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Whitestone Gallery Presents a Group Exhibition: Almost Spring
Poster credit: Whitestone Gallery Whitestone Gallery is pleased to present Almost Spring, a curated selection from the gallery’s collection, unfolding across multiple floors as a gradual shift in mood, material, and color. Like the season it alludes to, the exhibition inhabits a moment of transition—where stillness begins to loosen and subtle vitality surfaces.
Jiang Miao, Mindfulness, 2023, Acrylic on aluminium panel, carving, 90.0 x 90.0 cm The B1 space is dedicated to abstract works that emphasize texture and materiality. Featuring works by Yayoi Kusama, Jiang Miao, Soonik Kwon, Tsuyoshi Maekawa and Katsuyoshi Inokuma, this floor invites viewers into a tactile landscape shaped by repetition, gesture, and surface. Here, matter feels dense and contemplative, echoing the quiet persistence beneath winter’s pause.
Karen Shiozawa, Dune, 2024, Alkyd resin, acrylic, oil on wooden panel, 116.7 x 91 cm Moving upward, the 2nd floor opens into a more dynamic visual rhythm. Works by Aruta Soup, Karen Shiozawa, and Jaehyun Lee explore pop-inflected color, movement, and layered textures in distinct stylistic languages. The atmosphere becomes lighter and more animated, suggesting energy beginning to circulate—forms stretch, colors vibrate, and compositions breathe more freely.
The exhibition culminates on the 4th floor, which focuses on print works by internationally recognized artists including Damien Hirst, KAWS, and Yayoi Kusama, among others. Bright, graphic, and playful, these works foreground pop sensibility and reproducibility, offering a sense of openness and immediacy that completes the exhibition’s gradual ascent toward color and clarity.
We hope visitors enjoy this exhibition as a moment just before spring fully arrives.
Venue
Whitestone Gallery Seoul, 70 Sowol-ro, Yongsan-ku, Seoul, KoreaArtists
Yayoi Kusama, Damien Hirst, Lee Ufan, Julian Opie, KAWS, Florentijn Hofman, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Katsuyoshi Inokuma, Kwon Soonik, Lee Jaehyun, Jiang Miao, Aruta Soup, Ahhi Choi, Karen ShiozawaExhibtion Dates
24 January – 28 February, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.whitestone-gallery.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/whitestonegallery.officialContact
https://www.whitestone-gallery.com/pages/contact(Text and images courtesy of Whitestone Gallery Seoul)
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Tang Contemporary Art Presents Group Exhibition: Tracing Places, Weaving Times
Poster credit: Tang Contemporary Art Tang Contemporary Art presents Tracing Places, Weaving Times, curated by Cynthia Liu and Terry Chong, on exhibit from 17 January 2026 – 1 March 2026, in Bangkok. This group exhibition brings together three Thai artists—Sornchai Pongsa, Butsapasila Wanjing, and Amalapon Robinson—whose practices explore how identity is formed at the intersection of place, culture, and memory.
Whether bridging rural borderlands and urban density or myth and lived reality, the exhibition offers a multilayered portrait of Thailand as experienced through the next generation of artists born between the 1990s and 2000s. Moving between the past and the present, between the personal and the collective, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how Thailand’s many stories are carried, reshaped, and reimagined across generations.
Across Thailand’s diverse regions, cultural identities emerge not only from formal histories but from the intimate details of daily life—traditions passed on quietly, stories shared casually, materials handled out of habit and necessity. These nuances, often invisible from the outside, form the true texture of the Thai identity. Grounded in this idea, the featured artists draw from the spaces they grew up in—mountainous borders, northern villages, Bangkok’s layered urban sprawl—yet render their memories through contemporary visual languages. Each distinct, yet interconnected, their practices echo, diverge, and intersect, forming an open-ended narrative about belonging, change, and continuity. Together, they present Thailand not as a single story but as a complex and evolving constellation of histories, ethnicities, and lived realities.
Sornchai Pongsa, Ritual Laborers, 2026, Stainless steel sheet, transparent nylon line, stainless steel objects, 120 x 120 cm Sornchai Pongsa: Diaspora, Displacement, Becoming
Hailing from a Mon community along Thailand’s Western border, Sornchai Pongsa’s work emerges from a lived experience shaped by cultural inheritance, displacement, and adaptation. His conceptual practice draws on the intertwined history of his family and people—stories marked by movement, negotiation, and survival. Drawing from familial stories, local histories, and the complexities of modern existence, Sornchai’s pieces evoke a sense of loss and adaptation, yet also resilience and redefinition. Through powerful visual forms and mixed media artworks, he captures the simultaneous ache for what is left behind and the urgency to forge new identities and preservation of traditions in unfamiliar landscapes. His pieces become vessels for memory—at once fragile and forceful—inviting viewers to witness the multi-layered experience of diaspora within the Thai context.
Building on his earlier work Mon Spirits Totem (2016), Pongsa presents a technologically infused meditation on “statelessness,” conceptualizing the body and territory as absent hardware and the spirit as enduring software. Through ethereal installations of suspended structures and volumes of light, he visualizes the migration of identity from the physical to the metaphysical, raising profound questions about the persistence of ritual and belief in a digitized era. His work emphasizes both loss and adaptation, showing how cultural memory endures even when physical borders are absent.
Butsapasila Wanjing, Welcome Drink, 2026, Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 cm Butsapasila Wanjing: Memory, Myth, and the Remaking of History
Butsapasila Wanjing approaches memory as something formed not only through official histories but through the informal stories embedded in everyday life. His practice draws from Lanna culture, folkloric and mystical beliefs, childhood memories of Chiang Mai, and raw materials collected from the northern landscapes he grew up in. His works—textured, layered, and enigmatic—entice viewers to look closer, searching for traces of narratives that have been transformed, suppressed, or forgotten.
A central focus of his recent work is the rewriting of historical memory spaces. Butsapasila’s exploration extends beyond Thailand’s borders. His exploration of overland trade routes examines the longstanding cultural and economic relationships between Thailand and mainland China. From ancient exchanges of goods and knowledge along the Tea Horse Road—glazed ceramics, tea-making traditions, the role of horses—to their later integration into the vast Silk Road network, he traces how these routes shaped communal life in the borderlands.
In the present, he observes how the Belt and Road Initiative has reshaped these ancient corridors into pathways of capital, cross-border investment, and sometimes illicit or informal economies. What were once routes of cultural circulation have become sites where geopolitical power is contested and negotiated. Through paintings and mixed-media presentations, Butsapasila renders these overlapping histories visible—revealing the delicate interplay between memory, state power, regional identity, and the shifting forces that continue to shape northern Thailand.
Amalapon Robinson, Chinatown, 2026, Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm Amalapon Robinson: Urban Light, Inner Loneliness
In contrast to the northern landscapes and border narratives of Sornchai and Butsapasila, Amalapon Robinson turns her gaze toward the dense urban rhythms of Bangkok—a city of constant illumination. Growing up between two cultures, Amalapon investigates identity and belonging within a metropolis defined by artificial light. Her hauntingly beautiful oil paintings capture intimate domestic scenes and everyday urban moments, using the interplay of radiance and shadow to reflect the emotional undercurrents of city life.
In her work, light becomes both a physical necessity and a metaphor for searching—searching for connection, clarity, or simply a sense of place amid the city’s overwhelming glare. While there is always light in darkness, Amalapon reveals how urban brightness can coexist with profound loneliness. Her paintings resonate with quiet intensity, suggesting that in a world saturated with illumination, the most meaningful forms of luminosity may be internal.
Together, these three artists illustrate the many ways Thai identity is shaped—by geography, by memory, by generations of cultural inheritance, and by the changing landscapes of modern life. Their works bridge past and present, local and national, rural and urban, inviting viewers to consider how individual stories intersect to form a broader cultural tapestry.
Tracing Places, Weaving Times does not offer a singular definition of Thai identity. Instead, it opens a space for reflection—on where we come from, what we carry, and how our surroundings continually shape who we are becoming. Through the perspectives of the next generation of Thai artists, the exhibition presents the Thai experience as a place of layered histories, evolving cultures, and rich, interconnected experiences.
Venue
Tang Contemporary Art BangkokArtists
Sornchai Phongsa, Butsapasila Wanjing, Amalapon RobinsonExhibtion Dates
17 January – 1 March, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.tangcontemporary.comInstagram
https://www.instagram.com/tangcontemporaryart/Contact
bkk@tangcontemporary.comAbout the Artists
SORNCHAI PHONGSA
b. 1991, Thailand
Sornchai Phongsa was born and raised within the Mon ethnic community in Thailand, an upbringing that shaped his engagement with migration, displacement, and hybrid identities in Southeast Asia. Drawing on his heritage and academic training and having graduated from Silpakorn University with a BFA in 2015 and an MFA in 2017, Phongsa develops a visual language that interweaves personal memory, collective history, and socio-political narratives.
Working across installation and mixed-media, he employs vernacular materials and performative spatial strategies to recontextualize spiritual traditions and interrogate the politics of belonging and territory. Key projects include Mon’s Spirits Totem (Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, 2017), Montopia (Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2018), Le Flash (École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2018), and Alien Capital for the Bangkok Art Biennale (2018).
Phongsa has participated in residencies at Tokyo Arts and Space and Cité Internationale des Arts, with works presented in exhibitions including Dogma Yard (Gallery Seescape, Chiang Mai) and MythMakers—Spectrosynthesis III 神話製造者——光.合作用 III (Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2023).
In 2025, he presented his solo exhibition Diaspora at River City Bangkok, investigating displacement and hybrid identities among marginalized communities. He continues to develop research-driven projects exploring memory, migration, and the shifting cartographies of place and identity, extending his critical engagement with contemporary social and cultural transformations.
BUTSAPASILA WANJING
b. 2000, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Butsapasila Wanjing graduated from Silpakorn University in 2022 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts. His work delves into the historical and cultural landscapes of Thailand, addressing political, social, and environmental themes.
Butsapasila is interested in the processes through which collective memory of the past transforms over time, leaving traces and effects that persist into the present. His practice draws on diverse sources, including historical narratives shaped by conspiracy theories found in blogs and online media, supernatural beliefs transmitted through oral traditions, and local myths and fragmented histories that cannot be fully integrated into dominant, centralized historical narratives.
By also examining personal memory, he seeks to connect individual experience with broader social and cultural dynamics, reflecting on how the past is continually reinterpreted from multiple perspectives in the present and how these shifting understandings shape contemporary perceptions of history and identity.
AMALAPON ROBINSON
b. 1995, USA
Born 1995, Thai-American artist, Amalapon Robinson graduated from Silpakorn University in 2019. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in Thailand, at VS Gallery, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and Silapakorn University. Working primarily in oil painting, her practice explores quiet emotional landscapes within urban night scenes, with a focus on artificial light from windows, street lamps, and interior spaces.
Raised in an apartment in Bangkok, Amalapon draws from long-term observation of dense urban environments. Her paintings often emerge from moments of looking at the city from a distance, through windows or during night-time travel where artificial light becomes a symbol of living and working, carrying traces of life, hope, and dreams within the city. Through muted palettes and softened contrasts, her work captures a sense of calm and stillness embedded in ordinary, often overlooked urban spaces.
Amalapon explores the interactions between light and darkness – investigating how we use and engage with artificial lights in our everyday lives, and how urban society is dependent on this use of light. Though there is light in darkness physically, living in a city can result in a feeling of loneliness and isolation. This juxtaposition between the physical use of light and its metaphorical meaning is represented in her works, as she seeks more luminosity within the city.
About Tang Contemporary Art
Since its founding in Bangkok in 1997, Tang Contemporary Art has opened 8 spaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore to promote the development of experimental art in different regions. In the past 28 years, Tang Contemporary Art has organized groundbreaking exhibitions in its gallery spaces, and also cooperated with important art institutions in China and abroad to accomplish outstanding art projects. The gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.
As one of China’s most influential contemporary art platforms, Tang Contemporary Art maintains a high standard of exhibition programming. Tang Contemporary Art represents or collaborates with leading figures in international contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan, Zhu Jinshi, Chen Danqing, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiaodong, Chen Shaoxiong, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Shen Liang, Wu Yi, Xia Xiaowan, He Duoling, Mao Xuhui, Wang Huangsheng, Yang Jiechang, Tan Ping, Wang Du，Yan Lei, Yue Minjun, Wang Jianwei, Yangjiang Group, Zheng Guogu, Lin Yilin, Sun Yuan&Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Wang Qingsong, Yin Zhaoyang, Feng Yan, Guo Wei, Chen Wenbo, Ling Jian, Qin Qi, Yang Yong, Peng Wei, He An, Zhao Zhao, Xu Qu, Chen Yujun, Chen Yufan, Xue Feng, Cai Lei, Li Qing, Wang Sishun, Xu Xiaoguo, Lí Wei, Liu Yujia, Wu Wei, Yang Bodu, You Yong, Li Erpeng, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adel Abdessemed, Niki de Saint Phalle, AES+F , Michael Zelehosk, Jonas Burgert, Christian Lemmerz, Michael Kvium, Sakarin Krue-On, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Natee Utarit, Kitti Narod, Gongkan, Entang Wiharso, Heri Dono, Nam June Paik, Park Seungmo, Jae Yong Kim, Diren Lee, Dinh Q. Lê, Rodel Tapaya, Jigger Cruz, Ayka Go, Raffy Napay, H.H.Lim, Etsu Egami, etc.
(Text and images courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art)
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Listening to the Now: Eight Artists Reframing Asian Contemporary Art in 2025
In the slow unfolding of 2025, the contemporary art landscape revealed itself through a constellation of practices that pushed, pulled, and reimagined the boundaries of form, material, and lived experience. Within the evolving ecology of Asian contemporary art, this year unfolded as a site of negotiation between inherited histories and speculative futures, between localized knowledge and global circulation. Rather than a singular movement, 2025 revealed an attentiveness to multiplicity, where artists moved fluidly across geographies while remaining deeply tethered to place, lineage, and lived context.
Below are eight artists who have shaped the trajectory of contemporary Asian art in 2025. Working across sculpture, painting, ceramics, sound, and hybrid modes, each bringing a distinct language to bear on the relevant issues that weighed on us all this year. What binds them is not a singular aesthetic but a shared insistence on art as a space of reflection, rupture, and renewal.
GWON Osang, Reclining Figure-Watch, 2022-2023, Archival pigment print, mixed media, 192 x 52 x 88 cm, ⓒ GWON Osang. Courtesy of the Artist and Arario Gallery GWON Osang
Seoul-based sculptor GWON Osang continues a decades-long inquiry into what sculpture might become when unshackled from its own traditions. Across his ongoing series, Deodorant Type, The Sculpture, New Structure, and Relief, Osang dissolves the weightiness of classical materiality, replacing it with photographic skin and aluminum frameworks that gesture toward both surface and depth. Within the lineage of postwar Korean sculpture, marked by both material rigor and conceptual restraint, Osang’s practice stands apart for its insistence on hybridity and illusion. In 2025, his work appeared in group exhibitions at institutions like Arko Art Center in Seoul, a year-long collaborative project with Roy Gallery’s new venue PS ROY in Seoul, and was featured at Art Busan with ARARIO Gallery, which has been central to his international representation. Osang’s practice persists in its quiet destabilization of expectations, inviting viewers to feel the present age through the “margin” of sculpture itself.
Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Machine Ghost in the Human Shell, 4K Video and Holographic installation, 2024 Kawita Vatanajyankur
Media and performance artist Kawita Vatanajyankur expanded her practice this year into immersive projects that probe the systemic forces shaping labor and the body. Rooted in global capitalism’s unseen mechanisms, the Bangkok-based artist’s ongoing series, such as Performing Textiles and Field Work, alongside new 2025 works like Flight and Echoes, give form to the often invisible lives entangled in production, exploitation, and ecological collapse. Her work resonates strongly within Southeast Asia’s artistic landscape, where questions of labor, gender, and extractive economies are deeply embedded in everyday life. Vatanajyankur’s projects traveled widely in 2025, engaging public consciousness through collaborations with technologists, activists, and researchers. These conversations inspired curators to include her work in exhibitions across Asia and beyond, including Believe in a River at Guangdong’s Hengqin Cultural and Art Center and Protest is a Creative Act at the Museum of Australian Photography. These developments signal a growing institutional recognition of performance-based practices emerging from the region, culminating in preparations for her upcoming solo exhibition at Shanghai’s Yuz Museum in 2026.
Quan Lim, Stony Sleep, 2025, Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 152.4 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Cuturi Gallery, Singapore Quan Lim
In Singapore, painter Quan Lim emerged in 2025 with The Flood, a major solo exhibition of a new body of work at Cuturi Gallery in Singapore that deepened his interrogation of identity, myth, and narrative fragmentation. Using layered, gestural surfaces and figurative fragments drawn from art history, mythology, and everyday life, Lim’s work inhabits moments of rupture where memory and history collide, where storytelling becomes a way of understanding the self and others. Operating within Singapore’s tightly calibrated cultural ecosystem, Lim’s practice opens space for ambiguity, emotion, and dissent. His paintings this year, dense with allegory and dissonance, reflect a practice attuned to the instability of existence, conveyed through richly textured canvases that resist easy resolution.
Sun Yitian, Storm, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 205.4 x 158.4 cm, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul, Photo © Andrea Rossetti Sun Yitian
Sun Yitian is a Beijing-based painter who continued her ascent this year. Her highly detailed depictions of quotidian objects turn toward ever more expansive explorations of desire, commodity, and cultural imagination. Known for hyper-real surfaces that oscillate between seduction and unease, Yitian’s works engage the deep structures of consumer society while reflecting personal history and collective nostalgia. Her 2025 exhibitions, including The Life of Things at Museum Voorlinden in The Hague, As She Descends with Qinhuangdao’s Aranya Art Center, and a solo show Romantic Room at Esther Schipper Gallery’s Berlin space, underscore how artists from China continue to navigate global visibility while retaining a sharp critique of spectacle and excess. This year reinforced her international profile and demonstrated her remarkable ability to render “thingness” itself into a language of the psychological with new, personally resonating depths for the artist.
Dae Uk Kim, NORI totem, 2023, Synthetic hair, color rope, Dimensions variable, © Hyundai Motor Company Dae Uk Kim
Based in Eindhoven, sculptor and storyteller Dae Uk Kim’s practice is a testament to the power of form to articulate the diverse narratives of identity and body politics. Kim weaves personal history with broader ecological and social registers, transforming materials like synthetic hair, ropes, and hybrid forms into embodiments of lived multiplicity. As a Korean artist working across Europe and Asia, Kim’s work reflects a diasporic condition increasingly visible in contemporary Asian art. In 2025, his practice broadened through collaborations with artists and brands alongside public dialogues that animate sculpture as an exchange between body, memory, and environment. His work had been exhibited in shows including Can the Monster Speak? with Delft’s RADIUS CCA, Check In, the Forgotten Guest at Gallery Remicon in Jeju, South Korea, The Tail by Maison the Fuax hosted by Framer Framed in Amsterdam, Fragments of Form at DOEN in Rotterdam, The Body Project presented in Munich, and a solo show with OSISUN in Seoul titled Grandma’s Cabinet. Kim’s work resonates as both introspective and outward-facing, with larger steps towards collective dialogues this year and anticipatory projects that extend beyond the field of sculpture into immersive, interdisciplinary presentations in the future.
Lisa Chang Lee, World Atlas No.7, 2024, A series of 10 collages combining analog photographs, textiles, pencil drawing, vintage notebook, mapping pins, cutouts from World Atlas, and Post-it stickers, 55 × 70 cm each Lisa Chang Lee
Working between London and Beijing, Lisa Chang Lee’s interdisciplinary practice this year spanned across sound, ecology, language, and technology. Through field research, installation, and AI-informed processes, her work examines listening as a political and poetic act, attuning audiences to the subtle interdependencies that shape environments and histories. Positioned within broader conversations around environmental degradation and knowledge systems in East Asia, her practice foregrounds care, slowness, and relationality. A founder of the ongoing research platform South of the Sea, Chang Lee’s projects in 2025 spanned institutional exhibitions and ecological storytelling frameworks that emphasize indigenous knowledge and collective listening. A selection of her recent projects was on view this year at the He Xiangning Museum of Art, followed by the Guangzhou Image Triennial and, in 2027, at the Beijing Art, Science, and Technology Biennale. Her work continually foregrounds the entanglement of place, memory, and perception, leveraging her research and interdisciplinary collaborations to ask us to consider how art might become a medium of care.
Takuma Uematsu, SCULPTOR’S SNACK, 2025, Tin can, corn kernels , 11.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm, Open editon © Takuma Uematsu, Courtesy of Yumiko Chiba Associates Takuma Uematsu
Building upon the Fluxus-inspired playfulness and philosophical curiosity that have guided him for decades, Osaka-based artist Takuma Uematsu embraced his move to embody energy and coincidence in his practice this year. Through sculpture, installation, and relational works, Uematsu explores boundaries between object, viewer, and environment, privileging encounter over completion. His practice occupies a unique position within Japanese contemporary art, where humor and conceptual rigor coexist as modes of quiet resistance. His 2025 project, The Sculptor’s Snack, considered the dynamics of everyday materials and communal experience, inviting laughter, reflection, and dialogue, and was presented as part of the WE THE DAY exhibition at the OAG Art Center Kobe.
Yin-chen Li, View from the bottom No. 12, 2024, Ceramic with copper, tin, acrylic frame, 39.2 x 31.2 x 4.6 cm, Photo credit: Tu Yue-shiuan Yin-chen Li
In Taipei, Yin-chen Li’s ceramics practice this year advanced an intimate inquiry into perception, psyche, and material responsiveness. Blending gestural mark-making with the unpredictable nature of clay and firing processes, Li’s work captures fracture, displacement, and fusion as metaphors for relational dynamics between viewer and form, interior and exterior, control and chance. Within the context of contemporary Taiwanese ceramics, her practice bridges craft lineage and conceptual abstraction. Each piece operates as both trace and threshold, inviting viewers into an active encounter with material embodiment. Her work was presented as part of the Piecing Landscapes: Experience in Layers at Gallery Unfold in Kyoto, featured in the Art Osaka 2025 contemporary art fair, in a solo exhibition titled Next Art Tainan: Hidden Sea at SOKA Arts, and was the Tainan New Arts Award winner.
Across these eight practices, 2025 witnessed art that was simultaneously rigorous and tender. Their work held contradictions without dissolving them, which honored both form and fugitive experience. Seen together, these artists offer a snapshot of contemporary Asian art as a field defined not by uniformity, but by complexity, one shaped by migration, memory, and material consciousness. Whether through the layered narratives of paint, the corporeal provocations of performance and video, the sculptural interchanges of material and identity, or the resonant listening evoked by sound and ecology, this year in contemporary art affirmed a generative possibility: that art’s deepest work remains its capacity to hold us in reflection, and in reflection, to invite transformation.
Review by Shannon Permenter
Shannon Permenter is a freelance writer and art historian based in Arizona. After completing her Masters in History & Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute she has channeled her passion for the arts into a career helping artists, curators, and nonprofits share their work with the world.
Interviews with Asian Art Contemporary
- GWON Osang: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/09/05/interview-seoul-based-artist-gwon-osang/
- Kawita Vatanajyankur: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/03/03/interview-bangkok-based-artist-kawita-vatanajyankur/
- Quan Lim: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/11/04/interview-singapore-based-artist-quan-lim/
- Sun Yitian: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/06/23/interview-beijing-based-artist-sun-yitian/
- Dae Uk Kim: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/11/18/interview-eindhoven-based-artist-dae-uk-kim/
- Lisa Chang Lee: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/07/15/interview-london-and-beijing-based-artist-lisa-chang-lee/
- Takuma Uematsu: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/08/13/interview-osaka-based-artist-takuma-uematsu/
- Yin-chen Li: https://asianartcontemporary.com/2025/06/26/interview-taipei-based-artist-yin-chen-li/
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Artemin Gallery Presents An Unarrived Hello, a Solo Exhibition by monouno
Poster Credit: Artemin Gallery Artemin Gallery is delighted to announce an upcoming exhibition, An Unarrived Hello, featuring a Taiwanese sculptural duo, monouno, Jui-Chien Hsu and Chiao-Chin Chiang.
Founded in 2021 by the two sculptural artists, monouno focuses on blurring the boundary between artworks and everyday furniture. The collective integrates the sculptor’s concerns with form, space, and the body directly into functional objects. Their works intentionally question conventional ideas of utility and aesthetics.
The duo shifted how people perceive furniture. Their works evoke the feeling of an unreachable phone number that no one answers, recasting familiar objects with new purposes and new personas. The longing to connect with something belated, or perhaps no longer present, runs throughout the entire exhibition.
Installation view of An Unarrived Hello When I dial a number and no one answers, that disconnected tone feels like a signal that hasn’t yet been received. Maybe the other person’s phone is o, or maybe the number doesn’t even exist. Yet in that long “beep—” sound, I still hold the posture of speaking, as if talking to someone who hasn’t appeared yet.
An unreachable number isn’t truly empty; it holds all the interrupted connections, the unfinished words, and our attempts to reach out that somehow drifted away. In that state, we try to speak to the void, letting objects act as extensions of our bodies—still functioning, even when no connection is made.
Installation view of An Unarrived Hello In reality, furniture has fixed purposes: a sofa is for resting, a dining table for eating. But here, they’re rearranged and renamed, becoming new existences. They’re moved, turned, as if responding to that disconnected tone—seeking another kind of connection within an unreachable frequency.
Perhaps the world of that empty number is simply the side that hasn’t yet been picked up. And the “hello” we say is a gentle greeting to the unknown, a soft call toward a presence that has not yet arrived.
mirror 25-01, 2025, Stainless steel, stone, mirror, leather, 63.5 x 26.5 cm Venue
111 Taipei City, Shilin District, Lane 251, Jihhe Road, No. 32, 1st FloorArtist
monouno, Jui-Chien Hsu and Chiao-Chin ChiangExhibition Dates
November 29, 2025 – December 20, 2025Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 11:00 – 18:00Website
https://www.artemingallery.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/artemin.gallery/Contact
info@artemingallery.com(Text and images courtesy of Artemin Gallery)
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Experimenter Presents The Forest, a Solo Exhibition by Sohrab Hura
Poster credit: Experimenter Sohrab Hura’s third solo in Kolkata, The Forest at Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, brings together new oil paintings, recent works on paper, and video. Drawn from the series of ongoing oil paintings, the title encompasses within itself the act of waiting, denoting the forest as a place with a multitude of possibilities—it can harbour secrets and provide refuge or even a sense of solace and comfort. Hura’ s exploration in image-making through drawing is underscored by his tendency to reflect upon the social and the political through everyday ordinariness underscored by love, joy, relationships, and the familial.
Installation view of The Forest, Courtesy of Experimenter. The exhibition features memories from television-watching, memes from popular culture, social media algorithms, events in political history, intimate moments with loved ones. Breaking through the frenetic numbness of the image-saturated world, where they are often consumed rapidly and without any reflection, Hura’ s quest for slowness, tactility and softness materialises through his pastels, gouaches and oil paintings. On view will also be a new body of work titled Timelines, a collection of acrylic paintings on cardboard boxes, which present overlapping vignettes. Sifting through the entanglements of past events, scenes both real and imagined, pop culture and news references, the work also questions what constitutes majoritarian history. Timelines brings attention to how changing the timelines of stories can alter the stories themselves—much like the boxes that can be folded inside out to form new combinations. Taking a step back from the heaviness of photography, Hura explores the element of meandering which these mediums allow while also offering a reassuring affirmation that he exists in the real space through the physical act of making. Hura’s works resist linear narratives which draw from how he looks at the world—experiences interspersed with humour, grief, satire, violence and melancholy.
Hura’s new film Disappeared will also have its debut in India in the exhibition, where a seemingly distorted single shot of a forest tent is transformed through sound, colour, and texture into a near-narrative mystery that reflects on the malleability of perspective.
Sohrab Hura, The Bouganvillea tree and the summer sun, 2025, Oil on canvas, 42 x 54 in, Courtesy of the Artist and Experimenter. Venue
Experimenter – Hindustan Road | 2/1, Hindusthan Road, Kolkata, 700 029Artist
Sohrab HuraExhibition Dates
November 5, 2025 – January 3, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 10:30 – 18:30Website
https://experimenter.in/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/experimenterkol/Contact
admin@experimenter.inAbout Artist
Sohrab Hura is a photographer and filmmaker. He lives and works in New Delhi, India.
Select solo and group exhibitions include Sohrab Hura: Mother,MoMA PS1, NewYork, (2024–25); Post Scriptum. A Museum Forgotten By Heart, MACRO, Rome (2024–25), Ghosts In My Sleep,Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai (2024), Spill, HuisMarseille Museum of Photography, Amsterdam (2021) andThe Levee,CincinnatiArt Museum, Cincinnati (2019), among others. Hura’s work has been widely shown in international film festivals such as UNDERDOX Film Festival; VancouverInternational Film Festival; Image Forum, Tokyo; Arkipel Film Festival, Jakarta;Moscow International Experimental Film Festival; Oberhausen InternationalShort Film Festival; FotoFest International, Houston.
About Gallery
Experimenter was co-founded by Prateek & Priyanka Raja in 2009 in Kolkata, India. With a multidisciplinary approach, the gallery is an incubator for an ambitious and challenging contemporary practice. The program represents some of the most critical contemporary artists worldwide. The program, rooted in dialogue and dissent, is considered to be a ‘pace-setter’ for its region, and extends from exhibition-making to knowledge creation, through regular talks, performances, workshops and through its much acclaimed, annual curatorial intensive – Experimenter Curators’ Hub. A second, more ambitious space was added in 2018, marking a deeper inquisition into the gallery’s realm of interest. Its third space Experimenter Colaba, established in 2022, marks the commitment of its discursive programming to Mumbai, a city that in turn represents the diverse pluralities of the region.
The gallery attempts to expand the scope of contemporary practice beyond the ambit of its expected role. In 2016, its artist-book publishing wing was launched followed by the Experimenter Learning Program in 2018 which enables learning in fields of contemporary and performing arts, curatorship, film, writing, language and social culture. In 2019, Experimenter Outpost, an iterative exhibitions program outside the physical gallery temporarily inhabiting disused, characterful spaces was formed. 2020 marked the beginning of Experimenter Labs, an inclusive, experimental and multi- dimensional online platform in addition to the onsite gallery programming.(Text and images courtesy of Experimenter)
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Experimenter Presents The Line is Time, a Solo Exhibition by Radhika Khimji
Poster credit: Experimenter Experimenter presents The Line is Time, Radhika Khimji’s third solo with the gallery, that brings together a new and introspective body of painting and installation.
Khimji draws from an array of mediums and a layered technique of mark-making to reimagine geographies and abstractions within the environment. She approaches time as a subjective experience, measured by our internal time-consciousness, to think of temporality and fleeting moments that recognise an intuitive emotion as opposed to a reactive action. Her works fundamentally challenge the perception of time and respond to interior circadian rhythms.
Radhika Khimji, Strait to the gate, 2025, Oil and photo transfer on MDF panel with tulip sub frame, 18 7/8 x 23 5/8 x 3/8 in, Courtesy the Artist and Experimenter. Informed by the physicality and materiality of the making process, Khimji’s practice navigates a collaged way of working, referencing perpetual displacements of the transitory body moving across a fragmented space. Geometry and its deconstruction emerges in the surface of her images — where body and landscape remain closely embedded in a liminal space, materialising through an interplay of absence and presence. The lines where dots converge create a tactile portal through which time is mapped across a layered narrative of space and temporal registers.
Khimji alludes to a coexistence of two simultaneous timelines, where memories and linear time can be disentangled from their logical sequence. Navigating and escaping identification, the works reveal a visceral journey of ‘making’, by compressing many tempos, speeds, and durations. The surface of the works record the juxtaposition of body and spatial relationships, by weaving in shifts and ruptures through interventions with images.
Radhika Khimji, Intrusions happen like medusa at night, 2025, Oil and photo transfer on MDF panel with tulip sub frame, 72 x 48 x 2 in, Courtesy the Artist and Experimenter. Khimji’s works navigate what it means to see and be seen, where the metaphors of the personal and collective subvert boundaries of identification of forms, fluidity, displacement and abstraction.
Venue
Experimenter–Ballygunge Place | 45 Ballygunge Place, Kolkata 700 019Artist
Radhika KhimjiExhibition Dates
November 5, 2025 – January 3, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday | 10:30 – 18:30Website
https://experimenter.in/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/experimenterkol/Contact
admin@experimenter.inAbout Artist
Radhika Khimji (b. 1979) lives and works between Muscat, Oman and London, UnitedKingdom.
Radhika Khimji studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, the Royal Academy of FineArts and holds an MA in Art History from University College London. She lives and works between Muscat, Oman and London, United Kingdom.
Select solo and group exhibitions includeCutting Into Space, Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai (2023); the Oman National Pavilion, 59th International Art Exhibition of LaBiennale di Venezia (2022);Adorning Shadows, Experimenter – Ballygunge Place,Kolkata (2021); The Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2021);Rupture,Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata (2020);Shift, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2019);Searching for Stars Amongst the Crescents, Experimenter – Ballygunge Place,Kolkata (2019);On the Cusp, Stal Gallery, Muscat (2018);Becoming Landscape, Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna (2017); 6th Marrakech Biennale, Not New Now, Marrakech (2016), among others.
About Gallery
Experimenter was co-founded by Prateek & Priyanka Raja in 2009 in Kolkata, India. With a multidisciplinary approach, the gallery is an incubator for an ambitious and challenging contemporary practice. The program represents some of the most critical contemporary artists worldwide. The program, rooted in dialogue and dissent, is considered to be a ‘pace-setter’ for its region, and extends from exhibition-making to knowledge creation, through regular talks, performances, workshops and through its much acclaimed, annual curatorial intensive – Experimenter Curators’ Hub. A second, more ambitious space was added in 2018, marking a deeper inquisition into the gallery’s realm of interest. Its third space Experimenter Colaba, established in 2022, marks the commitment of its discursive programming to Mumbai, a city that in turn represents the diverse pluralities of the region.The gallery attempts to expand the scope of contemporary practice beyond the ambit of its expected role. In 2016, its artist-book publishing wing was launched followed by the Experimenter Learning Program in 2018 which enables learning in fields of contemporary and performing arts, curatorship, film, writing, language and social culture. In 2019, Experimenter Outpost, an iterative exhibitions program outside the physical gallery temporarily inhabiting disused, characterful spaces was formed. 2020 marked the beginning of Experimenter Labs, an inclusive, experimental and multi- dimensional online platform in addition to the onsite gallery programming.
(Text and images courtesy of Experimenter)
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Asian Art in Focus: Asian Art Contemporary at HIAF 2025
From November 14–16, 2025 (Beijing), Horizon International Art Fair—presented by Art Horizon Co., Ltd. at MGM Shanghai West Bund—introduced its inaugural hotel-based edition under the theme “Art for Everyone, Everywhere.” Rooted in the belief that art should extend beyond gallery walls and into the rhythms of daily life, HIAF 2025 positioned itself not merely as an art fair but as an innovative, shared artistic experience. The fair brought together 37 galleries and institutions from China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and beyond, along with more than 300 artists ranging from emerging creatives and cross-disciplinary performers to internationally recognized figures. Lived-in hotel spaces were transformed into intimate, immersive environments for artistic dialogue.
The everyday setting of the hotel offered a flexible platform for visual conversations around identity, emotion, and creative freedom—dialogues that transcended generations and national borders. Guest rooms, lounges, and corridors became exhibition sites where visitors did not simply view art but stayed with it, conversed with it, experienced it, and ultimately coexisted with it in a symbiotic way.
Asian Art Contemporary was honored to participate in HIAF as an exhibitor at Booth 51F B05, presenting a curated selection of works by three artists: Jingyi Wang, Apollo Wang, and ZiPu.
Jingyi Wang explores the delicate coexistence between fragility and sharpness. She channels the cactus—its resilience and solitude—as a vessel for expressing emotion and personal perspective. In Greenana, a cactus quietly hides beneath soft, expansive banana leaves. Although seemingly out of place in the humid tropics, it stubbornly continues to grow, much like how people conceal their anxieties beneath the gentleness of daily routines.
In Kaleidoscopic Light, the cactus stands amid the fleeting brilliance of a concert—intersecting beams of light, floating ribbons and confetti, and an atmosphere where music and emotion pulse together. Wang maintains a realist mode of thinking while integrating surrealist techniques, exploring the tension between the subconscious and the real world and seeking spiritual solace amid the pressures of contemporary life.
Apollo Wang’s works are grounded in contemplations and metaphors drawn from an Eastern visual lexicon. Mystery, symbolism, prophecy, and divination permeate his compositions, hinting at an unseen “cosmic order.” Engaging with traditional philosophical inquiry, Wang seeks to uncover an indigenous conception of life and destiny—tracing the subtle cultural codes embedded within it.
His series Rules points to the invisible principles underlying the proliferation of life. Across four works, Wang presents slices of life-forms at different moments in time and space: from their earliest sprouting, to increasing structural complexity, to the expansion of spatial presence, and finally to the emergence of a complete living system. The series attempts to capture the elusive moment of becoming—when energy turns into matter, when simplicity evolves into complexity, and when the one unfolds into the many. Between deconstruction and reconfiguration, between order and chaos, Rules reveals the essence of life’s continuous propagation: an unceasing cycle that follows its own inherent laws across boundless time and space.
ZiPu’s Raw Image Era series reflects the artist’s deep inquiry into traditional painting mediums within the context of the digital age. In today’s visual environment saturated with digital imagery, “raw image” carries a dual meaning: it refers both to the unprocessed image file in digital photography and to the “primal” visual form created through the intersection of digital and traditional media. By reorganizing natural objects, digital tools, and traditional painting methods, ZiPu constructs a unique visual archaeology that reveals how technology shapes our perception of the world.
This series investigates how natural objects are represented in digital media, and how technological frameworks reshape—and often redefine—our understanding of nature.
Horizon International Art Fair was not only an exhibition but also a practice that advanced the deep integration of art and everyday life. By using the hotel as an exhibition site, the fair created an intimate and authentic environment for artistic dialogue. The works presented were not merely displayed—they were heard. Visitors encountered art face-to-face in the most lived-in of settings, experiencing the flow of creative energy in a space that felt personal and real.
(Text by Zhenglin Zhang, Courtesy of Asian Art Contemporary)
Further read:
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Situated Stories International Juried Exhibition
Poster Credit: Asian Art Contemporary Situated Stories: International Juried Exhibition brings together artists from across the globe whose practices explore the power of narrative through diverse media—painting, photography, digital works, installation, and more. Each artist offers a distinct perspective shaped by personal history, cultural context, or lived experience. Their stories unfold through varied approaches, from reconstructing memory to examining identity, belonging, and transformation, revealing the many ways narratives can be formed, challenged, or reimagined in contemporary art.
Presented by Asian Art Contemporary, this exhibition highlights the depth and range of Asian artistic voices on the international stage. By centering storytelling as both subject and method, Situated Stories invites viewers to encounter connections across different cultures and mediums, while celebrating artists who expand how we understand and experience the world through their situated, resonant, and inventive narratives.
Title
Situated Stories
Date
December 1, 2025 – February 20, 2026
Selected Artists
Jieun Cheon, Matthew Chung, Nina Kuo, Vân Anh Lê, Ayana Hanbich Lee, Camille Li, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Mizuki Nishiyama, Avani Patel, Mitchell Poon, Devishi Seth, Fengzee Yang
Juror
Carol Paik, Phil Zheng Cai
Exhibition Assistant
Katherine Li, Jianing Lu
Exhibitor
Asian Art Contemporary
Guest Juror
CAROL PAIK is a mixed-media artist based in New York, working primarily with repurposed materials. Her goal is to create art from the unappreciated, overlooked, landfill-destined stuff she finds around her, of which there is never a shortage. She is interested in the emotions we bring to the things we discard: nostalgia, guilt, desire, and loss, and her goal is to give these objects–and, by extension, ourselves—new possibilities.
Her work has been shown recently at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY; Galerie Étienne de Causans in Paris, France; Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in Brooklyn, NY; Westbeth Gallery in NY, NY; Silvermine Gallery in New Canaan, CT; Yellow Studio Gallery in Cross River, NY; and the SVA Flatiron Gallery in NY, NY.
https://www.instagram.com/capaik670/
https://www.carolpaik.comPhil Zheng Cai (American, b. Shanghai) is a curator and writer based in New York. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA in Social Science, and received his MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He has held posts at Mary Boone Gallery, Phillips Auctioneers, and is currently a partner at Eli Klein Gallery.
Phil Cai’s curated exhibitions have received critical acclaim. His curated exhibition “(In)directions: Queerness in Chinese Contemporary Photography” was reviewed by Hyperallergic, Musee Magazine, Asian American Arts Alliance AMP Magazine, and many others. His curated exhibition “Alienation?” was reviewed by the Brooklyn Rail. He has participated in panel discussions and talks at institutions such as the Asia Society Museum New York, the SCAD Museum of Art, Columbia University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, among others. His independent curatorial initiative Open Kitchen focuses on systematic critique. Its most recent iteration “Open Kitchen – Fusion” was reviewed by IMPULSE Magazine.
Phil Zheng Cai’s writings are regularly published. His exhibition review “The Estate of Joshua Caleb Weibley at CHART Gallery asks if we still want to play” was recently published in WhiteHot Magazine. His interview with Bojan Stojcic “A Mirrored Interview” was published in IMPULSE Magazine. His exhibition reviews “A Proposal to Live with What Had Been There – Cynthia Gutiérrez at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil”; “Enacting Disassociation – Jean-Luc Moulène Solo Exhibition at Miguel Abreu Gallery”; “Life as an Invitation – Yoan Capote Solo Exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery” and critical essay “Take a Step: Phil Zheng Cai on the Opening of M+ Museum” were featured in the Widewalls Magazine.
His translated book “The Story of Philosophy” was published by Shanghai Yuandong Press in 2020. His critical text “Everything can become an NFT, is it true?” was published by the New York Time T Magazine China. His essay “Nomad Photography” was published in the Parsons MFA Photo thesis catalog in 2024.
Phil Zheng Cai currently works and lives in New York, and can be reached via email at philzhengcai@gmail.com.
https://www.instagram.com/phil.z.cai/
https://philzhengcai.comSelected Artworks
Matthew Chung, Grappling Masculinity, 2023, Denim fabric, thread, 131 x 76 x 37 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Gallery 46 (First Place)
Mizuki Nishiyama, Kan’nabi (The Mountain Gods), 2023, Mixed media tapestry, 250 x 130 cm (Second Place)
Jieun Cheon, The Anti Fractal Map I, 2024, Pen drawing, installation, 57.5 x 57.5 x 6.5 in
Ayana Hanbich Lee, OOlda series 5, 2023, Acrylic and water color with collage elements on wood panel, 18 x 21 in
Mitchell Poon, Mothholes I, 2024, Silkscreen and mezzotint on BFK Rives, Image 12 x 12 in; Paper 14 x 14 in
Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, The Pocket, 2024, Dimensions variable (Second Place)
Fengzee Yang, Where Goes the Wheel of Fortune, 2023, Wood, stoneware (Second Place)
Fengzee Yang, A Chunk of Angel, 2024, Stoneware (Second Place)
Nina Kuo and Lorin Roser, Living Machina, 2024, Digital Image, 5 ft x 10 in, Courtesy the artists N. Kuo & L. Roser
Vân Anh Lê, ENDLESS SEA, 2024, Video with sound, 3 min 19 sec
Camille Li, Memory Mental Bullying, 2023, Wool yarn, E-Wire, nylon cable, 23.6 x 23.6 x 70.9 in
Avani Patel, Transition of Nature, 2024, Acrylic and paint marker on canvas, 36 x 72 in
Devishi Seth, Mukti – set me free, 2023, Bronze, 11 x 8 in
Selected Artists
Jieun Cheon https://www.uncanishedworkld.com
Matthew Chung https://chungmatthew.com
Nina Kuo https://www.videosoundarchive.com
Vân Anh Lê https://vananh.space
Ayana Hanbich Lee www.ayanalee.com
Camille Li https://lipeiyang2001.wixsite.com
Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann http://www.katherinemann.net
Mizuki Nishiyama https://www.mizukinishiyama.com
Avani Patel https://www.avanirpatel.com
Mitchell Poon https://www.mitchellpoon.com
Devishi Seth devishiseth.com
Fengzee Yang https://www.fengzeeyang.com
Artwork information and images courtesy of the artists.
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Tang Contemporary Art Presents The Wayfarer in Motion, a Group Exhibition by Five Artists
Poster credit: Tang Contemporary Art Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the group exhibition The Wayfarer in Motion, in Bangkok, from 29 November 2025 to 11 January 2026. The exhibition features works by five artists: Pocono Zhao Yu (China), Gabriel Cheah (Malaysia), Duairak Padungvichean (Thailand), Verapat Sitipol (Thailand), and Aphisit Sidsunthia (Thailand).
Humanity today resides within a torrent of information, capital, and digital currents. Familiar coordinates dissolve, stable forms are reconstructed, and individuals are cast into an ever-shifting, boundless field. It is as if we are in the midst of a vast and invisible migration, where the ground beneath us is no longer solid, but a quicksand of trends, fragmented identities, and fleeting points of attention. As the weight of existence lightens, what replaces it is a heightened sense of presence, one that signals a silent yet profound transformation in our connection to the real world.
This exhibition invites viewers on a journey of self-exploration that traverses both time and space. The five artists use images as vehicles for spiritual migration, attempting to reveal resilient forms of existence within the fluid and alienating landscapes of change. The nomadic subject has no fixed coordinates; in the ceaseless movement of the body and the constant breaking of boundaries, the subject must confront vulnerability and clarify its authentic self. The exhibition seeks to explore the question of “how to be in the world”: how can individuals, through artistic practice, find orientation and affirm their existence amid alienating internal and external terrains?
Pocono Zhao Yu employs the method of “archaeological notes,” juxtaposing symbolic images and text. Different cultural genes “hybridize,” generating new identities at the “interstices” and “boundaries.” Zhao Yu has long researched the “Sun God” as a core symbol carrying the cultural evolution of both East and West, sun worship represents humanity’s most primal impulse to journey: where the sun rises, humans explore the world and pursue inner desire. Its significance, evolving from a collective totem to a reflection of individual spirit, illustrates how humanity’s outward exploration ultimately returns to the self.
Aphisit Sidsunthia’s works question the notion of “completeness” by embracing the inevitable imperfections and ambiguities of existence. By challenging color theory and employing both manual and digital techniques to collage, remove, and distort images, the artist emphasizes “love” as an event that reshapes being. Fragments of subconscious memory are retrieved and overlapped with geometric forms, opening windows to alternate realities. These fragments become ghosts of resurrected past events, crossing through societal norms and time, suspended between the virtual and the real.
Gabriel Cheah’s Still Kind series highlights active choice within given environments, never abandoning the pursuit of inner light even during moments of heaviness or self-doubt. The artist embraces vulnerability and transforms it into an attitude of “self-will” and gentle resistance, thus defining the essence of selfhood and freedom.
Verapat Sitipol and Duairak Padungvichean’s works present natural landscapes brimming with joy and vitality. Sitipol’s paintings attempt to capture the energy of nature rather than merely its appearance, absorbing and transforming the external world to explore a more authentic and poetic mode of “dwelling.” Forest and mountain scenes, depicted with vibrant brushstrokes, resemble musical scores of natural symphonies, opening possibilities for interpreting musicality beyond painting. These lines recreate both the existence and disappearance of the landscape, capturing the fleeting reality and fragility of dynamic scenery.
Padungvichean’s dreamlike desert landscapes serve as metaphors for both external and internal worlds. The wondrous creatures in her works embark on unknown journeys in search of meaning. This non-purposeful migratory poetics evokes a nomadic attitude toward the land, not to possess, but to continually seek direction in unfamiliar environments, an “in-the-world” experience that redraws the map of the self through movement.
“On this desperate land returned to its primordial innocence, he, the traveler lost in an ancient world, rediscovered his connections.” From the symbol of the Sun God to the ghosts of hidden memories, from inner seekers to shifting terrains, the five artists reassemble memories in the gaps between history and the present, reconstructing narratives where nature and civilization converge. The “self” is shaped, tested, and deepened through encounters with different cultural symbols, others, and predicaments, within this nomadic journey of interwoven inner and outer worlds.
Venue
Tang Contemporary Art Bangkok, Room 201 – 206, River City Bangkok, 23 Soi Charoenkrung 24, Talad Noi, Sampantawong, Bangkok, 10100Artists
Pocono Zhao Yu, Verapat Sitipol, Aphisit Sidsunthia, Duairak Padungvichean and Gabriel CheahExhibtion Dates
29 November, 2025 – 11 January, 2026Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Sunday | 11 AM – 7 PMWebsite
https://www.tangcontemporary.com/Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/tangcontemporaryartbangkok/Contact
bkk@tangcontemporary.com
About GallerySince its founding in Bangkok in 1997, Tang Contemporary Art has opened 8 spaces in Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Seoul and Singapore to promote the development of experimental art in different regions. In the past 28 years, Tang Contemporary Art has organized groundbreaking exhibitions in its gallery spaces, and also cooperated with important art institutions in China and abroad to accomplish outstanding art projects. The gallery strives to initiate dialogue between artists, curators, collectors and institutions working both locally and internationally. A roster of groundbreaking exhibitions has earned Tang Contemporary Art internationally renowned recognition, establishing its status as a pioneer of the contemporary art scene in Asia.
As one of China’s most influential contemporary art platforms, Tang Contemporary Art maintains a high standard of exhibition programming. Tang Contemporary Art represents or collaborates with leading figures in international contemporary art, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan, Zhu Jinshi, Chen Danqing, Liu Qinghe, Liu Xiaodong, Chen Shaoxiong, Wang Yuping, Shen Ling, Shen Liang, Wu Yi, Xia Xiaowan, He Duoling, Mao Xuhui, Wang Huangsheng, Yang Jiechang, Tan Ping, Wang Du, Yan Lei, Yue Minjun, Wang Jianwei, Yangjiang Group, Zheng Guogu, Lin Yilin, Sun Yuan&Peng Yu, Qin Ga, Wang Qingsong, Yin Zhaoyang, Feng Yan, Guo Wei, Chen Wenbo, Ling Jian, Qin Qi, Yang Yong, Peng Wei, He An, Zhao Zhao, Xu Qu, Chen Yujun, Chen Yufan, Xue Feng, Cai Lei, Li Qing, Wang Sishun, Xu Xiaoguo, Lí Wei, Liu Yujia, Wu Wei, Yang Bodu, You Yong, Li Erpeng, Jade Ching-yuk Ng, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Adel Abdessemed, Niki de Saint Phalle, AES+F , Michael Zelehosk, Jonas Burgert, Christian Lemmerz, Michael Kvium, Sakarin Krue-On, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Natee Utarit, Kitti Narod, Gongkan, Entang Wiharso, Heri Dono, Nam June Paik, Park Seungmo, Jae Yong Kim, Diren Lee, Dinh Q. Lê, Rodel Tapaya, Jigger Cruz, Ayka Go, Raffy Napay, H.H.Lim, Etsu Egami, etc.
(Text and images courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art)
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Crossing Cities, Cultures, and Media: HIAF 2025 Shapes the Future Horizon of Asian Art
From November 14 to 16, 2025, the Horizon International Art Fair (HIAF 2025) officially opened at the MGM Shanghai West Bund Hotel. As a major highlight of Shanghai’s annual art season, HIAF appeared alongside ART021 and West Bund Art & Design, bringing a cross-cultural, multimedia, and interdisciplinary contemporary art platform to the public during the city’s most vibrant art month. Located on the 51st and 52nd floors of the MGM Shanghai West Bund Hotel (688 Yunjin Road), the fair utilizes the hotel’s private rooms, elevated city views, and flexible spatial layouts to create an immersive viewing experience that bridges everyday life and professional exhibition formats.
As the organizer, Art Horizon positions HIAF 2025 as a “platform where creativity and inspiration transcend borders and artistic categories.” In a globalized context, the fair emphasizes the visibility and discursive agency of Asian art within the international landscape. By inviting galleries, artists, and curatorial teams from China, Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Russia, France, and beyond, HIAF cultivates an art ecology that balances regional diversity with conceptual depth.
The fair presents painting, sculpture, installation, works on paper, moving image, light-based experiments, and cross-media projects—showcasing the latest structural, formal, and conceptual trends in contemporary Asian art. At the same time, HIAF places particular emphasis on emerging voices, supporting young institutions, independent platforms, and interdisciplinary creators as a key part of its curatorial vision, bringing developing artistic languages to international audiences, professionals, and collectors.
The gallery lineup at this year’s HIAF spans two floors, forming a diverse international constellation: from WAS Gallery, AG Gallery, and K.M. ART LAB—each deeply rooted in the Korean art ecosystem—to Crazy Lab, known for its cross-media toy aesthetics; from EBI ART, which focuses on visual texture and subtle narrative, to New York–based Asian Art Contemporary, dedicated to contemporary Asian art discourse; and to LUMINATORS, which explores the structures of light and shadow. Together, they embody the fair’s most representative spirit of international vision and experimental energy.
These galleries not only present their own artistic directions but also form the spiritual core of HIAF 2025: a cross-cultural framework for dialogue, the dynamism of emerging artists, innovations in material language, and contemporary visual narratives unfolding within the unique setting of a hotel space.
WAS Gallery
WAS Gallery presents a contemporary perspective that bridges modernity and experimentation across the Asian and international art markets. Founded in Shanghai and deeply engaged with Korean art, the gallery promotes East Asian contemporary art through exhibitions and cross-cultural collaborations. This presentation brings together works by three artists: Kwon Hyuk’s large-scale acrylic paintings evoke symbolic visual force; Ju Tae Seok uses rhythmic color blocks to reflect inner landscapes; and Lee Don Ah employs lenticular prints to weave historical textures with optical imagery. The works collectively construct an integrated portrait of contemporary Korean art from a cross-cultural perspective.
EBI ART
EBI ART, founded in New York and guided by the belief that “everyone is an artist,” showcases restrained yet tactile contemporary aesthetics rooted in nuanced material practices and cross-cultural creativity. Artists such as Masaki Kanamori, Yuki Matsueda, and Mika Shimauchi explore rhythm, perception, and the energy of form through diverse media. Masaki Kanamori’s Wavelength_Resonance 5!_068 series conveys the pulse of light and shape; Yuki Matsueda’s Emergency Exit 400—Shanghai Edition I blends LED, acrylic, and wood into a sculptural urban symbol. Together, the works generate a unified visual rhythm grounded in materiality, tonal subtlety, and contemporary observation.
AG Gallery
Operated by the Ahngook Foundation, AG Gallery serves as a nonprofit platform supporting young Korean artists through open calls, interdisciplinary collaborations, and arts education. This presentation forms a layered visual matrix: Lee Ju Yeon constructs psychological spaces with abstract lines and color fields; Kim Ki Tae blends ink painting with allegorical structures to develop new modes of narrative. The artworks engage emotion, spatial metaphor, and cultural signification, offering an open, diversified, and critically engaged portrait of emerging Korean contemporary art.
Crazy Lab
Crazy Lab—founded by Malaysian artist James Lee (Jimsee)—bridges toy culture and contemporary art through humorous, playful, and pop-inspired visual languages. Featuring coffee as a medium, everyday symbols, and stylized characters, the works express the moods and rhythms of daily life. This cross-disciplinary approach merges design, aesthetics, and art experience, transforming the booth into an accessible and instantly engaging space for audiences.
K.M. ART LAB
Founded by sculptor Kim Gyoung Min, K.M. ART LAB focuses on material experimentation and sculptural methodology. The booth features works by Kim Gyoung Min, Kwon Chi Gyu, Park Chan Girl, Kim Byung Jin, and Lee Sung Ok, who explore metal, resin, and composite materials across various structural vocabularies. Kim Gyoung Min’s fluid, glossy forms extend bodily sensibilities; Park Chan Girl constructs tension through weighty masses and sharp cuts; Kim Byung Jin and Lee Sung Ok express spatial energy through geometric assemblages. Together, the works form a forward-looking sculptural landscape grounded in research, experimentation, and material intelligence.
LUMINATORS
LUMINATORS, a Shanghai-based creative studio, approaches art through light, energy, and material interaction. The presentation features Jessica Fu, Blaise Schwartz, and Wu Ding. Schwartz’s Europe, Snail, Bat depicts symbolic scenes through oil on wood, merging tranquility with cross-cultural imagination. Other works incorporate refracted light, reflective surfaces, and geometric forms to create immersive sensory environments.
Asian Art Contemporary
Asian Art Contemporary, based in New York, highlights international perspectives on emerging Asian art. Through exhibitions, interviews, and curatorial collaborations, the platform advances global dialogue on Asian contemporary practices. The booth features three artists: Apollo Wang, who uses cardstock and markers to examine order in the everyday; Jingyi Wang, who paints emotional projections of nature within urban life; and ZiPu, who reinterprets “raw image” logics through oil on panel. Their works intersect in material, composition, and theme, offering a sharp contemporary lens on visual culture.
HIAF 2025 is not merely an experiment in hotel-based art fairs—it aims to become a bridge for cultural connection across Asia. Set against the global visibility of the Shanghai art season, the fair provides a new international stage for artists and institutions from Korea, China, and throughout Asia, demonstrating how art can open new possibilities within contemporary life.
With the participation of diverse galleries, institutions, and artists, HIAF is shaping a distinct cultural identity—one that stands at the intersection of art, life, and cross-cultural exchange, creating a truly open and dynamic horizon.
Written by: Jianing Lu, Asian Art Contemporary
Images courtesy of Art Horizon
