’” by Gao Shiming. The conclusion includes some of my own analysis, but the content is generally the same as the previous two “Readings” on Gao. (Going along the [...]

“Observations on and Predictions for ‘After Postcolonialism’” was a Gao Shiming’s curatorial essay printed in the catalog for the 2008 Third Guangzhou Triennial. It collects and builds upon the rejection of Postcolonial interpretive strategies that was put forth in Xu Jiang and Gao Shiming’s “Globalization,” (see a post on that article here) and provides the [...]

I’m celebrating this July 4th national day with the “Soldier’s Pocket Guide to China,” published by the US War Department in 1943. (No bbq’s for me, but as American as one can get at S.I.T., I’m enjoying an omelet slathered in ketchup and Tabasco with a cup of joe, black.) This guide is deftly written, and [...]

Gao Shiming and Xu Jiang’s “‘Globalization’ and Chinese Contemporary Art –– written on the occasion of the Kassel Documenta curators’ visit to China” 读许江与高士明的《“全 球概念”与中国当代艺术的境遇——写在卡塞尔文献展艺术策划人访华之际》 的一些感受 The following are some thoughts and some translations while reading Xu Jiang and Gao Shiming’s essay, “‘Globalization’ and Chinese Contemporary Art” (The Chinese title translates more literally as “the notion of [...]

No, this is not a Chinese equivalent to Twilight. This is Komi, an “Uber-Internet Beauty” 网络超强美女. In case you weren’t aware, big, round eyes, with their giant irises and enormous pupils glinting with anime shine, white skin, pointy almond chin, and pursed rosebud lips are ke’ai, cute. They are cute that has crossed to the other side. Thus,  the “Post [...]

The North Korean pavilion at the Shanghai World’s Fair was inspiring, but last week I discovered the Mansudae Art Museum in 798 just across from Pace Beijing. The current signage in 798 can’t be missed, and although a stop in to this spacious museum might cause most visitors to smirk at its “kitschy” socialist realist [...]

Gao Minglu’s “’85 Movement” gives an inclusive perspective and presents the most moving and utopian, most filled with youthful rebelliousness and broadly germinal movement in contemporary Chinese art history. The book is separated into two volumes,

Barbara Pollack’s book decoding the Chinese art scene “The Wild, Wild East” has caused some controversy with its recent release––I interviewed her for artforum.com.cn, and the following is her responses. A translated version can be found here, and see the Sinopop review of the book here. While she talks below about she located [...]