The Things That Are Sensitive, Loud, and Make You Look Twice — That, Perhaps, Is Art

Starting this week, QDaily launches a new column, "Art & Exhibitions," updated weekly. We'll try to show the art world as it really is — real, interesting, and, at times, not entirely likable — through an independent lens.

This Week's Artist: Michael Wolf

German photographer Michael Wolf, who lived in Hong Kong for 25 years, died at his home on Cheung Chau on April 24, at 64. Sarah Greene, a gallerist who worked with Wolf for years, called him "a sensitive observer who saw the world in a different way."

Wolf arrived in Hong Kong in 1994 and watched the city, and Chinese society at large, transform dramatically. But his photographs were mostly trying to answer one question: in a city growing at a frantic pace, what does real life actually look like?

In his 2005 series "Architecture of Density," Wolf compressed Hong Kong's endlessly multiplying residential units into flat planes, radiating a strong sense of claustrophobia and apocalypse. Informal Solutions, shot over more than a decade, instead focused on mops, gloves, and other everyday objects tucked into the city's corners. Wolf believed that the back alleys behind the buildings were a more interesting world.

"I have always sided with the underdog," Wolf said in an interview.

Big Events

Japan's Setouchi Triennale, held every three years, opened on April 26. The festival runs across three seasons — spring (April 26 to May 26), summer (July 19 to August 25), and autumn (September 28 to November 4).

The Setouchi Triennale's theme is "the restoration of the sea." Like the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, which we covered last year, it's one of Japan's experiments in using art to revive the countryside. Urbanization, industrial pollution, and a shrinking birth rate have turned more and more Japanese villages into isolated islands, and art has been handed the mission of bringing people back.

Some places have already benefited from the change art can bring — take the rural art project on Naoshima, launched by the festival's chief curator Soichiro Fukutake. Thirty years ago, young people had abandoned this small island; today, thanks to a museum designed by Tadao Ando and Yayoi Kusama's giant pumpkin sculpture, among other works, it has become a tourist destination.

The Setouchi Triennale is courting more Chinese visitors. Last December, it held its first press conference in China, and its official website now offers a simplified-Chinese version.

As an artist's representative, is a gallery just a place to hang and sell paintings? The internationally known gallery Gagosian clearly has other ideas. On April 17, The Wall Street Journal first reported that Gagosian had launched an advisory firm, setting off heated discussion across the art world.

According to reports, Laura Paulson, a veteran of the auction industry, will head the newly formed Gagosian Art Advisory LLC, managing, protecting, and appraising collections and advising collectors. Gagosian says the new firm will "operate independently of the sales team," but critics have already raised the question of a potential conflict of interest: how do you know Gagosian's own advisory arm won't push collectors harder toward Gagosian's own paintings?

Oh, and Laura Paulson is also married to Gagosian's chief operating officer.

Still, Gagosian isn't the first art institution to build out an advisory business — Sotheby's did the same in 2016. Some commentators argue that this "one-stop shop" approach to art collecting is intensifying a winner-take-all dynamic. In the future, the gap between a gallery and an auction house may end up far smaller than the gap between a "big gallery" and a "small gallery."

Artists Speak

"From now on, no more despair. Strategy begins."

At an Extinction Rebellion climate protest

Even though graffiti artist Banksy himself hasn't confirmed it, the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion couldn't wait to claim a new work as his on Twitter. On April 26, a mural quietly appeared near the protesters' base camp at Marble Arch in London: a small girl crouching before a sapling, holding the Extinction Rebellion symbol, with these three lines written beside her.

Extinction Rebellion is a climate-policy protest group. They believe that only a campaign of law-breaking "civil disobedience" can force governments to act immediately. In mid-April, thousands of protesters "occupied" several transport hubs in central London, disrupting travel for hundreds of thousands of people; over a hundred have been arrested by police.

Sources close to the matter say the mural was very likely painted by Banksy, who was indeed spotted at the Extinction Rebellion protest. Banksy is today's most famous graffiti artist, and the themes he cares about include the decline of libraries, pollution in industrial towns, and the art-market system, among others.

The growing urgency of environmental issues has inspired many artists. Late last year, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson placed 24 giant blocks of ice outside London's Tate Modern, called it "Ice Watch," and let them melt naturally. Last Saturday, environmental activists in France and several other countries staged a mass "die-in," lying down together at transport hubs, cultural sites, and shopping centers to simulate a scene of extinction.

A Matter of Taste

You can't talk about the miniskirt, "Swinging London," and the wild, unruly Britain of the 1960s without mentioning Mary Quant. The first generation of postwar teenagers entered society with spending power of their own. They were tired of traditional fashion's condescension and its endless rules, and Mary Quant was the first to sense that mood and capture it in clothes. "Taste is death, vulgarity is life," she said.

You can see this revolutionary designer's first international retrospective in nearly 50 years at London's V&A Museum. The show focuses on 1955 to 1975 and features more than 200 pieces, most never before publicly exhibited; curator Jenny Lister crowdsourced some of them via social media under the hashtag #WeWantQuant. It runs through February 16 of next year.

Dior brought Hajime Sorayama's giant "Sexy Robot" to Chengdu. In early April, Bernard Arnault, CEO of Dior's parent company LVMH, made a special trip to inspect stores on Chengdu's Chunxi Road, curious why the group's brands were doing so well there. With competition growing saturated in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, it's no surprise that luxury brands are looking elsewhere. Dior chose Chengdu this week for the first launch of its 2019 menswear early-fall collection, and brought the 9-meter-tall Sexy Robot to Chengdu's Taikoo Li Yuancheng mall, on display through June 20.

Sexy Robot first appeared last November at her Tokyo debut; now she pokes her head out above the square, traditional-style Cantonese guild hall building. Cherry blossoms carpet the ground at her feet, and when night falls she's bathed in laser lights, looking down on the shops and crowds below. Futurism, cyberpunk, eroticism, and a touch of Japanese exoticism combine with consumerism once again to manufacture an urban spectacle.

Market Makers

Luxury brands aren't the only ones eyeing Chengdu as the next hot spot — some art institutions are too. From April 28 to May 2, the second Art Chengdu fair will take place at the Century City New International Convention & Exhibition Center, running two days longer than last year. A number of museums and galleries will launch new shows to coincide with it. The Chengdu Contemporary Image Museum officially opened on April 27.

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has "ended his working relationship" with Blum & Poe, the American gallery he worked with for more than 20 years. Artnet cited several unnamed sources saying that "Murakami's professional ambitions led to a financial dispute between the two sides, ending the partnership."

Murakami remains a gallery favorite — Gagosian in Los Angeles just gave him a lavish solo show. But Murakami had the foresight, back around 2002, to break into the fashion world, which made his commercial success "largely independent of the gallery system." A similar case is the recently red-hot KAWS. Whether artists — especially star artists with no shortage of brand exposure — are gaining more leverage and more pricing power in their dealings with art institutions is worth watching.

Nineteenth-century Impressionism hasn't gone out of style. Sotheby's New York will auction Claude Monet's Meules (Haystacks) on May 14, with an estimate above US$55 million, or 420 million Hong Kong dollars. Monet painted multiple works on this subject; 17 are currently held by museums, and 8 belong to private collectors, including the one going up for auction.

A Few Exhibitions

Civilization: The Way We Live Now, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Against the backdrop of globalization, the individual's daily life, work and leisure, migration and settlement, thought and creativity are all undergoing contradiction and change, and photography offers an intuitive, accessible lens on all of it. Here you'll find more than 250 works by over 120 photographers from Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas, exploring eight core concepts around "civilization." Through May 19; adult tickets 100 yuan.

The Challenging Spirit: Yves Klein, Lee Ufan, Ding Yi, Power Station of Art, Shanghai. This marks the first large-scale showing in China of work by the 20th-century French avant-garde artist Yves Klein — you'll see International Klein Blue rendered in different forms and learn about his life story. Shown alongside his work are pieces by Lee Ufan, a leading figure of Korea's Dansaekhwa (monochrome painting) movement, and Ding Yi, a participant in China's contemporary art movement. Through July 28; adult tickets 60 yuan.

Hélène Binet: Thirty Years of Conversation With Light and Shadow, Power Station of Art, 3rd floor, Shanghai. Architect Daniel Libeskind once described her work this way: "every photograph Binet takes reveals architecture's achievement, force, emotion, and vulnerability." We've covered this exhibition before and recommend it again. Through July 21; free.

The Enlightener: Henry Steiner, UNESCO Gallery, 2nd floor, Sea World Culture and Arts Center, Shenzhen. Henry Steiner, known as "the father of Hong Kong design," gets his first solo show in mainland China here, bringing together 85 branding projects — for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, HSBC, the Hong Kong Hilton, and others — plus numerous posters and currency designs. Through June 20; adult tickets 50 yuan.

Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition. The Design Museum, London, England. With one meticulously crafted, groundbreaking production after another, director Stanley Kubrick earned the title of "artist" too. London's Design Museum is showing roughly 700 items, many straight from his sets, recreating his creative process. Through September 15; adult tickets £16, booking required.

The Naked Form in Modern Chinese Art. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. The nude was hardly rare in traditional Chinese art, but the 20th-century generation of Chinese artists trained under Western teachers brought a new understanding of "the body." Oxford's Ashmolean Museum traces cases from the 1930s to the present. Through September 15; free.

Cover image: istockphoto ©️MichelangeloArtwork Column icon: Zheng Shuya / QDaily