Lifestyle

Through its self-defined mission of democratizing collecting, Avant Arte has been making waves across the art market for quite some time. Now, the company is cementing its commitment to bringing the industry to a wider audience, through the launch of its public art program – beginning with a commission from artist Tschabalala Self titled “Seated”. Installed in London‘s Kings Cross estate, the huge bronze work depicts a figure sitting upon a turquoise-hued chair. It marks the first public art commission for Self, and has been inspired by the ideas currently influencing her body of work: domestic spaces, and similarly, the space we take up within them. “I wanted to reference the quotidienne with this sculpture: choosing the act of taking a seat as a daily, universal gesture of leisure and ca...

Fine Art Asia is back again with its lineup of art curations spanning from antiques as well as traditional and contemporary artworks. With an accumulation of over 50 galleries, the fair looks to shed light on works from artisans across the world with a balance of historic cultural pieces with current artists expressing their views on existing times. Leading the roundup of antiques is the special exhibition The Art of Flowers by Wui Po Kok & Ming Gallery as ancient artifacts such as a stone statue of a Buddha and ceramics intertwine with floral arrangements. Rossi & Rossi held on display a mix of Chinese and Himalayan works – stone sculptures, bronzes and paintings emphasizing religious faiths from China, India, Nepal and Tibet. Among jewelry and accessories, Palais Royal Hong Kong ...

Following his recent exhibition in Spain, rising Chinese artist Gao Hang returns with a new solo show at Pulpo Gallery in Germany. My Bad Ideas follows Hang’s penchant for humor, as each of his paintings have been equated by the artist as his form of “standup comedy.” For those unfamiliar, Hang’s aesthetic can be equated to seeing a ’90s video game graphic in a fluorescent airbrush-like application. While his depictions often vary from largely featureless characters to 2-bit stacks of money, his compositions discreetly examine and comment on humankind’s precarious habits and need for instant gratification. “My recent paintings are concerned with image ‘definition’ in digital graphics, especially those from the last 20 years, said Hang in a statement. “I understand digital graphics as 21st ...

Arguably more than any of his films, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining continues to terrify and inspire droves of moviegoers over 40 years on. There have been countless articles and even documentaries investigating the conspiracy theories pertaining the film and its ambiguous set of meanings. To add to the list, Rough Trade Books is set to release a beautifully packaged book that chronicles The Shining’s cultural legacy through the lens of music, art, mythology, fashion, gender, and more. Edited and designed by Craig Oldham, The Shining: a Visual and Cultural Haunting is replete with artwork and ephemera, along with rare and exclusive interviews with original cast members, such as Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrance) and Dan Lloyd (Danny Torrance), as well as artistic figures, from Cosey Fanni to G...

Richard Colman is an American artist best known for blending figurative iconography with geometric abstractions. Each of Colman’s vibrant paintings are executed with a masterful eye for symmetry and contain striking symbolism that comments on themes regarding sexuality, social hierarchies and the duality between life and death. On view at Louis Buhl & Co., Colman is presenting his latest solo exhibition titled Sometimes it’s a Flower, Sometimes it’s a Weed. The show was partly inspired by his time living on his Connecticut-farm-turned-studio, where the space and solitude allowed for a period of respite and reflection. The resulting paintings showcase elongated figures whose genderless bodies serve as both a fortress from outside judgment, while simultaneously acting as the very clues t...

“I needed to take it slow and just do what I could do on my own.” Tell us about handling that exposure and then navigating that at such an early time in your career. You have to be ready. Have to have stuff in stock, which I didn’t have anything in stock when it came out. Overall, it’s luck. I was with the right people at the right time. But I think that, looking back, I definitely did not take advantage of it. Because there are companies that get ready, have it in stock and they sell out. None of that happened to me. I just had to literally email everybody back being like, “Sorry, I can’t.” But it was just me too, so I think I’m still okay with how I went. Because it would’ve been too much growth fast and I wasn’t going to be able to handle it. Tell us about that moment when you transitio...

Space has long been a fascination for Tom Sachs. From moon landings to spacesuits and all the gadgets in-between, the acclaimed American artist has used the last frontier as a muse of sorts throughout his career spanning paintings, sculptures, installations and of course, loads of highly coveted sneakers with Nike. For many of us, however, the first thought of space travel isn’t so much the mysterious destinations or the gear seen in films, but rather the vessel to actually get there. Sachs’ latest exhibition, “Spaceships”, uses this simple concept as its jumping off point. Housed at Acquavella Galleries in New York, the solo show examines the accepted understandings, assumptions, epistemology, and consensus of what constitutes a spaceship. Similar to his three concurrent exhibitions that ...