This book focuses on the under-explored significance of materials throughout Chinese art. Since the inventions of porcelain and gunpowder, Chinese artists have experimented with unconventional artistic materials and used conventional materials in unorthodox ways. This groundbreaking volume is the first publication to expound the trans-historical importance of materiality in Chinese art by bringing together essays from leading scholars, curators, and conservators. Essayists Anne Feng, Yuhang Li, Wei-Cheng Lin, Catherine Stuer, and Yusen Yu examine how materials including lacquer, crystal, paper, and gold stimulated advances in premodern Chinese art. Alex Burchmore, Orianna Cacchione, Nancy P. Lin, Sara Moy, and Rachel Rivenc analyze several instances of material experimentation in contemporary Chinese art in essays that consider materials as varied as gunpowder, plastic, and water. This book builds upon scholarship originally presented at the Art and Materiality Symposium, held on the occasion of the Smart Museum of Art's exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China.

A collection of essays offering a creative look at crises past, present, future, and speculative.   Starting with the shared experience of crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and a planet sieged by disaster, Imaginable Worlds transforms tragedy into a framework for research and art, imagining a shared world beyond a global experience of emergency. Produced by the Smart Museum of Art and the Projects/Processes essay collection series, an initiative launched by the Serendipity Arts Foundation in New Delhi, this volume brings together the voices of artists, authors, and public intellectuals from a range of fields and locations. Suraj Yengde, named one of the “25 Most Influential Young Indians� by GQ Magazine; Siyanda Mohutsiwa, the brain behind the viral hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar; and Ho Tzu Nyen, the acclaimed artist behind the ongoing Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia project, are among the diverse contributors who have come together to critically engage with ideas and practices that engage with a partially known or unknown world. Inviting fresh creative looks at crises past, imminent, immediate, and speculative, Imaginable Worlds considers questions of survival and invites us to imagine new modes of sensing, knowing, and dwelling.  

For his first US museum exhibition, Hong Kong-based sound artist Samson Young looks to the idealism presented at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago to explore varying concepts of social progress and utopia through a trilogy of animated music videos. The catalog addresses questions of how people adapt to societal changes that they have little control over. For Young, "progress" as it was defined in the 1933 fair's subtitle "A Century of Progress" represents a specific variant of aspirational thinking. From cars to shopping malls and houses designed for the future to political change, progressive thinking has had contrasting consequences as it made its impact felt across the globe in the decades that followed. The accompanying catalog acts both as an introduction to Young's work and a lavishly illustrated document of the exhibition. It features an essay by curator Orianna Cacchione contextualizing Young's work, an essay by G. Douglas Barrett exploring the tension between modern visions of utopia and the musical version of the contemporary, and an interview between Seth Kim Cohen and Young about the form of the music video and its variations in the exhibitions. Additionally, the catalog also contains full-color video stills of the works, original drawings, and archival materials included in the exhibition.

From the 1980s, many Chinese artists have experimented with a range of unconventional materials. Their works-in plastic, paper, silk, ash, and tobacco-form a major trend in Chinese art. The Allure of Matter offers the first serious consideration of these ground-breaking material explorations, coining the term Material Art to describe works that place "matter" itself as the primary vehicle of investigation and expression. The book contains four ground-breaking essays, profiles of twenty-five artists, and corresponding color images.

Considered the first Chinese artist to work in video, Zhang Peili (b. 1957) manipulates perspective, close-ups, and framing to create astonishing recordings of banal repeated actions, such as breaking glass, reading, washing, shaving, and blowing bubble gum. He is a pioneering figure, experimenting with a video camera in the late 1980s, exploring digital formats in the early 2000s, and developing large-scale, immersive scenes today. Despite Zhang's pivotal role in the global history of video art, his oeuvre has received relatively little attention. This book, which includes insightful essays, color plates, and an illustrated chronology, is one of the few in-depth explorations in English of this important artist's work. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The Art Institute of Chicago (03/31/17-07/09/17)