Vivian Li

Vivian Li is an arts writer based in Dallas.
Tangled Hierarchy 2 aspires to transcend linear narratives of cause and effect or hierarchical roles.
Installation view of Tangled Hierarchy 2 at Tkm Warehouse, 2022-2023.
Known for his massive paintings of people around the world living at the edge of contemporary society, the neo-realist painter Liu Xiaodong was commissioned by the Dallas Contemporary to create a series of paintings on the US-Mexico border.
Liu Xiaodong, Mountains and River, 2019. Oil on canvas, 118 1/8 x 98 1/2 inches. Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.
Modernisms focuses on the period of the 1960s and 1970s when Grey traveled and assembled her collection of approximately 700 works from the Middle East and Asia (114 of which are on view), after which she established the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.
Francis Newton Souza, Trimurti, 1971. Oil on canvasboard, 30 x 24 inches. Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection.
Though her first East Coast solo exhibition is formally promoted as featuring three of her recent photographic series that explore the complexities of national identities and memories in former USSR territories, the brilliance of photographer Mila Teshaieva's show lies not in the expansive and consciously composed photographs alone but in their total installation.
Mila Teshaieva, House of Kadjar, 2013. Archival Pigment Print. Courtesy the MIT Museum.
Although this grouping of cast objects demonstrates the artist’s long-standing fascination with materials and reproduction, a room full of them can feel like monuments—anonymous and easy to dismiss. But maybe that is the point, to look closely past surface meanings.
Ai Weiwei, Cao / Humanity, installation view, 2018. Courtesy UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles.
When you enter The Sun Teaches Us That History Is Not Everything, one of the first works you might overlook amongst the other more colorful installations is a large suspended orb slowly spinning in the center of the room.
Shinpei Takeda, A Blueprint for Emigration/Immigration, 2018, paint. Courtesy the artist.
Though Brooklyn-based artist Christopher Knowles is renowned for his mathematical, oftentimes compulsive, use of language, his large retrospective show Christopher Knowles: In a Word is a revelation of how equally intense and curious he is throughout the breadth of his artmaking.
Christopher Knowles, The Sundance Kid is Beautiful, 2013. Photo: Julian Mommert.
Rather than an outright duel between fact and fiction, Dion demonstrates that the judgment more at stake has always been between truth and value and how we balance the two.
Mark Dion, Landfill, 1999-2000. Mixed media, 71 ½ x 147 ½ x 64 inches. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase, Contemporary Collectors Fund. Photo by Pablo Mason. © Mark Dion.
Nation-themed contemporary art exhibitions can be problematic, especially now when so many artists work in the context of globalization. Nonetheless, national exhibitions still retain enough public appeal to justify their continued existence. In this context, Sunshower: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now is surprisingly thoughtful, in part because it does not hew too closely to mere geographical parameters.
UuDam Tran Nguyen, Time Boomerang: Phase 1: The Real Distance of Things Measured, 2014 - ongoing, metal casting of artist’s hand, sculpture, performance video, mixed media, (Photo: Vivian Li).

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