contemporary Chinese art

March 31, 2026April 2, 2026, by Hantian Zhang

The 15th Shanghai Biennale: Does the Flower Hear the Bees?

Botany, I read in Zoë Schlanger’s bestseller The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, is full of groundbreaking discoveries these days (Schlanger 2024). We now know that plants have cellular conduits that allow propagation of electrical charges, that some plants release chemicals in the air to alert neighbors of insects, and that evening primrose increases its nectar’s sweetness when it senses the frequency of the hum of bee wings. While such plant-feeling, plant-talking, and plant-listening are not sustained by the same biological apparatus as ours, the functional parallel is apparent. Perhaps it is time to broaden our understanding of intelligence.

March 30, 2026March 29, 2026, by Michal Gavish

Zhang Huan: The Ash Paintings, at 125 Newbury Gallery

It has been over ten years since the last New York exhibition of the Chinese artist Zhang Huan, known for his edgy political performance pieces documented at the exhibition. What captured me on this visit was his ash paintings, which extended across the entire front hall of the gallery. It feels entirely appropriate that this social activist artist, who later turned to Buddhism, should exhibit these works in New York at such a tense moment. Ash, as a medium, touches on absolute destruction. It carries deep meaning in Buddhist practice, but these days it also pulls toward something harder to name: the daily accumulation of impure ash on the ground of cities being destroyed.

January 28, 2025January 27, 2025, by Art Spiel

Beijing Stories at the Liu Shiming Art Gallery

A sculpture of a building

AI-generated content may be incorrect. — Residential Building. 2005. Copper. 12.2 x 10.3 x 8.7

In 2021, a group of friends, family members, and former colleagues of the renowned Chinese artist Liu Shiming (1926-2010) banded together to form the Liu Shiming Art Foundation, an organization dedicated to both preserving the artist’s legacy and furthering his dedication to the power of the arts. The Foundation has undertaken an ambitious program of granting scholarships to university students around the world with a goal of funding 100 scholarships per year. They also have opened a gallery space on 15 East 40^th Street in Manhattan to showcase Mr. Liu’s work and eventually to showcase the work of pan-Asian artists.