Simon Frank

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  print October 2019

  Geng Jianyi, Liang Shaoji, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

  This group show was straightforward in execution: It consisted simply of one artwork from each artist arranged in the gallery’s rectangular main hall so as to encourage sequential viewing. Finding a line connecting Geng Jianyi’s use of readymades, Liang Shaoji’s silken sculpture, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s video installation (closely linked to his work as a filmmaker) might have seemed difficult, especially for a show without an explicit curatorial premise. Yet the formally distinct pieces all shared an airy indeterminacy, suggesting to the viewer additional layers of meaning lurking below

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  picks April 19, 2019

  Liang Shuo

  Liang Shuo is no stranger to taking a transformative approach to space, having filled Kunsthalle Baden-Baden with cascading waves of wood for his 2017 show there. For this exhibition, “Scenery,” Liang continues this macro strategy, arranging landscapes around a meandering spiral path constructed from metal and plywood. This setup prevents visitors from immediately seeing works in their entirety, lending a durational aspect to the paintings, some of which are long horizontal scrolls. Liang further intervenes in traditional Chinese landscapes through irreverent traces of contemporary life that

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  print March 2019

  Timur Si-Qin

  When artists experiment with virtual reality, they often lose themselves in the medium’s overwhelming possibilities. So A New Protocol VR v.1.2, 2018, the sole VR piece in Timur Si-Qin’s “East, South, West, North,” is a pleasant surprise. Among the pieces on display in this show, it is the one that most clearly expresses the artist’s intentions, thematically and visually uniting the other works. Broadly speaking, Si-Qin is advocating for a “new spirituality” to help humanity move past a binary relationship between the human and natural worlds.

  Walking into the gallery’s back room, one sees a seat