Sarah Forman

9th September 2021

When Everything Is Burning, Just Keep Dancing: Lu Yang’s ‘Delusional World’

ArtReview:

Shanghai-based Lu Yang is not a performance artist. Lu Yang is not a video artist, a videogame artist, a digital artist. If you take them at their word, Lu Yang is not an artist at all. But the culminating attention from ‘global’ insti

1st July 2021

Can an Art Critic Be a Belieber?

ArtReview:

On Justin Bieber’s Justice and the lessons of millennial masculinity

What do you think of when you hear the name Justin Bieber? A flippy-haired tween heartthrob? A self-destructive, tattooed train-wreck with a police record? A devout Christian and young husband?

My money’s on one of the former rather than the latter, despite all three being true.

A few weeks ago, Justin Bieber released his sixth studio-album, Justice, and if someone had tried to convince me there was any substance to it, I wo

1st December 2020

Slime Engine Rewires the Future of Art Exhibitions

ArtReview Asia:

Enter the Shanghai-based collective’s interactive shows, hosted in dystopian amalgamations of well-known cities, in oceanic abysses, on roller coasters and desert islands

COVID-19 has instigated an onslaught of online initiatives that have saturated the digital artworld with fairs, exhibitions, social-media campaigns and educational programming, in an attempt to play catchup to a now overwhelmingly online industry. While many institutions have scrambled to repackage their programming, others ha

Moniker Projects • 1st November 2020

How Can We Read Damien Hirst's Work in a COVID-19 Climate?

Moniker Projects:

Damien Hirst is obsessed with health. He’s obsessed with life, death, the body, science, and religion. They’ve consumed him and his work since before his days at Goldsmith’s College of Art, and have continued to do so ever since, leading him to become one of the most recognisable contemporary British artists of the last hundred years. But his fame and popular Pop-Art aesthetic may actually distract from the content of his work, themes that offer particular resonance in a climate coping...

Moniker Projects • 18th August 2020

Explainer: Post Vandalism

Moniker Projects:

Post-Impressionism, Postmodernism, Post-Internet, the art market is oversaturated with value laden words that suggest art “after” something marks paradigmatic shifts in the way artists make, and the way that we make sense of work as a whole. Aside from its problematic, unidirectional approach to history (that excludes and others non-Eurocentric narratives) the prefix does have useful applications when handled with care, and one of those ways is when applied to the term “vandalism”.

1st August 2020

Digital Native: AORA

OnOffice Magazine:

In the heart of ancient Rome lies a palace buried beneath the ground, an incomplete architectural feat built by Emperor Nero that was stripped of its jewels, marble and ivory veneers not long after his death. Filled with earth, the Domus Aurea remained hidden until the 15th century, where at the birth of the Renaissance it was rediscovered, becoming a site of study for artists like Raphael and Michelangelo. This recovery, this wellspring of cultural production, was an important source of inspiration for these painters and sculptors, and nearly 600 years later it remains so for the digital pioneers behind AORA.

RADII | Stories from the center of China’s youth culture • 23rd October 2019

In New Installation, Beijing Artist Wang Wei "Defamiliarizes" a London Church

RADII China: You probably wouldn’t expect to find a contemporary Chinese art installation in one of north London’s residential neighborhoods, and at first glance, walking into St. Saviour’s Church in Highbury will not do much to ease that skepticism. Enter through the back door and you’re met by a temporary wooden corridor that zigzags into the main part of the decommissioned building. But make your way through the short maze and you’ll find your confidence return as the grey hall opens up into a nave...

That's Online • 28th February 2019

The History Behind Shenzhen’s Blossoming Underground Electronic Music Scene

That's Mags:

Electronic music has literally taken China by storm in the last few years. With big name festivals like Ultra and corporate partnerships between companies like SHFT and Budweiser, the genre has come into its own in a big way across the country. But one city in the PRC has had its hat in this race for much longer, with a budding underground scene in the works for nearly 10 years.

That's Online • 26th September 2018

Spinning Out: Shanghai's Teenage DJ Gouachi

That's Mags: While many children in China grow up learning to play traditional instruments like the piano or violin, Shi Jiayuan, better known by her stage name, Gouachi, opted for turntables instead. Over the last few years, she’s made a name for herself in Shanghai and across China, but her story is just as interesting as her sound.

Artsy • 14th March 2018

The Shanghai Art Factory That’s Constructing Massive Public Artworks

Artsy: “One of the jewels of Good Fences Make Good Neighbors ”—the sprawling Public Art Fund project the Chinese artist mounted across New York City last fall—was a gleaming steel cage that sat within the arch at Washington Square Park. The work quickly became a destination for droves of locals and tourists alike, but few likely knew that the work itself was made in a factory on the other side of the globe, in a suburb of Shanghai, China. Ai’s piece was the first partnership between the New York-based...