The Five Colours of White

Ink-and-Brush painting by Zhang Shuqi. (Photo: Jason Wang.)

In the glass-and-concrete halls of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, Zhang Shuqi’s work bursts with an urgency that belies its age. Echoes of the Homeland is a retrospective of a Chinese painter long overshadowed in the West. A native of Zhejiang Province, Zhang Shuqi (or Chang Shu Chi, 1900–1957) was hailed as one of the “Three Masters of Jinling” along with Xu Beihong (1895–1953) and Liu Zigu (1901–1986), pioneers who adapted traditional ink-and-brush to a modern world. Amid the fourth-floor galleries, his flowering branches and roiling flocks of fowl feel like a living ecosystem, each petal and plume pulsing with the tensions of war, exile, and cultural survival.

Dostoevsky in the Water Town

The Dostoyevsky: Man is a Mystery exhibit at the Muxin Art Museum. (Photo: Jason Wang.)

To reach the Muxin Art Museum, one first passes through Wuzhen, a historic water town in Zhejiang Province that has been carefully polished for tourism. Stone paths are kept immaculately clean, boats drift slowly through the canals, and the entire district often feels suspended in a state of permanent display. At the edge of Yuanbao Lake, the museum rises as a cluster of spare concrete volumes designed by OLI Architecture. The shift from the cultivated brightness outside to the cool, inward atmosphere of the galleries is immediate.

Fouettés, Flutters and Fun: The Trocks at 50

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. (Photo: Zoran Jelenic.)

On Sunday, Oct. 19, at the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatres, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo — the Trocks — closed their 50th-anniversary tour in Toronto with an evening in which exacting technique and theatrical excess sharpened one another — and the laughter felt earned. From the first moment, it was clear the Trocks were performing with both intelligence and irreverence.

When A Film Lab Cancels an AI Show, Who Gets to Define a Cultural Commons?

Works by the artist Rick Valicenti from the exhibit Playbot Companions.

We are pleased to welcome a new critic, Jason Wang, to Critics at Large.

In the first week of October, Toronto hosted a small but telling cultural collision. On Oct. 1, artist and designer Rick Valicenti opened Playbot Companions at 99 Frames Parliament Street: a two-week presentation of framed, AI-generated hairstyles linked by QR code to tiny “playbot” faces and backstories. The conceit is simple and unnerving — show the hair, hide the face, and force the viewer to complete the “playbot” as a person. But the sharper question is: what happens when intimacy becomes a design choice and companionship a consumable commodity?