David Spalding
David Spalding is an American writer and curator based in Beijing. Spalding has served as a correspondent / contributing editor for Art Papers, Contemporary and Flash Art magazines. He was the first China correspondent for Artforum and the founding Editor-in-Chief of ARTINFO China. Over the last decade, he has published over one hundred texts on contemporary art and culture in these and many other periodicals and publications, from Modern Painters to Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. Most recently, he was honored with a Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Art Writing Grant.
From 2006 to 2009, Spalding was also Curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, the first international art center of its kind in China, where he helped to initiate the arts program and realized solo projects with a wide range of artists, including Feng Mengbo, Mona Hatoum, Won Ju Lim, Navin Rawanchaikul, Lawrence Weiner and Yin Xiuzhen. Spalding’s most recent independent curatorial project was Even in Arcadia (San Francisco Camerawork, 2009). He sits on the Academic Advisory Board of the Asian Art Archive in Hong Kong. Before relocating to Beijing in 2005 with the aid of an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, Spalding lived in San Francisco, writing for arts publications and teaching at the California College of the Arts and Mills College.
Contact: david.c.spalding@gmail.com
Exhibition setup, “House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective,” UCCA Beijing.
Mona Hatoum, Undercurrent (red), 2008, UCCA Beijing.
Additional links:
“In the Garden of Mirrored Flowers and Forking Paths: Notes from the Edges of Beijing” is a multi-part Dispatch and digital Reading Room commissioned by Independent Curators International for their online platform and print publication (Fall 2011).
“A Finale of Broken Spells,” Modern Painters (cover story), September 2010.
“The AI Interview: Rirkrit Tiravanija,” Artinfo.com, January 13, 2010.
“Beijing’s New Luxe Life,” Artinfo.com, October 23, 2009.
“The Political Is Personal: The 11th Istanbul Biennial,” Artinfo.com, October 13, 2009.
Ghosts in the Machine
SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA
October 5 – November 18, 2006
This exhibition and its related publication, which grew from Spalding’s VCS thesis project, explored the ways that pieces of the past return to haunt the present in contemporary lens-based artwork. Received National Endowment for the Arts Access to Artistic Excellence Award. Curator walk-thru filmed for KQED television.
Recent Happenings:
