Friday, December 12, 2008

Winter Group Exhibition:
Introducing Kelly Falzone, Michal Gavish, Mary Anne Kluth, Tomokazu Matsuyama
San Francisco

Winter Group Exhibition: Introducing Kelly Falzone, Michal Gavish, Mary Anne Kluth, Tomokazu Matsuyama


Frey Norris Gallery and Annex
456 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Tomokazu Matsuyama, "The Night of the Rays," 2008, acrylic on paper, 20 1/2 x 28 1/2 in.

Four new artists: After an intense vetting process, Frey Norris Gallery introduces four promising young artists - Kelly Falzone, Michal Gavish, Mary Anne Kluth and Tomokazu Matsuyama. This winter group exhibition will open to the public on December 17 and run through February 1, 2009. We invite each of you to visit the gallery or the Web site to learn more about these artists and their blossoming careers.

Holiday Hours: The gallery will be closed November 30 - December 9 and December 24 - January 2, 2009.

Frey Norris Gallery and Annex
456 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

T: (415) 346-7812
F: (415) 346-7877

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday — Saturday 11:00 am to 7:00 pm
Sunday 11:00 am to 5:00 pm
Closed on Monday.
Driving directions: http://www.freynorris.com/directions.htm

More information: http://freynorris.com/docs/Frey-Norris-Winter-Group-2008_event.htm

More about the artists:


• A recent MFA graduate of SFAI, Kelly Falzone mines the nostalgia-rich terrain of sitcoms she watched as a child, creating often hysterical or manic collages around such TV shows as Gilligan’s Island, M.A.S.H., etc. References to slapstick, vaudeville-inspired comedy and oversimplified caricature evoke sentimental laughs and tragic meltdowns when painted in Falzone’s signature bleeding watercolors.

Michal Gavish earned her PhD in Physical Polymer Chemistry and worked in the applied sciences around semiconductor crystal growth and pharmaceutical research in Israel, Switzerland and the United States. A 2008 graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Gavish now mixes literary concepts around the indefinite impulses of growing cities with similar geometries found in crystal growth, all expressed through innovative, multi-layered, unique prints made using brightly contrasting photo-mechanical and serigraphic techniques.

• Making use of a variety of thick and thin papers, Mary Anne Kluth contrasts spontaneous acrylic splash marks with meticulous in-painting and photorealistic cut-out watercolors, creating three dimensional pieces that reference a variety of cosmologies and theories of art-making. Her cut paper and video and mixed media installations boggle the viewer with their time consuming and fastidious presentation and rich terrain of historical allusions.

• Splitting his time between Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, Tomokazu Matsuyama invests mythical importance in cultural and ethnic conflations. His storybook paintings, installations and works on paper mine a deep well of Japanese folklore and textile patterning, while granting their protagonists’ blonde hair, blue eyes and a variety of small cultural markings that make for riveting hybrids. Legendary painter/printmakers like Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai find rebirth in fairy tales superficially rooted in the 21st century.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
tix 415-978-ARTS

transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix—is a rare opportunity to view cutting-edge contemporary art by critically acclaimed artists from three countries whose works explore representations of modernity and popular culture. transPOP features 16 artists from Vietnam and Korea and their respective diasporas in the United States. In recognizing the vitality of art in addressing cultural, social and political issues, the exhibition signals unprecedented engagement with the rich historic and contemporary relationship between Korea, Vietnam and the United States.

Visit: http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production/view.aspx?id=7701

Zero Capital Presents: CLUSTERBOMB!
New York City

Zero Capital presents
CLUSTERBOMB!

Asian American Arts Centre
26 Bowery, 2nd Floor
New York City
Saturday, December 13, 2008
6pm
www.zerocapital.net



CLUSTERBOMB! is a fundraising event for the BorderStatements Collective, a community-based arts space on the China-Burma border, that works with ethnic minority and street youth utilizing the arts as a platform for HIV/AIDS and intravenous drug use prevention and antidiscrimination education.

Artists
Tomie Arai
Regie Cabico
(curated by) Fay Chiang
Jean Chiang
Kayan Chiu
Jason DaSilva
Paul Gilman
Larry Hama
Laren Hokoyama
Arlan Huang
Jason Kao Hwang
(curated by) Siddhartha Joag
Mia Kang
Dara Lipton
Jenny Logico
Perry Mamaril
Mari Nakano
Kcue Palma
Danny Phelan
Angel Velasco Shaw
F. Omar Telan
Laura Wilde and Bella Noir
Ad-on

With support from the Asian American Arts Centre, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, and the Asian American Arts Alliance

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes
at the de Young Museum, San Francisco


Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes
at the de Young Museum

October 25, 2008–January 18, 2009

Maya Lin, 2 X 4 Landscape, 2006. Wood. 36’ x 53’ x 10’
Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery.
Photo by Colleen Chartier

Presented by PG&E

San Francisco, August 2008—Recent sculptures, drawings, and installations by the celebrated artist Maya Lin are on view at the de Young Museum October 25, 2008, to January 18, 2009. Lin (b. 1959) came to prominence in 1981 with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and has since achieved a high degree of recognition for a body of work that includes monuments, buildings, earthworks, sculpture, and installations. Systematic Landscapes is Lin’s second nationally-traveling exhibition in ten years, with venues in Seattle, St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. “This exhibition continues my interest in exploring notions of landscape and geologic phenomena,” says Lin. “The works created, both small- and large-scale installations, reveal new and at times unexpected views of the natural world: from the topology of the ocean floor to the stratified layers of a mountain to a form that sits between water and earth.”

Lin’s extraordinary ability to convey complex and poetic ideas using simple forms and natural materials is fully evident in Systematic Landscapes. Working in a scale that relates to the land, and combining a deep interest in forces and forms of nature with a long-term investigation into the possibilities of sculptural form to embody meaning, this exhibition offers a rich, immersive experience for visitors that brings the sensory understanding of Lin’s outdoor works inside.

Lin has created a trio of large-scale sculptural installations for the exhibition that present different ways to encounter and comprehend the landscape. 2x4 Landscape (2006), a vast hill built of 65,000 boards set on end, presents a land surface rising from the gallery floor. Water Line (2006), a wire-frame three-dimensional drawing in space based on an undersea formation, is installed overhead and dips into the visitor’s sightline. Blue Lake Pass (2006) is a topographic translation of a Colorado mountain range made of layers of stacked particleboard that have been segmented and pulled apart to create landscape strata through which the visitor can see.

Maya Lin, Water Line, 2006, Aluminum tubing and paint.
19' x 34' 8" x 29' 2" Photo by Colleen Chartier


Systematic Landscapes also includes a series of sculptures based on the water volumes of various inland seas; plaster reliefs of imagined landscapes that are embedded directly into gallery walls; large drawings of landforms and river sheds; and altered atlases that present alternative topographies.

Concurrent with Systematic Landscapes is the debut of Maya Lin’s public art installation Where the Land Meets the Sea, a tubular wire sculpture commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the California Academy of Sciences, also in Golden Gate Park. The installation is the first permanent work by Lin in San Francisco. The de Young exhibition will feature small-scale models, maquettes, and renderings of the piece, engaging audiences in Lin’s creative thinking process and studio practice.

Organization
Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes, presented by PG&E, is organized for the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington and curated by its director, Richard Andrews. Major support for this exhibition has been provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Peter Norton Family Foundation.

The San Francisco presentation is made possible by the Ednah Root Foundation and bequests from the Evelyn A. Westberg Trust and Margrit Landesmann. Karin Breuer, the curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, is the installation curator at the de Young Museum.

de Young Visitor Information
The de Young, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and located in Golden Gate Park, showcases American art from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international contemporary art, textiles and costumes, and art from the Americas, the Pacific, and Africa.

Address:
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118

Hours:
Tuesday–Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 am–5:15 pm;
Friday 9:30 am–8:45 pm
Closed on Monday

Admission:
$20 adults
$17 seniors
$16 youths 13–17 and students with a college I.D.
Members and children 12 and under are free
Above prices include the $10 special exhibition surcharge
The first Tuesday of every month is free ($10 special exhibition surcharge still applies)
$10 admission to see the permanent collection only

Information:
www.deyoungmuseum.org
415.750.3600

Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970
at the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco

Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970
at the de Young Museum, San Francisco
October 25, 2008 — January 18, 2009

Image: Chiura Obata (1885–1975) Setting Sun: Sacramento Valley, ca. 1925.
Hanging scroll: mineral pigments (distemper) and gold on silk,
107 1/2 x 69 in. Courtesy of Gyo Obata


Download the brochure

San Francisco, June 2008—Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900–1970, on view October 25, 2008, to January 18, 2009, at the de Young Museum is the first comprehensive survey of Asian American modernism. This exhibition of works by artists of Asian ancestry who lived and worked in the United States seeks to showcase some of the most important individuals contributing to the canon of Asian American art and advance awareness of this under-represented group in American art history. Their art reflects the currents of identity and style that shift between aesthetics of diverse international geographies. Exhibition curator Mark Johnson says, "This body of work is rich in variety and demonstrates the wealth of Asian American art using masterpieces spanning 70 years as examples."

Nearly 100 works by over 70 artists of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Korean ancestry, many of whom had their work exhibited at the de Young Museum or Legion of Honor in earlier decades, are included. Asian/American/Modern explores the wide range of influences across cultural boundaries on artists such as Ruth Asawa, Chang Dai-chien, Yun Gee, Dong Kingman, Isamu Noguchi, Chiura Obata, Yoko Ono, Alfonso Ossorio, Nam June Paik, and Tseng Yuho. Included in the exhibition:

Carlos Villa (b. 1936, San Francisco, CA–lives in San Francisco, CA)
Painted Cloak, 1970–71. Painted canvas with taffeta lining and feathers,
60 x 30 x 30 in. Carlos Pedro Villa

  • Toshio Aoki’s Untitled (Thunder Kami), ca. 1900––the earliest piece in the exhibition is a work on paper featuring a sacred Shinto spirit; the piece demonstrates the passion for Japanese art and design in America at the turn of the twentieth century.
  • Nam June Paik’s TV Clock, 1963––one of Paik’s groundbreaking works, it is among the earliest works of conceptual art to incorporate televisions as sculpture, and explore the relationship of video and time.
  • Tseng Yuho’s mural Western Frontier, 1964––likely the largest public artwork ever created by a female Chinese artist before 1970; commissioned by Golden West Financial, now Wachovia Bank, featuring paper collage on a mural scale.
  • Carlos Villa’s Painted Cloak, 1970–71––the most recent work in the exhibition is a painted canvas with taffeta lining and feathers; this mixed media object points to the artist’s search for a cultural identity as a Filipino American.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has played an unparalleled role in the development of Asian American artists’ careers and art history. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing in every subsequent decade, the de Young has hosted many exhibitions of artists of Asian ancestry. Tseng Yuho had solo exhibitions in 1947 and 1952, and in 1960 there were solo exhibitions for Ruth Asawa and Gary Woo. Chee Chin S. Cheung Lee’s 1933 painting Mountain Fantasy, featured in the 1935 group exhibition of the Chinese Art Association at the de Young, makes a repeat appearance in Asian/American/Modern. John Buchanan, director of FAMSF says, "Our roster of Asian American exhibitions is arguably the most significant of any major American museum. Our commitment is not only critical to the institution’s self conception, but also relevant to the understanding of what constitutes a more holistic vision of American culture."

Yun Gee (b. 1906, Kaiping, Guangdong, China–d. 1963, New York, NY)
Where is My Mother; 1926–1927. Oil on canvas. 20 1/8 x 16 in.
Credit line: Estate of Yun Gee, Courtesy of Li-Ian


A full-color catalog co-published with the University of California Press accompanies this exhibition. In addition, the Fine Arts Museums invited prominent members of the local Asian American art community to collaborate on related programming as well as strengthen awareness of the rich offerings by institutions that regularly present exhibitions of Asian American art in the Bay Area. The result of this cultural partnership is a community-wide program calendar for fall/winter 2008, produced by FAMSF.

Organization
This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Asian American Art Project at Stanford University in collaboration with San Francisco State University. Exhibition co-curators are Daniell Cornell, former curator of American art at FAMSF and current deputy director of the Palm Springs Museum of Art, and Mark Johnson, professor of art at San Francisco State University. Asian/American/Modern Art will travel to The Noguchi Museum and be on view
February 18 to August 23, 2009.

de Young Visitor Information
The de Young, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and located in Golden Gate Park, showcases American art from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international contemporary art, textiles, and costumes, and art from the Americas, the Pacific, and Africa.

Address:
Golden Gate Park
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118

Hours:
Tuesday–Thursday, Saturday and Sunday: 9:30 am–5:15 pm
Friday: 9:30 am–8:45 pm
Closed on Monday

Admission:
$20 adults
$17 seniors
$16 youths 13–17 and students with a college I.D.
Members and children 12 and under are free
($10 special exhibition surcharge is included)
The first Tuesday of every month is free ($10 special exhibition surcharge still applies)

Information:
www.deyoungmuseum.org
415.750.3600

Asian Roots/American Reality: Photographs by Corky Lee
at The Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles

Asian Roots/American Reality: Photographs by Corky Lee
at The Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles
Nov. 16, 2008 - May 31, 2009

Photo: © Corky Lee, 1975

(LOS ANGELES, OCT. 21, 2008) For well over 35 years, New York-based photojournalist Corky Lee has played both witness and participant in chronicling the evolution and expansion of the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community through his photography. Signifying more than just a fleeting moment caught on camera, Lee's trademark images deftly capture the personal stories amidst a public sphere of social and political movements spanning from the 1970s to present day.

The Chinese American Museum (CAM) and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument are proud to present "Asian Roots/American Reality: Photographs by Corky Lee" opening on Nov. 16 to May 31, 2009 and curated by community artist, Steven Wong and photography instructor, Joanne Kim. Occupying two galleries, the exhibit will feature 88 black and white photographs depicting scenes of labor, protest, resistance, celebration and everyday community events that defined the socio-political and cultural landscape of APIA communities over the past three decades. The opening of this exhibit marks the first time Lee's work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and more significantly, in the entire West Coast. The debut of "Asian Roots/American Reality" will be Lee's first major career retrospective and will anchor the celebration of CAM's milestone Fifth Anniversary.

"Corky's passion for providing a voice to the untold stories, experiences and images of the APIA community resonates strongly with CAM's overall mission to perserve and document the Chinese American experience, especially in connection with other ethnic communities. For this we feel that "Asian Roots/American Reality" is a very significant exhibit to mark our own milestone 5th Anniversary," says Pauline Wong, CAM Executive Director.

Lee was a self-taught photographer who began taking photographs in the early 1970s. Fueled by his passion for community activism, Lee used his camera to gain ringside access to both news-making and commonplace situations, often times focusing on the compelling personal stories of invisible and excluded APIA communities. However, more than just visual records of a changing APIA community, Lee's images possess the unique ability to convey commonalities and shared experiences with its viewers. Whether he is photographing Connie Chung, Muhammad Ali, a Korean American hot dog vendor or a Japanese American war veteran, Lee's self-styled photographs have the ability to operate like windows into the Asian and Pacific Islander experience, gaining viewers entry into American realities that remain often unseen.

Lee's groundbreaking photographs have been exhibited on college campuses across the East Coast, including Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell and have been extensively printed in numerous ethnic publications, mainstream media like The New York Times, The New York Post, Time Magazine as well as seminal texts in Asian American Studies. Self-described as the "undisputed, unofficial Asian-American Photographer Laureate," it is no wonder why Lee's work has earned him the respect and reputation of being the most prolific photographer documenting the APIA experience today.

ABOUT THE CHINESE AMERICAN MUSEUM
The Chinese American Museum (CAM) is jointly developed and operated by the Friends of the Chinese American Museum (FCAM) and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, a department of the City of Los Angeles. Located within the El Pueblo Plaza in downtown Los Angeles, CAM is housed in the last surviving structure of the City's original Chinatown. CAM's mission is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of America's diverse heritage by researching, preserving, and sharing the history, rich cultural legacy, and continuing contributions of Chinese Americans.

VISITOR INFORMATION
The Chinese American Museum is located at 425 North Los Angeles Street in El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, across from Union Station. Hours are 10 a.m. - 3 p.m., Tuesday — Sunday. Admissions are suggested donations of $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and students. Members are admitted free. Tel: 213-485-8567.

For more information about the Museum, please visit www.camla.org

Saturday, November 1, 2008

ACROSS THE PROVIDENCE at Gallery Satori, NYC


ACROSS THE PROVIDENCE
Continuing Exhibition
at Gallery Satori
164 Stanton Street, NYC
Oct. 30-Nov. 18, 2008

Emily Cheng's large photo-collages and Hosup Hwang's objects will be on view at Gallery Satori through November 18th. The exhibition "Across The Providence" essentially exemplifies immanent doubts pertaining to Christian and Buddhist sacred images. Reifying the shapes of Buddha containing corruptive images, as well as, enlarging photo-collaged post cards derived form Renaissance religious paintings, the two artists provide the opportunity to question religious grounds so as to retool religious belief might be. These works also present the discrepancy between what we see in religious image and what it implies. Curated by Hoon Jung, the show includes around forty works.


Gallery hours:

Wed-Thursday 11 am-6pm
Fri: 11am-8pm
Sat, Sun: 12pm-6pm

Friday, October 17, 2008

Arlan Huang
MOST VIOLET
at Walter Randel Gallery, NYC


Arlan Huang
MOST VIOLET

Paintings (2003-2008)

at Walter Randel Gallery
October 30-December 6, 2008


Heaven (2004) 90 x 72 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas Photo: Steven Barall

Walter Randel Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of paintings by Arlan Huang, a five-year survey of the artist’s work. Arlan Huang is an accomplished and expressive colorist. Through the vigorous examination of tint underlying the very tracks of his brushwork, he envisions the act of painting as a lyrical, harmonious and whole moment within an exceptional, mindful zone.

Mr. Huang is a painter and a glass artist. His permanent public commissions in glass in New York City include Suddenly Laughter: Reflections from Within a Zen Rock Garden at the Jacobi Medical Center, American Origins at P.S. 152, and Wall of Honor for the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (in progress). If these works in glass demonstrate the artist’s cooperative and collegial spirit, the distinctive paintings presented in this exhibition afford a privileged view of the more personal side of his creative focus.

Huang describes a “humm” that flows through him and envelopes his senses when he paints. “If I am lucky, it is the song that gives clear and luminous meaning to my passion for art.” What is commonly called Qi — life force and energy— for Huang translates more specifically as “breath,” the vital tool he has mastered and refined through his glass-blowing, and the force that informs all his creative efforts.

In his painted oeuvre, Huang’s brush becomes an extension of his very breath. He skillfully “breathes” boundless energy into his interlacing lines and colors to produce a visual account of the struggle, profundity and fluidity central to his spirit. His painted surfaces alternate rhythmically between dense opacity and near transparency; passages dominated by thick impasto, at times glistening with a metallic sheen, contrast markedly with areas of subtle, atmospheric washes of color. These paintings distill a visceral, tender spirituality. The work, abstracted from and elevated above culture or the continuity of any specific national tradition, is in essence a painterly Esperanto.

A 12th-century musicologist and cleric Gerard of Wales’ description of a Celtic manuscript perhaps best captures the spirit of this 21st-century painter’s sophistication: “When you concentrate your eyes… with a sustained effort [and] penetrate the secrets of art, you will be able to perceive intricacies so delicate and subtle, so knotted and interlaced, and so much illuminated by colors which have preserved their freshness up to our day that you will attribute the composition of all this to the industry of angels rather than humans.”

A more current view of Huang’s canvases has been offered by Samuel Fromartz, who has written of Huang’s canvases with apt reference to the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, “There is turmoil and energy here, but, paradoxically, the works seem tranquil and meditative. Like music, but silent, or life’s stories, and then their absence. The paintings hold these poles together for a minute and then let go, leaving you with, as a poet once called it, ‘the dearness of the vanishing moment.’” Huang himself affirms, “These paintings dwell in the abstract sublime, and for one brilliant moment, life becomes crystal clear. This is why I paint.”

This exhibition also includes a part of his ongoing life project ironically called A Day’s Work. New York Times critic Holland Cotter reviewed this project in 1998 as “an impressive work…a set of hand-blown glass “stones”… clustered on the gallery floor and carrying a range of meanings.” Mr. Cotter noted that, “Huang created the original group as a memorial to his Chinese-born grandfather but continues to produce them, each stone sequentially numbered, both to mark the passage of time in his own life and as a gesture of commitment to art as a story unfolding.” Eventually, the artist intends to make 10,000 glass stones; to date, he has completed 1337.

Arlan Huang was born in Bangor Maine in 1948 and grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He is a graduate of the Pratt Institute in New York City and has studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. Mr. Huang has been a visiting artist in residence at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. His numerous honors include awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Department of Cultural Affairs of New York City.

OPENING RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST: Thursday October 30, 2008 6 - 8 PM

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11:00am-6:00pm
Location:
287 Tenth Ave
2nd Floor
Between 26th and 27th Streets
New York, NY 10001
212-239-3330
info@wrgallery.com
www.wrgallery.com

Contact: Yoo-Jong Kim or Walter Randel
Additional images available upon request to: info@wrgallery.com

On-line exhibition live October 25, 2008: www.wrgallery.com

Artist’s website will be linked for preview: www.tenbuckcut.com/Arlan/art.html

ROSTARR: "WRECKLESS ABANDON"
at O.H.W.O.W. (Miami, FL)

Opening October 11, 2008 - November 8, 2008
Curated by Al Moran

MIAMI, FL - September 29, 2008 - O.H.W.O.W. is pleased to announce the first major solo exhibition of work from Rostarr in Miami, his largest showcase of work up to date. Wreckless Abandon will feature new large‐scale paintings that combine his “Graphysics” (visual energy) aesthetic and free‐formed elegant drawings based on his human behavior studies. His work extends into the mediums of painting, digital media, sculpture, textile, video and public art projects with the ‘Barnstormers’ collective, a core member since 1999.

Through the balance of dynamism and geometric order characteristic of his work, Rostarr explores the arbitrariness and relationship between significance and signifier with a sensibility that stems from his interest in iconography and calligraphy, an ancient practice which combines form and content into brush strokes. By using various materials, Rostarr is able to enhance the expressive capacity of surfaces. The eye floats above a tumultuous strength, in the fluid hard lines and soft splatter, propagating like crashing waves in a storm.

Born in Korea in 1971, Rostarr moved to Washington D.C. when he was a child. He then graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1993. In 2000, he was featured as one of I.D. magazine’s “I.D. 40 under 30.” And in 2004 he was recognized as an honoree at the A.I.C.P. show held yearly at the MOMA for his graphics in the Nike Basketball Asia “Flow” campaign. Alife published his first book “Graphysics” in 2001. Art Forum, Modern Painters, The Village Voice, The New York Times and Artnet.com have reviewed his work.

ABOUT O.H.W.O.W.: Our House West of Wynwood, (O.H.W.O.W) is one of Miami’s most exciting and new high profile art spaces. Out with the old and in with the new, O.H.W.O.W. is a promising new gallery with an interior designed by Rafael de Cardenas of Architecture at Large. As Miami constantly reinvents itself, the now closed Moore Space audience has a new home for experiencing prominent international and U.S. based experimental art as well as innovative contemporary art forms. It will achieve this through an alternative cross‐disciplinary perspective, musical performances, artists and curators residencies and book publishing which will reflect the state of contemporary art today in all new forms and mediums representing groundbreaking voices and intellects.

Our House West of Wynwood: www.oh-wow.com

Amanda Ross-Ho visiting artist presentation —
Presented by DePaul University Department of Art


Amanda Ross-Ho visiting artist presentation —
Presented by DePaul University Department of Art


Host: Asian American Studies Minor



Artist Talk

Date:
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Time:
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location:
DePaul Art Museum
Street:
2350 N. Kenmore
City/Town:
Chicago, IL

Contact Info
Phone:
7733254048
Email:

Description:
Amanda Ross-Ho received her BFA in 1998 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2006, she received her MFA from the University of Southern California. Her work has been seen in recent exhibitions such as the 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and the Depositions at Galerie Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (Atlanta); Mitchell-Innes and Nash (New York) and the Approach (London).

Artist statement:
My practice is rooted in the act of navigating experience, fiercely rifling through elements of the visual world in an effort to demand meaning out of the present. Sseeking stability within this constantly shifting space, I compensate by manipulating the lens of attention itself, altering perspective on immediate, local surroundings through continual adjustments of focus aperture and resolution. Mediation and imposed disance render the local universal, and vice versa. With a degree of urgency, I am looking to find, and to behold, what is important.

Sustainable Art Project 2008

Sustainable Art Project 2008
Opening Reception:
October 18th, Saturday, 18:30~
at "Geidai Art Plaza" (make left after Fine Art department Gate)

in Tokyo University of the Arts, 12-8 Ueno Park, Taito Ward
http://www.geidai.ac.jp/english/

Exhibition:
October 20th, Monday ~ November 8th, Saturday
10:00 ~ 17:00 (entrance is till 16:30)

at "Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Gardens" (1-3-45 Ike-no-hata, Taito-ku, Tokyo)
Billiard room, Entrance:
http://teien.tokyo-park.or.jp/en/kyu-iwasaki/index.html

Includes artist ON megumi Akisyoshi exhibiting video documentation of the opening; complete piece will be shown from the 20th.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Metro Poles in Chinatown — at AAAC


Metro Poles in Chinatown

Friday October 24, 2008 3pm
at AAAC 26 Bowery 3fl

This Fall the Asian American Arts Centre joins in a cross-borough collaboration called Metro Poles occurring simultaneously in Jamaica, the Bronx & Lower Manhattan. Metro Poles in Chinatown marks the first time AAAC will partner with the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center & Chinatown Manpower Project & the Chatham Green Cooperative as installation sites for artists art works. This will open community institutions to the innovations and ideas of new art inviting a New York audience from Manhattan & other boroughs together with local people & residents.

At the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center from Oct 22 till Jan 10. Clients & patients of the Health Center can view the art work of three artists, Katarina Wong, Wennie Huang, & Tamiko Kawata during their visit there. The general public is welcome to this open press conference on the 24th, and during special limited hours to view the installations 630pm - 830pm on three dates - Oct 27, Nov 12 & Dec 5. Three Walking Tours will coincide with these dates starting at AAAC at 530pm. CBWCHC address is 268 Canal St & 125 Walker St.

At Chinatown Manpower Project from Oct 14 till Nov 29 clients of Manpower as well as the general public can view the work of two groups of three artists, Olivia Beens, Wan Ling Li & Angela Valeria, with Tamara Gubernat, Laura Chipley & Francisca Caporali as the second group. Located at 70 Mulberry St, Manpower viewing hrs are 9 am-5pm,
M-F, Sat 9-4pm. Special public reception Sat Nov 22 3pm – 5pm

The Chatham Green Cooperative, right across from the police barricade that keeps Park Row closed, artists Nathalie Pham, and Avani Patel, with the support of artist Ke Qin Yang, will enable community people, local school children, local artists and others to express in words and/or image their hopes for the Chinatown community. This is scheduled for Oct 25 to Dec 13. Every weekend the artists will be on site to facilitate this. Stories, experiences, feelings & grievances of community people will have a chance to be aired on the panels of this outdoor site. You can see the Chatham Green Cooperative, a long, curving building of 21 stories, where Mott St flows into Chatham Square and connects to Park Row.

Artist Yo Park in December &/or January with the full cooperation of the NY Police Department, will create greater harmony by enabling community people to meet and chat informally over free tea & coffee with members of the police department. The site for this will be named shortly – see updates on www.artspiral.org

On December 5th Friday, 530-715pm audiences will be able to meet and hear the
artists from all three sites speak. This will be held at AAAC, 26 Bowery. Afterwards, immediately following this talk, a Reception will be held for all three sites from 715pm – 900pm.

Recommended is for audiences to visit installation sites and see the special feature of Metro Poles - continuous changes by succeeding artists - see this before the December 5th final reception.

Participating artists:
Katarina Wong
Wennie Huang
Tamiko Kawata
Olivia Beens
Wan Ling Li
Angela Valeria
Tamara Gubernat
Laura Chipley
Francisca Caporali
Nathalie Pham
Avani Patel
Yo Park
Ke Qin Yang

Metro Poles: Art in Action is a cross-borough collaboration with Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL), Bronx River Arts Center (BRAC) & Maiden Lane Exhibition Space. In October & November 2008 over 50 artists, will debut new work almost simultaneously in the Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan. Curators are: Heng-Gil Han of JCAL, Jose Ruiz of BRAC & Bob Lee of AAAC. See the following to learn more about Metro Poles at JACL (718) 658-7400 http://www.jcal.org/visual_arts/programs.html, and at BRAC 718-589-5819 www.bronxriverart.org .

Asian American Arts Centre, Inc. is supported, in part with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. With additional funding and support from Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, 9.11 Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Manhattan Mini Storage/Edison Properties Inc, Materials for the Arts, Pearl River Mart, United Orient Bank, New York Cosmopolitan Lions Club, Con Edison, Dedalus Foundation, Expedi Printing, Inc., Charles Yuen, Jody and John Arnhold, Danny C.K. Li, Jeanne Lee Jackson, Linda Peng, Wing Lee Yee, Mikyung Kim, Richard Kenny Esq, John Yu, and the many generous friends of the Asian American Arts Centre.

The Asian American Arts Centre is located in Lower Manhattan at 26 Bowery (just below Canal Street, 3rd floor above McDonalds. Press bell #3.). It is a short walk from the N, Q, J, M, Z, and 6 trains at Canal Street or the B and D at Grand Street or the M103, M15, or M9 buses to Chatham Square.

transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix Talk

























transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix Panel Discussion and Walkthrough

Featuring:

Kyung Hyun KIM is the author of The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (2004, Duke University Press), Co-editor (with Esther Yau), positions: east asia cultures critique special volume on Asia/Pacific Cinemas vol. 9 no. 2 (fall 2001) and Co-editor (with David E. James), Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema (Wayne State University Press: 2001) (also translated into Korean by Hanul in 2005). He is also active as a film producer, critic and curator, serving as a consultant on a Korean film retrospective held at the Harvard Film Archive in Spring 2005, a major Korean film retrospective held at the Smithsonian Institute Freer Gallery in Washington DC in October 2004, a graduate student conference on Korean cinema held at UC Irvine in March 2005, and a film series of Lee Chang-dong's work held at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles in January 2003. He is Associate Professor in East Asian Languages and Literature department at UC Irvine.

Mariam Beevi Lâm is a professor of literature, media & cultural studies, and Southeast Asian studies at the University of California at Riverside. She specializes in Vietnamese and Southeast Asian American literature, film, popular culture, gender and sexuality, translation, tourism and community politics. She is currently finishing her book project, Surfin' Vietnam: Trauma, Memory, and Cultural Politics, which analyzes cultural production and community politics within and across Vietnam, France, and the United States. Lâm is also co-editor of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies (U Cal Press).

Việt Lê is an artist, creative writer, and curator. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at The Banff Centre, Canada, and in the US at Laguna Art Museum, CA; Cape Museum of Art, MA; Ethan Cohen Fine Arts Gallery, NY; Hudson D. Walker Gallery, MA; Shoshin Performance Space, NYU, NY; Korean Cultural Center, CA, among other venues. He has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Italy; Fulbright Foundation, US-Vietnam; William Joiner Center, US; Banff Centre, Canada; the Fine Arts Work Center, US; and PEN Center USA, US. Shows he has recently curated include the performance event "Miss Saigon with the Wind" at Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, and the visual art show Charlie Don't Surf! at Centre A in Vancouver, Canada. Le co-curated humor us at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles CA. Le obtained his MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and is currently writing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern California.

Yong Soon MIN is an artist and independent curator. Her artistic practice, inclusive of curatorial projects, incorporates diverse media and processes that engage issues of representation and cultural identity, the intersection of history and memory, and the role of the artist and the arts as agents of social change. Her artwork has been exhibited and reviewed widely since the early 1980s. Recent curatorial projects include transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix, at ARKO Art Center/Seoul and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts/San Francisco; humor us at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Exquisite Crisis and Encounters at the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute of New York University; Fallayavada: Bahc Yiso Project and Tribute at UC Irvine's University Art Gallery; and THERE: Sites of Korean Diaspora, an international exhibition at the Fourth Gwangju Biennial in Korea. She is Professor in the Department of Studio Art and affiliate faculty in the Culture and Theory PhD program at University of California, Irvine.

"Charlie" Nguyen is a Vietnamese American film producer, director, screenwriter and martial arts action director. Born in Saigon, Charlie Nguyen immigrated to Orange County, California in 1982 with his family. Charlie fell in love with martial arts movies and began his career by making action short films. In 1992, Charlie Nguyen started his own production company, Cinema Pictures. His first feature, 18th King Hung Vuong (w/ diacritical marks:: Hùng Vương ), was independently funded and set the tone for the kind of films he would continue to make, infused with Vietnamese history, martial arts and drama. A former student from the University of California Los Angeles film program, Nguyen has produced and directed many music videos, live concerts and documentaries. His other film credits include the romantic comedy Chances Are, the drama Finding Madison and his most ambitious project, The Rebel, which was picked up for distribution by The Weinstein Company, won audiences and grand jury awards at film festivals and broke box office records in Vietnam.

Jung Sun PARK is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Asian Pacific Studies Program at California State University at Dominguez Hills. She is the author of Chicago Korean Americans: Identity and Politics in a Transnational Community (Routledge, forthcoming) and co-editor of The Borders in All of Us: New Approaches to Three Global Diasporic Communities (New World African Press, 2006). She has also published journal articles and book chapters in the U.S., Korea and Japan on topics such as transnationalism, (im)migration, race/ethnicity, identity, citizenship, and Korean/East Asian popular culture (including Hallyu and Japanese animation). Her current research focuses on two themes: transnational flows of South Korean/East Asian popular culture and the changes in South Korean citizenship in the global era.

transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix
Oct 2-Nov 8, UC Irvine University Art Gallery

DIRECTIONS:

From San Diego: Take the 405 North to University Drive off ramp, turn left. After several miles you will come to the campus on your left and will be turning left at the intersection after Campus Drive which is Mesa Rd. Turn left to the Mesa Parking Structure one block up on right side.

From Los Angeles: Take the 405 South to the 73 South to University Drive off ramp, turn left. Proceed to Mesa Drive and turn right to Mesa Parking Structure one block up on right side. Cross the Mesa Drive on street level or the upper pedestrian bridge and follow signs to Room 160.

The University Art Gallery, 712 Arts Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697-2775 tel. 949 824-9854

Room Gallery, University of California, Irvine ACT rm. 1200 Irvine, CA 92697-2775

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12-6pm

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

SAWCC 2008 Art Auction Benefit Information

SAWCC 2008 Art Auction Benefit

Date: Monday, October 20th 2008
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Venue: TamarindART Gallery
142 E. 39th Street
New York, N.Y. 10016
Tickets: $35 in advance or $50 at the door
Tickets are considered a donation and are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

Buy a ticket through PayPal below.


Works by emerging and established artists including:
Samira Abbassy, Jaishri Abichandani, ON megumi Akiyoshi, Fariba Alam, Jonathan Allen, Blanka Amezkua, Firelei Baez, Pooja Bakri, Kim Baranowski, Anjali Bhargava, Caroline Chiu, Heman Chong, Safia Fatimi, Brendan Fernandes, Chitra Ganesh, Gonkar Gyatso, Sarah Hardesty, Vandana Jain, Amy Kao, Fawad Khan, Swati Khurana, Hye Rim Lee, Pooneh Maghazehe, Samanta Batra Mehta, Naeem Mohaiemen, Yamini Nayar, Nortse, Carol Pereira, Ramya Ravisankar, Sa’dia Rehman, Joyce Riley, Vijay Sekhon, Karina Skvirsky, Christy Speakman, Hiroshi Sunairi, Hank Willis Thomas, Mary Valverde, Anahita Voussoughi, Richard Wilson, and more…

Sandhya Jain Patel and Swati Khurana
Benefit Co-Chairs and SAWCC Board Members

Thanks to this year’s Sponsors:
Marguerite Charugundla, TamarindART Gallery, New York
Fred Eychaner
Elaine Ng, ArtAsiaPacific
Chitra Ganesh
Gana Art Gallery
Meenakshi Thirukode
and the SAWCC Board

Monday, October 13, 2008

Metro Poles: Art in Action – A tri-borough collaborative art exhibition

Metro Poles: Art in Action at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning
Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (www.jcal.org)
161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11432
November 13, 2008 – January 17, 2009
Reception: Thurs, November 13, 2008, 6 - 9 pm
Panel: Sat, Jan 17, 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Mon-Sat, 10 am-6 pm


*Please note JCAL is closed from Wednesday, November 26th afternoon - Saturday,
November 29th. JCAL reopens on Monday, December 1
December 23rd afternoon - January 3, 2009. JCAL will reopen Monday, January 5, 2009.

New York, October 10, 2008 - This month, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL presents Metro Poles, Art in Action, a curatorial collaboration with the Bronx River Art Centre, the Asian American Arts Center, and the Maiden Lane Exhibition Space. Metro Poles, Art in Action debuts on Friday, October 17th with the opening of John Powers: Captain America at the Maiden Lane Exhibition Space located at 125 Maiden Lane, in lower Manhattan. John Powers' Captain America was commissioned by Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and Maiden Lane Exhibition Space is sponsored by Time Equities Inc.

From October 17, 2008 – January 17, 2009 the four galleries will serve as hubs for creative experimentation. A core group of artists will be given the opportunity to create work in each gallery and off site locations that reveal their vision of nexus, collaboration, and social relationships. The gallery/sites will be their stage for the duration of a week. Each artist in the core group will then invite an additional artist to continue their work expanding upon the original artist's momentum through addition, subtraction, inversion or re-position. This second group of artists will then each invite another artist to continue the process. This will continue for the duration of the exhibition with approximately 60 artists participating in the project. Throughout this time, each gallery will function as a collective studio—a site of constant creation and revision.

The idea for Metro Poles was originally conceived by Heng-Gil Han, JCAL's curator. It was later developed in collaboration with Jose Ruiz, Bronx River Art Center's curator and realized in collaboration with Robert Lee and Elisabeth Akkerman curators of Asian American Arts Centre and The Francis J. Greenburger Collection/Time Equities Inc, New York respectively.

"I wanted to create a show that was a collaborative activity among emerging contemporary artists and would bring people to discover art organizations located like Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Bronx River Art Center and Asian American Arts Centre, which are off the "beaten art path." It is at organizations like these where many critics, curators and art buyers are introduced to emerging contemporary artists, according to Mr. Han. The artistic collaborations will result in an installation which evolves over time and incorporates the cultural and artistic diversity of individual participants."

Participating Galleries:

Maiden Lane Exhibition Space
125 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038
John Powers: Captain America
Ict 17-Jan 30
Reception: Friday October 17, 5 - 8 PM
Gallery Hours: daily, 9 am- 6pm


Asian American Arts Centre (www.artspiral.org)
26 Bowery, New York, NY 10013
Oct 14 - Dec 5 (dates vary with each location - see website)
Chinatown Manpower Project, 70 Mulberry St., 3fl, across Bayard St.
Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, 268 Canal St
Construction Site: Corner of Mott & Worth St. Site TBA
Walking tours: October 27, November 12, December 5
Panel: Fri, Dec 5, 5:30 pm
Reception: Fri, Dec 5, 7:15 pm


Bronx River Art Center (www.bronxriverart.org)
1087 East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, NY 10460
October 27 – December 6, 2008
Reception: Fri, November 21, 2008, 6-9pm
Talk & Screening: Sat, Dec 6, 3-5 pm
Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri, 3 pm-6:30 pm, Sat, 12 pm-5pm


Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (www.jcal.org)
161-04 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11432
November 13, 2008 – January 17, 2009
Reception: Thurs, November 13, 2008, 6 - 9 pm
Panel: Sat, Jan 17, 6-9 pm
Gallery Hours: Mon-Sat, 10 am-6 pm


Participating artists include:

Maiden Lane Exhibition Space:
John Powers

Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning:
Shelly Bahl
Brian Balderston
Jason Balicki
Lindsay L. Benedict
Caitlin Berrigan
Andrea Christens
Emcee C.M., Master of None Liz Deschenes
Jason Eisner
Yevgeniy Fiks
Christopher K. Ho
Klara Hobza
Takashi Horisaki
Vandana Jain
Lin + Lam
Mary Lum
Carlos Motta
Jason Mortara
Annie Shaw
Chad Stayrook
Chanika Svetvilas
Tattfoo Tan
Claudia Weber

Asian American Arts Centre:
Olivia Beens
Wan Ling Li
Angela Valeria
Tamara Gubernat
Laura Chipley
Francisca Caporali
Katarina Wong
Wennie Huang
Ke Qin Yang
Tamiko Kawata
Yo Park
Avani Patel
Nathalie Pham

Bronx River Art Center:
Shinsuke Aso
Kai Bailey
Marcy Brafman
Amy Brenner
Robert Anthony Bryn
Emie Catedral
Corey D'Augustine
Zack Davis
Asa Elzen
Zachary Fabri
Paul Clay
McKeedre Key
Sandra Lee
Chang-Jin Lee
Rossana Martinez
Esperanza Mayobre
Jim Nolan
Brian Zanisnik
Mike Rader
Leonid Tsvetkov

Metro Poles, Art in Action is funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation.

The Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning is housed in a landmark building owned by the City of New York and is funded with public funds provided through the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin; the New York City Council; Council Speaker Christine Quinn; the Queens Delegation of the Council; Deputy Majority Leader, Councilman Leroy Comrie; and Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Shin il Kim — Decoded Love at Smack Mellon and other shows

Shin il Kim — Decoded Love

at Smack Mellon
92 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
five DVDs, five 14” TV monitors, speakers, wooden structured dark room dimensions variable

Decoded Love is based on the silent film, "The Toll of the Sea," the first color feature film made in Hollywood in 1922. This perplexing story of unrequited love, similar to Puccini's "Madame Butterfly,” stages a power struggle between the dominant male and obedient female character. The love story not only represents the complications of society's subtle yet oppressive gender roles but also the contradiction of defending peace with war.

Interpreting and visually deconstructing the film, Shin Il Kim reveals the actual material of the movie; the indirect light from the playing film is his main and distinctive medium. In the darkened room of the installation, a pattern of lights emanate from a circular channel in the floor that is more than 8 feet in diameter. Viewers walk over and around the circular glow of the shimmering lights as the film’s original score plays softly in the background.

While maintaining the film's sequence, the scenes of each character have been separated onto their own DVDs. Under the floor of the installation, five TV monitors play each character's DVD illuminating the cut out circular channel. Decoded Love strips the narrative from the film's love story in an attempt to reveal the true essence of the word love. The love story is visualized only as light, which is symbolic in many religions of purity, truth, goodness and life.

Kim is a native of Seoul, South Korea and now currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from Seoul National University and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. Selected solo shows include: Galeria do Lago at the Museu de Republica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; The Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan, Italy; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and ARCO Art Center-Arts Council Korea, Seoul, Korea. Selected group shows include: Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; Singapore Biennale (2006), Singapore; Analog Animation at The Drawing Center, New York, NY and Macy Gallery at Columbia University, New York, NY. He has been awarded fellowships and grants from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; The Pollack Krasner Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Smack Mellon; and Skowhegan Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. His work is represented in the collections of the Queens Museum of Art; Queens, NY; ALTOIDS Curiously Strong Collection at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; and Arts Council Korea. This year of 2008, he participates in Media City Seoul 2008, international media biennale, Hermes prize show in Seoul, and the third edition of the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville in Spain.

Please find more info at www.smackmellon.org

Shin il Kim also at:

Hermes Foundation Misulsang, Atlier Hermes, Seoul, Korea
August 29-November 09

The 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Seoul, Korea
September 12, 2008-November 5, 2008
http://www.mediacityseoul.or.kr/

The 3rd Seville International Biennale, Seville, Spain
October02 2008-January 09 2009
http://www.fundacionbiacs.com

Daejeon City Museum of Art, Korea
October 07 2008-November 30 2008
http://dmma.metro.daejeon.kr

the 5th Sustainable Art Project, Tokyo, Japan
October 18-November 8 2008 in Ueno area, Tokyo

Icons of Presence: Asian American Activist Art — curated by Margo Machida — exhibition info

Icons of Presence: Asian American Activist Art
Exhibition Site: Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, 750 Kearny Street, 3rd floor
Dates: TBD; opening scheduled for October 24, 2008

Icons of Presence: Asian American Activist Art showcases important graphics and posters by Jim Dong, Nancy Hom, and Leland Wong, three Chinese Americans whose art and cultural activism during the 1970s and 1980s were pivotal in the San Francisco Bay Area’s burgeoning Asian American arts movement. Organized for Chinese Culture Center in conjunction with the major art historical survey exhibition, “Asian/American/Modern” at the de Young Museum, this show highlights pieces that mark a critical turning point in Asian American artistic production, as matters of identification, community, self and collective representation, and local history increasingly came to the forefront for a new post-war generation of artists. To understand how this landmark cultural transformation unfolded in San Francisco during this period, Icons of Presence emphasizes the central role of graphic art and printmaking as a powerful means of social expression, in building a foundation for an emerging Asian American visual culture. To recognize the continuing evolution of these artists’ visions, the show will also incorporate examples of their more recent work.

This exhibition is inspired by ongoing research on Bay Area Asian American artists by East Coast-based guest curator and scholar Margo Machida. It is an outgrowth of her recent essay, “Art and Social Consciousness: Asian American and Pacific Islander Artists in San Francisco 1965-1980,” to be published in the forthcoming book, Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (Stanford University Press, 2008), edited by Gordon Chang, Mark Johnson, and Paul Karlstrom. Because this book, and the related “Asian/American/Modern” exhibition at the de Young Museum, chiefly trace the rise of Asian American artists involved with modernism through the 1960s, Icons of Presence provides a counterpart in signaling the historic turn toward social and cultural activism in the tumultuous 1970s – an era which touched off a new “wave” of artistic production and social consciousness in Asian America.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Margo Machida is Associate Professor of Art History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from SUNY Buffalo (2002). A scholar, independent curator, and cultural critic specializing in Asian American art and visual culture, her most recent book is the co-edited volume Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art (University of California Press, 2003). In 2005 this volume received the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Among her current publications are: “Reframing Asian America” in the exhibition catalogue, One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now (New York: Asia Society, 2006), and “Object Lessons: Materiality and Dialogism in the Art of Flo Oy Wong” in the exhibition catalogue Seventy/Thirty—Seventy Years of Living, Thirty Years of Art (Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, San Francisco, May 2008). Her forthcoming books and articles include: Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary (Duke University Press, February 2009); “Diasporas in Motion: The Visual Arts and Communities of Affinity,” in Alexandra Chang, Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Artist Collectives Godzilla, Godzookie, and the Barnstormers (Timezone 8 Art Books, Beijing, China, 2008); and “Convergent Conversations – The Nexus of Asian American Art” in the Blackwell Companion to Asian Art, Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton, eds. (2010).

Monday, October 6, 2008

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions in NYC

Current and Upcoming Exhibitions in NYC:

Journeys at the Brooklyn Public Library, Central at Grand Army Plaza is extended to November 1, 2008!

New Library hours: Sun: 1:00PM-6:00PM; Mon: 9:00AM-6:00PM; Tues: 9:00AM-9:00PM; Wed: 9:00AM-9:00PM; Thurs: 9:00AM-9:00PM; Fri: 9:00AM-6:00PM; Sat: 10:00AM-6:00PM.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/events/exhibitions/2008/journeys.jsp

__________________________________________________________________________


“Homecoming” at ABC No Rio
October 2 to October 29
Opening Reception: Thursday October 2 at 7:00pm


Artists: Meg Escudé, Akiko Ichikawa, Jayson Keeling, Rahul Saggar, Martina Secondo, Chanika Svetvilas, Vandana Jain

In Homecoming, seven artists who were born in the United States or immigrated as children explore the themes of migration, ancestry and returning to their parental homeland.

Meg Escudé traveled to her father’s homeland of Argentina where she discovers the Italian-Brazilian circus, Circo Orlando Orfei, one of the oldest and most traditional of the circuses that still travel throughout Latin America. Living nomadically with the circus enabled her to recreate her idea of self without nationality and to be at home wherever a door was opened to her.

Having grown up in the suburbs of Nashville and Boston, Akiko Ichikawa returned to Japan as an adult, reconnecting with her culture and the familiarity she’d lost through documenting the quotidian aspects of contemporary Japanese life.

Through roughly collaged images, Jayson Keeling explores his relationship to his culturally and spiritually disconnected homeland of Jamaica.

In “I Wish I Was White,” Rahul Saggar explores concepts of skin color, acceptance, belonging and matrimonial prospects both here and in his parents’ home country of India.

While visiting her grandmother in Genova, Martina Secondo Russo discovered a box of photographs her grandfather took as a soldier in Italy’s “Operation Barbarossa” campaign against Russia during World War II. Through reprinting these images, Secondo reconnects with the grandfather she never knew and rediscovers her roots.

Utilizing Campbell’s soup cans, bean sprouts and coconut milk, Chanika Svetvilas challenges our perception of what constitutes American and what is considered “other.”

After spending countless childhood summers visiting her extended family in Madhya Pradseh, Vandana Jain returned as an adult. Her images show the layering of religion, iconography and pattern in a way that felt extremely familiar.

ABC No Rio is located at 156 Rivington Street, between Clinton and Suffolk Streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Take the J/M/Z trains to Essex Street or the F train to Delancey Street and walk one block north.

Homecoming
October 2 – October 29, 2008
Opening: Thursday October 2 at 7:00pm
Viewing hours: Sundays 1:00-6:00pm,
Wednesdays & Thursdays 4:00-7:00pm ABC No Rio
156 Rivington Street
(b. Clinton and Suffolk Street)
212.254.3697
www.abcnorio.org

ABC No Rio is a center for art and activism, known internationally as a venue for oppositional culture. ABC No Rio was founded in 1980 by artists committed to political and social engagement and retains these values to the present.

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“Art and China’s Revolution” exhibition at Asia Society
September 5, 2008 through January 11, 2009
Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, New York
Cost: $10; $7 for seniors and $5 for students with ID; free for members and persons under 16. Admission is free to all Friday 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Asia Society presents Art and China's Revolution, a groundbreaking exhibition that considers the artistic achievement and legacy of one of the most tumultuous and catastrophic periods in recent Chinese history: the three decades following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The exhibition brings together large-scale oil paintings, ink paintings, sculptures, drawings and artist sketchbooks, woodblock prints, posters, and objects from everyday life, many never before shown in the United States. It is the first exhibition to examine in-depth the powerful and complicated effects of Mao Zedong's revolutionary ideals on artists and art production in China.

More info at:
http://www.asiasociety.org/chinarevolution

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“MEDITATION ON CONTEMPORARY CHINESE LANDSCAPE” AT GODWIN-TERNBACH MUSEUM, QUEENS COLLEGE, 10/15 - 12/6/08 Exhibition Opening: Wednesday, October 15, 6 – 7:30 pm

“Meditation in Contemporary Chinese Landscape,” a special exhibition organized by the Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College and curated by Luchia Meihua Lee, features the work of 12 Chinese artists from Taiwan, China, Malaysia, and the United States. Working in the media of painting, installation, digital, video and photography, these artists capture the spirit of Chinese landscape in contemporary context, using today’s visual language and idioms. Included is work by Queens resident Zhang Hongtu, whose politically charged painting was seized by Chinese customs officials and banned from Beijing exhibition during the recent Olympics. Other artists represented in the exhibition are Arnold Chang (Zhang Hong), Lin Shih Pao, Chin Chih Yang, Huang Guorui, YoYo Xiao(Wei Xiao), Cui Fei, Hai Zhang, Marlene Tseng Yu, Chee Wang Ng, Lin Pey Chwen and Yin Mei Critchell.

More info at:
http://www1.cuny.edu/forum/?p=2838

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Kyopo Project Fundraiser — photographer Cindy Hwang




Fundraiser for the Kyopo Project:


About the Kyopo Project:

The Kyopo Project began in November 2004 and is comprised of photographic and textual portraits that explore the nature of Kyopo identities of first, second and third generations. The over 200 Kyopos profiled embrace a myriad of roles in their communities. They range in age from 5-90 and were raised in Brazil, Canada, China, Brazil, Denmark, France, Japan, The UK as well as in the U.S.

The Project was created to engage the public in the new movement of the Korean Diaspora characterized by Kyopos adopting roles and professions outside of stereotypical norms and traditional expectations. Today’s Kyopos are an active presence in politics, arts & entertainment, literature, sciences and all aspects of their communities. This phenomenon is an inevitable result of Kyopos spending a longer time in their respective adopted countries and speaking the local language with command. What surfaced is a multiculturalism that’s infused in many of the participants embrace and the many definitions of their identities.

CINDY HWANG (CYJO), PHOTOGRAPHER
CYJO specializes in portraiture and beauty. After working many years in the fashion industry, Ms. Hwang began her photographic career after having one of her photos published in the New York Times. Her recent work focuses on capturing the collective persona of cultural diaspora and the inherent synergy produced by subjects during the documentation process. Ms. Hwang is a graduate of FIT and the University of Maryland. Her clientele includes the following: Guess Watches, Equilend, Elle International, Angelo Filomeno, Jessica Corr and others.

Introduction from Korea Society Panel on May 29, 2008:
Asian American Art and artists have been perpetually in the past been thrown back from art historical inclusion and specifically within the global arena of diasporic art. I would venture to suggest that even pre-2000, the specific political project of Asian American visibility for some critics, administrators and artists who identified within the Asian American art community, which overlay the terminology, wished Asian American art to remain separated from what they may have seen as a wish to “go global” as an overly progressivist trend rather than responding to the reality of the need to remain local — by which I mean, to emphasize U.S. subjectivity — being included within the American art historical canon.

However this was arguably the remnants of a political project of a movement, one that would alter the terrain upon which Contemporary Asian diasporic artists, and Asian American artists within that, worked, that originated from a need to unify from the days of the civil rights movement through to the 80s multicultural moment and 90s backlash But the use of the terminology and political landscape has shifted, especially with more inclusion of Asian Americans within the mainstream U.S. museums and institutions as both artists and administrators, though by all means not an overwhelming amount, and the definite increase in visibility of Asian American artists within the U.S. showing in international art fairs, such as Paul Pfeiffer who won the first Bucksbaum award at the Whitney and was selected to represent the U.S. at the Cairo Biennial in 2003.

The political project has been shifted from its roots and to now view Asian American art as artificially U.S.-based and circumscribed is naïve and has lost much of its original purpose. Also, what has been seen is that even within the Asian American art movement, in the 70s through to now, and specifically in the New York mainstream and alternative art space, Asian American art had always been diasporic in nature, inclusive of artists from Asia working in the U.S., as well as artists who travel back and forth between Asia, and have returned to live in Asia from the U.S., such as Dinh Q. Le or Zhang Huan, or have just declared that they find “home” in an airplane, such as Xu Bing, who can be seen as residing under that mysterious “international” artist rubric. For these artists, some fall under the more priviledged schema of the cosmopolitan artist, but for many, their international migration is a necessary way to support their work, to enter art schools to increase their cultural and creative capital, to be seen within an art market where they can feasibly sustain a living, find funding, or to be able to create certain work without censorship, among other realities.

What is very interesting about The Kyopo Project is that it immediately denies the artificial construct of the citizen subject as confined to the nation-state and specifically Korea and also hovering about: the U.S., however, at the same time, it does highlight difference as well — of location, occupation, of dress and appearance. At the outset, CYJO has found herself as a nexus of an international community — a portal or artist organizer who has found the very juncture of internationalism common to urban spaces such as Post-war Paris, or lets say most major cosmopolitan cities such as New York or more specifically in her 21st century studio in New York City, where her subjects pass through, leaving their stories and narratives to accumulate in her project, that in itself has become a larger one of linkage between not only these subjects, who were chosen through acquaintances, but to other communities who find an affinity of similarities to the diasporic connection illustrated by the very diasporic practice and processes of the creation and continuation of The Kyopo Project. (Alexandra Chang, May 2008)

Censorship at 3RD Guangzhou Triennial — Yong Song Min and Allan deSouza letter

This is an email from artists Yong Song Min and Allan deSouza that went out on their listserv. It details the efforts of the artists to work out a dialogue with the organizers and curator of the Triennial. Many issues come up including the relationships between art fairs, organizers' rights to censorship, curatorial practice and ethics, freedom of expression, an art-viewing public's rights within the confines of institutional/organizational frameworks of art fairs and spaces, and the artist's say on how their works should be viewed. (AC)

Posted on listserv below:

AN OPEN LETTER Concerning Censorship at the 3RD Guangzhou Triennale

Our mixed media installation that was commissioned by the Third Guangzhou Triennial
in China has been censored. The Triennial exhibition, entitled “Farewell to Post-
Colonialism” is on view at the Guangdong Museum, the primary Triennial venue, from
September 6 through November 16th, 2008. This international showcase was organized
by three curators: Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, and Chang Tsong-zung with additional
curatorial contributions by seven “Research Curators.”

We are troubled that a unilateral decision has been taken to censor our work without any
attempt at dialogue or even without informing us about how, by whom or why such a
decision was made. This censorship is further egregious in that museum visitors and
viewers of our (curtailed) work are not being informed that any such censorship is in
operation. In true Kafkaesque fashion, censorship rears its cowardly head while hiding its
traces and its train of command.

During the private opening and the first day of the public opening we––and a research
curator––made repeated requests through an assistant for a meeting or dialog with the
museum director (whom we indirectly learned was the one making this decision). These
were not heeded. At no point did the Director indicate any interest in trying to discuss the
matter with the research curator or with us. However, the video was allowed to be shown
during the opening afternoon, and has been turned off again. In retrospect, this afternoon
of projection appears to be a calculated act to temporarily appease us.

At no point in the process of vetting and finally commissioning the project did any of the
organizers indicate that there might be any issues or potential issues with our project,
even though we had clearly stated our intention of showing appropriated pornography. To
quote our catalogue statement,

“Inside, the Bed–Inn is haunted by projections of bodies engaged in sex acts,
appropriated from a mix of footage––from … 1960’s ‘underground’ films to
contemporary internet porn. One manifestation of the ‘sexual revolution,’
pornography was seen by its advocates as a utopian civil right, alongside free love
and free speech…. Here, in the Bed-Inn, … this space of virtual activity awaits
the insertion of the actual bodies of audience members.”

That this ‘sexual revolution’ is associated predominantly with the West (though feminism
and women’s rights are manifested globally) provides further impetus for examining its
legacy from the vantage of a rapidly changing China.

Our installation, admittedly, is provocative, but we wanted to engage with the
exhibition’s contested theme and title: Farewell to Postcolonialism. We have taken the
subject seriously, especially given our histories that we are both from previously
colonized countries that even now grapple with the throes of post- and neo-colonialism.
Our belief that histories and geographical locations literally mark the human body
impelled us to create a work that examines the body as marked by history and as carrier
of infectious ideas and contagious actions. The video component consists of the kind of
footage that has been multiply received: celebrated as liberatory, as spiritual even,
privately consumed and/or publicly condemned. Our point is precisely that such material
is contextualized by its and the body’s relationship to power, and in this case is further
inflected by its historical relationship to the 1960s’ liberation struggles of the individual
and collective body.

Our installation title, 2008 Springtimes for John and Yoko: the Bed-Inn, references both
the remarkable film, 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh, by Cuban revolutionary filmmaker
Santiago Alvarez, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s legendary “Bed-In” protests against
the Vietnam War. As discourses against censorship, authoritarianism and abuses of
power, they illustrate that iconic period of world-wide optimistic political foment,
popular resistance and radical politics that has since come to represent a lost time of
possibilities. Our awareness of how differently such discourses have played out
ideologically and materially in China and in the USA are also what inform this
installation.

We should not have been surprised, but it is nevertheless ironic that a work ruminating on
historical memory has been switched off through an act of enforced amnesia. This act
removes the viewers’ choice, not least by removing the viewers’ knowledge of a choice
to be made. The video is projected behind curtains; it would have been simple to provide
a warning sign in front of the curtains indicating the video’s subject matter, allowing the
viewer their own choice on whether or not to proceed.

Also ironically, our work is situated within the exhibition and catalogue section, “Free
Radicals.” Not so free, presumably. The curatorial statement draws attention to the
“‘political correctness at large’ that is the result of the power play of multiculturalism,
identity politics and post-colonial discourse.” Yet here is an example of an artwork
engaging those same discourses that is shut down by a far more insidious form of
“political correctness”––one enacted by an autocratic institution that professes its liberal
leanings. What “tyranny of the Other” (again from the curatorial statement) do we need
to contend with when the institution shuts down a space of difference, thereby barring the
mere entrance of the Other?

We don’t want to form knee-jerk accusations against “authoritarian regimes,” since we
are well aware that such acts of censorship occur in so-called “democracies,” where the
tender sensibilities of citizens are paternalistically protected. In the case here, Wang
Huangsheng, the museum director, states in the exhibition catalogue that,
“It is our sincere hope that your visual perceptions can get sharpened and
imported by thinking, and your thinking can be further powered in your enquiring
eyes.”

What sincere hope can there be when blinders prevent vision and the possibilities for
thinking are shut down? While we understand the need for local considerations,
especially given that regionally the Guangdong Museum is known to be culturally open,
we are dismayed that such openness has not extended to any direct communication with
us.

We call on the museum to reinstate the installation in its full, intended form. More than
that, we wish to open a dialogue with the museum, the curators and other artists about
how these questions might be, if not resolved, at least addressed. As artists, we expect to
be part of decision-making processes that profoundly intervene with our works’
relationship to the audience, especially in exhibitions such as this that profess to develop
new forms of cultural and social engagement.

Allan deSouza and Yong Soon Min, September 2008.