The exhibition includes approximately 115 spectacular examples selected from Vietnamese museums conveying the country’s impressive artistic developments and attesting to its importance in the cultural development of Southeast Asia. Objects range from early burial goods and large bronze ritual drums to gold jewelry with precious stones, Hindu and Buddhist stone sculptures, and beautifully decorated ceramics.


Art Project International
429 Greenwich Street, Suite 5B, New York, NY10013
http://www.artprojects.com/index.php/
IL Lee: Small Drawings 2000-2009
February 26, 2010 – March 27, 2010

Korean artist Il Lee’s solo exhibition at Art Project International will shocase his ballpoint pen drawings from 2000-2009, from February 26 through March 27.






Bose Pacia
163 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
http://www.bosepacia.com/
Linear Obscurity
February 4, 2010 – March 19, 2010

Linear Obscurity features new works by New Delhi-based artist M. Pravat and New York-based artist Heeseop Yoon. The pairing of disheveled organizational structures in Pravat’s paintings with obsessive but purposeful reiterations of unorganized towers of detritus in Yoon’s drawings and installations presents a frenetic sense of balance in the space.




China Institute
125 East 65th Street, New York, NY 10065
http://www.chinainstitute.org/
Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art
February 11, 2010 – June 13, 2010

This exhibition focuses on the life, teachings, and posthumous veneration of Confucius, the ancient philosopher, statesman and teacher who has come to symbolize Chinese civilization throughout the world.










Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york
Anish Kapoor: Memory
October 21, 2009 – March 28, 2010

Anish Kapoor’s Memory is the fourteenth commission project to be completed by the Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank collaboration. It is a unique and ambitious program of contemporary art commissions that has enabled the Guggenheim to act as a catalyst for artistic production. Anish Kapoor is an artist celebrated for his expansive vision and profound aesthetics.




Contemplating the Void: Intervention in the Guggenheim Museum
Febuary 12, 2010 – April 28, 2010

For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers, such as Ai WeiWei, Anish Kapoor and Wangechi Mutu to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.










Japan Society
333 East 47th Street, New York, NY 100017
http://www.japansociety.org/
Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection
March 12, 2009 – June 11, 2010

Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s vivid scenes from history and legend, wildly popular 150 years ago, are a major influence on the work of today’s manga and anime artists. This exhibition features over 100 dramatic depictions of giant spiders, skeletons and toads; Chinese ruffians; women warriors; haggard ghosts; and desperate samurai combat.










Thomas Erben Gallery
526 West 26th Street, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10128
http://www.thomaserben.com/
Video Installation: Barbad Golshiri
April 13, 2010 – May 15, 2010

Barbad Golshiri, an emerging Iranian artist, will be showing a video installation in a solo exhibition.

AN INITIATIVE OF ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART CONSORTIUM (ACAC)

More about Leeza Ahmady and ArtOnAir.org

Conversation with Guy Ben-Ner

Guy Ben-Ner, is an internationally renowned Isreali artist living and working in Tel Aviv. In New York to launch his latest video: Don’t Drop the Monkey, commissioned by Performa 09. In this conversation with Leeza Ahmady we hear about the artist’s process making videos, the intentions in his work, and his thoughts on how art and personal life mutually affect each other. Guy Ben-Ner shares details about the making of his video Don’t Drop the Monkey for Performa 09 in which the artist holds a telephone conversation with himself over a period of twelve months as he flies between Tel Aviv and Berlin. The film is completely unedited and always remains live. “Ben-Ner’s storyboard is life itself, and each scene occurs in real time, although with significant ellipses in between. Shot in Hebrew, and dubbed in English, the film presents a conversation in rhyme, which discusses how art can be at the service of life and the repercussions of such a unified relationship. Mixing sophisticated cinematic devices and crafty, do-it-yourself elements, Ben-Ner’s videos brim with witty cross-references to specific episodes and genres within the histories of cinema, video, and performance.”

Listen to interview with Guy Ben-Ner

What’s up and ahead for Bose Pacia

Bose Pacia has launched the careers of some of the best known artists from South Asia who have now been included in the most prestigious museums and curated events worldwide. In this conversation, Leeza Ahmady and Rebecca Davis, Director of Bose Pacia, talk about Bose Pacia’s growth as a gallery, the increased academic, institutional, and commercial interest in art from the region, and what lies ahead for the gallery. Rebecca gives us details on Bose Pacia’s recent move from Chelsea to DUMBO and how they have been handling the recession. We also learn how the gallery started to build its impressive roster of artists and positioned itself at the forefront of contemporary South Asian avant-garde.

Listen to interview with Rebecca Davis

Yeondoo Jung

South Korean artist Yeondoo Jung talks with Leeza Ahmady about his art and how his childhood exposure to Traditional Chinese Medicine, and early 19th century photographers continues to inspire his artistic thinking. He discusses his latest video, Hand Made Memory, where he has juxtaposed interviews of real life characters with entirely staged interpretations of their stories. He likes to offer transparency to his viewers about the process of his image construction. “The process is what is so exciting and I want to share how I play with multiple elements: fiction, truth, documentary and pure fantasy.” In his first ever-live performance event Cinemagician commissioned by Performa 2009, Jung integrates , sound, camera feed-back, cinematic tricks, and the energy of a live magician in performance to create a magical experience for the audience.

Listen to interview with Yeondoo Jung

Lee Mingwei, The Mending Project

Working behind a stunningly large, custom-built wooden table covered with used clothing, New York-based Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei speaks with Leeza Ahmady during the performance of his 2009 exhibition The Mending Project. The interview takes place at Lambard-Freid Projects, host to the installation, where visitors would come with an article of clothing or house garment and have the artist personally mend the piece over the course of a conversation. Mingwei discusses the intentions behind making the focus his work a mundane task and turning a private act into an intimate one, stating, “I am interested in opening up beautiful moments of connection.” He also speaks of his past works and how each seeks to highlight the banal elements of quotidian life, allowing for a transformative experience for both the artist and the participant.

Listen to Lee Mingwei, The Mending Project

Crossing Borders: Contemporary Art in Troubled Places

The Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia often dominate the headlines, but rarely because of the burgeoning art scene. But art is alive and well in the region. So how are artists negotiating all that new attention? And how are cultural expectations affecting their work? Moderator Savita Apte, Chair of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, and curators Leeza Ahmady and Carol Solomon sort out the issues in a panel discussion at the Museum of Arts and Design in September 2009. In association with the Abraaj Capital Art Prize exhibition.

Listen to Crossing Borders: Contemporary Art in Troubled Places
Stay tuned for more interviews to be posted later!

Asian Contemporary Art Week is a proud media sponsor of PERFORMA 09. 

Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) invites you to the third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performances held in New York City from November 1 – 22, 2009. The three-week festival will showcase new work by over 100 international artists, including a number of cutting edge artists working both inside and outside of Asia.

Guy Ben-Ner, Rabih Mroué, Keren Cytter, Omer Fast, Tan Lin, Ahmet Ögüt, Yeondoo Jung, Shoval Zohar, Alexander Singh, Sung Hwan Kim, Nikhil Chopra, and Khatt Foundation,  

Performa 09’s innovative program will break down the boundaries between visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, film, television, radio, graphic design, and the culinary arts, presenting over 110 events. These events are presented in collaboration with a consortium of more than 80 arts institutions and 40 curators, as well as a network of public spaces and private venues across the city, PERFORMA 09 will ignite New York City with energy and ideas, acting as a vital “think tank” bringing audiences together for new performances, exhibitions, broadcasts, screening, installations and public education programs accross all displines.

For a complete list of participating venues and agenda, please see the calendar!

To learn more about PERFORMA, please visit at http://performa-arts.org/.

Performa Hub
41 Cooper Square
Sunday, November 1, 7:00pm – Sunday, November 22 7:00pm
FREE

Filmed and edited over the course of twelve months, Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner will present an unusual “live film” that captures an ongoing phone conversation between the artist and himself as he flies to and fro between Berlin and Tel Aviv, the respective locations of his girlfriend and his family. Unlike a regular film, which is edited externally after all of the shooting is complete; Ben-Ner’s film never leaves the camera during a twelve-month period. The film always remains “live,” awaiting the next shot, which might take place in either Israel or Germany. Ben-Ner’s “storyboard” is life itself, and each scene occurs in real time. Since the only editing is done entirely in-camera, the move from one shot to the next requires a real physical move: the camera traveling the full distance from Tel Aviv to Berlin and back as the dialogue progresses. Shot in Hebrew, and subtitled in English, the film presents a conversation in rhyme, which discusses how art can be at the service of life and the repercussions of such a unified relationship.
Guy Ben-Ner was born in Israel in 1969 and currently lives and works between Berlin and Tel Aviv. Since the early 90s, Ben-Ner has filmed a series of videos starring himself and his family. Mixing sophisticated cinematic devices and crafty, do-it-yourself elements, Ben-Ner’s videos brim with witty cross-references to specific episodes and genres within the histories of cinema, video, and performance. Ben-Ner has been featured in numerous exhibitions internationally, including shows at the Hayward Gallery, London (2008), the ICA Philadelphia (2008), Sculpture Project, Munster (2007), and Musee D’Art Contemporain de Montreal (2007). Ben-Ner represented Israel at the 51 Venice Biennial (2005).
A Performa Commission with Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund. Supported by the Consulate General of Israel.

Omer Fast
Untitled

Abrons Art Center
466 Grand Street
Wednesday, November 11, 7:00pm – Friday, November 13 7:00pm
Nov. 11, 12, and 13 at 7pm
Tickets: $20 / $16 Performa Members

A Performa Commission with Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund
For Performa 09 Omer Fast will combine the familiar childhood game of “Broken Telephone” with the confessional talk show format. In a theatrical setting, invited guests will recount personal memories with direct links to current global events and the projection of power and freedom. As each guest begins speaking, an actor appears alongside, as an observer, listening to the guest’s account for the first time. When the guest is finished, the actor retells what he or she has just heard, while another actor listens to the account and subsequently narrates his or her own rendition of the story. This sequence repeats several times over the course of the evening, allowing the story to spontaneously transform from individual memory to communal recitation, from version to version into its own fluid text.
Working with film, video, and television footage, Omer Fast examines how individuals and histories interact with each other through narrative. He mixes sound and image into stories that often veer between personal and mass media-based accounts of current events and history. Fast was born in Jerusalem in 1972, studied in the United States, and currently works and lives in Berlin. His video installation, “The Casting” (2008), was presented at the 2008 Whitney Biennial and won Fast the 2008 Bucksbaum Award.

Ahmet Ögüt
The Pigeon-Like Unease of my Inner Spirit

Bidoun Magazine
47 Orchard Street
Sunday, November 15 7:00pm – Sunday, November 15 10:30pm

For Performa 09, artist Ahmet Ögüt develops a conversation with Devorah Greenspan, a blind painter in order to create a homage to the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, columnist, and journalist Hrant Dink. Ögüt not only shares what he knows about his physical characteristics, but also his philosophy, his writings, his love for his country, and his dreams as well as his fears, particularly referring to Dink’s last article that was published in the Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos on January 10, 2007, titled “The Pigeon-like Unease of My Inner Spirit.”

Ahmet Ögüt (born 1981 in Diyarbakir, Turkey) is a conceptual artist living and working between Amsterdam and Istanbul. His practice incorporates a variety of media including video, drawing and installation, with performance often playing a major role in the conception or realization of the work. His subtle references to complex topics including religion, social and rural customs and the specter of war in this region are offset by an edge of humour. In 2009 he represented Turkey in the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial. Ögüt has been a guest artist at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2007-2008.

New York artist Devorah Greenspan enrolled in a drawing class a few years ago. Prior to that she considered creating visual artwork, aside from doodling, “off limits” due to her vision loss. Her artworks have been featured at New York City’s Viridian Gallery, Object Image Gallery, the Bay Ridge Art Fair, and the Educational Alliance

Curated by Defne Ayas with assistance by Ozge Ersoy. Commissioned by Performa. Co-presented by Bidoun Magazine and Performa. Supported by the Moon and Stars Project.
FREE

Shoval Zohar
Futurist Life Redux

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
Monday, November 16 8:00pm – Monday, November 16 8:00pm

A Performa Commission
The only truly “Futurist” film, “Vita Futurista” (Futurist Life) was made in 1916 by Arnaldo Ginna and several other Futurist artists, including Giacomo Balla, Remo Chiti, and the founder of Futurism, F.T. Marinetti. Comprised of eleven independent segments conceived and written by different artists, “Futurist Life” contrasted the spirit and lifestyle of the Futurist with that of the ordinary man in a series of humorous sketches—“How the Futurist Walks,” “How the Futurist Sleeps,” “The Sentimental Futurist,” etc., many of which used experimental techniques in the new medium such as split screens and double exposures. The only-known copy of this film was lost several decades ago, and now all that remain are written accounts by Ginna and the journal L’Italia Futurista as well as a few still images.
For the Performa 09 biennial, Performa, with SFMOMA, has commissioned eleven contemporary film and video artists to create their own, 3-5 minute versions of the eleven segments in “Vita Futurista,” re-imagining this film in relation to our own future. Artists contributing films or videos to the new film, “Futurist Life Redux,” are: Trisha Baga, chameckilerner, Martha Colburn, Ben Coonley, George Kuchar, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Shana Moulton, Shannon Plumb, Aida Ruilova, Matthew Silver and Shoval Zohar (The Future), and Michael Smith. Each of the original segments of “Vita Futurista” was assigned to a contemporary artist via random drawing, and ultimately the shorts will be compiled into one, all-new version of Futurist Life for the twenty-first century.
For Futurist Life Redux, Silver will be working with Shoval Zohar (b. Haifa, Israel, 1982), a filmmaker, writer, and performer whose collaboration with Silver is known as The Future.
Curated by Lana Wilson and Andrew Lampert. Commissioned by Performa with SFMOMA and Portland Green Cultural Projects. Co-presented by Performa and Anthology Film Archives. Special thanks to Sally Berger and Marie Losier.
Tickets: $9 / $7 Students, Seniors, and Children / $6 Performa and AFA Members, available at the door.

Yeondoo Jung: Cinemagician
Cinemagician

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue
Thursday, November 19 8:00pm – Saturday, November 21 8:00pm

A Performa Commission
Yeondoo Jung’s new theater piece, Cinemagician, aims to recreate the tensions between the magician and audience that arise from watching the unfolding of an unknown event or trick. Inspired by the nineteenth-century French filmmaker George Melies, whose experiments as a magician and cabaret illusionist led him to play with special film effects such as the “stop trick” (stopping filming, substituting something in front of the camera for something else, and then resuming filming), multiple exposures, dissolves, and hand-painting colors on film, Cinemagician will present a live “happening” juxtaposed with a projected one. As a live magician (South Korean celebrity Eungyeol Lee) manually constructs the setting of the stage that he is standing on, a camera will simultaneously shoot the stage, and project its feed on a screen hanging above. As the performance progresses, the version shown on the screen will drift from a strict live feed to one transformed by illusions only possible in cinema, leaving the audience to oscillate between the “suspension of disbelief” and a paradoxically ravishing spectacle. Supported by The Korea Foundation and the TOBY Fund.
A Performa Commission with the Yokohama Festival for Video and Social Technology. Co-produced by Tina Kim Gallery, New York, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul.
One of the most prominent artists working in Korea today, Yeondoo Jung was born in 1969 in Jinju, South Korea and received his MFA from Goldsmiths College in 1997. He is the recipient of the 2007 Artist of the Year Award, given annually by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. He has had solo exhibitions in Asia, Europe as well as the United States and his works have also been shown in numerous museums and biennales worldwide, including the 51st Venice Biennale and the Liverpool Biennale in 2008.
Nov. 19 at 8 pm

Nov. 20 at 8 pm
Tickets: $20 / $16 Performa Members

Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawings IX
Nikhil Chopra
The New Museum
235 Bowery
Wednesday, November 4 12:00pm – Sunday, November 8 6:00pm
FREE – with museum admission.

Rabih Mroué’s Gift to New York
Rabih Mroué
PS 122
150 1st Ave.
Saturday, November 7 – Sunday, November 8, 8:00pm
Tickets: $10 at PS122. www.ps122.org

3 Lectures + 1 Story = 4 Evenings
Alexandre Singh
White Columns
320 W. 13th Street
Monday, November 9 – Thursday, November 12, 7:00 pm
FREE







History in the Making, or the Secret Diaries of Linda Schultz
Keren Cytter
The Kitchen
512 W 19th Street
Wednesday, November 11 8:00pm – Thursday, November 12 8:00pm

Tickets $15 at www.thekitchen.org

Chalk Playground, LitTwitChalk
Tan Lin
Asian American Writers Workshop
315 West 36th Street
Saturday, November 14 10:40am – Saturday, November 14 1:00pm
FREE

In the Room
Sung Hwan Kim
The New Museum
235 Bowery
Sunday, November 15 7:00pm -Thursday, November 19 7:00pm
Tickets: $12 / $10 Performa and New Museum Members.

Scratch the Grand Finale
Le Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street
Sunday, November 22 8:00pm
Tickets: $15 / $11 Performa Members


Click here for full calendar.

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Tonight 7 events will take place across Downtown Manhattan which includes 3 amazing Open Portfolio Artists. Make sure to check out Anindita Dutta’s talk at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Rundown of tonight’s events:

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
3-4:30pm Open Portfolio: Anindita Dutta’s Talk

Gallery 456
5:30-8pm Reception / 6pm Discussion

Art Projects International
6-8pm Reception

Ethan Cohen Fine Arts
6-9pm Opening Reception / Open Portfolio: Performance

THE Gallery
6-8pm Opening Reception

Rubin Museum of Art
6:30pm Open Portfolio: Artist Talk

Eli Klein Fine Art
7-10pm Reception / Discussion

Note: bolded events are part of ACAW’s Open Portfolio program.

You can find full descriptions of each event by going to the our event calendar.

View ACAW 09 Friday, May 15th in a larger map

_____________________________________________________

Also, be sure to check our Facebook and Twitter pages for constant updates and images for the rest of the week. Images and video from Thursday night’s events will be up soon.

You can check out all of them by going to our event calendar. There you can find quick descriptions and all the information you need to plan the night.

A quick rundown of tonights events:

The Chelsea Art Museum
5pm Exhibition Walkthrouths
6-9pm Reception
6:30 and 8:30pm Open Portfolio: Performances

Bose Pacia
6-8pm Opening Reception

Chambers Fine Art
6-8pm Opening Reception

Daneyal Mahmood Gallery
6-8pm Exhibition Viewing / 7pm Open Portfolio: Discussion

Gana Art Gallery
6-9pm Reception / 8pm Lecture

Kips Gallery
6-8pm Opening Reception / Artists Talk

Sepia International/The Alkazi Collection
6-8pm Opening Reception / Open Portfolio: Exhibition Viewing

Sundaram Tagore Gallery
6-8pm Opening Reception

THE Gallery
6-8pm Opening Reception

Thomas Erben Gallery
6-8pm Opening Reception

Tyler Rollins Fine Art
6-8pm Opening Reception

M.Y. Art Prospects
7-9pm Open Portfolio: Artist Talk / Reception

*Note: Bolded events are part of ACAW 2009’s Open Portfolio Program

See a map of Thursday’s events after the jump.


View ACAW09 Thursday, May 14th in a larger map

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Also, be sure to check our Facebook and Twitter pages for constant updates and images for the rest of the week. We’ve added a few albums to Facebook already.

I’ve been around it all my life. My dad was a painter and my mother is a ceramist, so it was encouraged early on…
I got interested in film and photography when I was about 15, discovered all the cool things that you could do with the camera and in a dark room in high school, and that’s what I ended up studying and practicing before considering/making art at the graduate level.

2. Briefly describe your art from the perspective of what it could tell us about you?

The collage and installation that I’m interested in now is not anything I’d have considered interesting four years ago. I suppose that means the way I think about making work has undergone a big shift.
The collages use ordinary materials and they parody the fashion of miniature painting that has become a sought after genre of contemporary painting from Pakistan, especially in the international art market. Its even considered a movement of sorts. There are some amazing artists developing their work in this way, but I was more interested in the way that the contemporary miniature has become fetishized. Also what it implies in terms of taste, and painterly skill and all the rest is an important thing for me. The collages were also inspired by certain political events that happened in Pakistan last year.
The other thing I am really interested in is the urban kitsch of Lahore, which is where the wallpaper made from posters comes in. I’m fascinated by the recycled imagery, the sloppy photoshop work, and the romanticism. This says a lot about the culture especially in relation to what is happening there politically, and I’m very interested in using that in my work.

3. What experiences have most influenced your choice of subject matter medium and style?

Growing up in Lahore in the 80’s. Moving between the developing and the developed world from a young age. Discovering my grandfather’s archive of photographs and travelogues at 12. All these things are pretty significant with recent projects.

4. Is your formal or informal training as an artist useful? How?

That’s a really good question. Everyone is marked by the ideologies of the institutions that they have been associated with. It is useful to some degree because it gives you a framework and structure, particularly useful at a basic level. But it is probably more important to undo that training, or develop your work beyond what they’ve set you up for.

5. Does your work reflect issues in yourself, in society or community?

Probably all of the above.

6. Do you appreciate culturally specific works of art? If so how does your personal and cultural background show up in your work?

In a way every work of art is specific to a culture and time and place, whether its Gordon Matta Clark splitting a house in two pieces, or Yinka Shonibare’s Victorian dresses that he commissions a seamstress to make with African fabric.
If you mean in terms of heritage and cultural background, I’m not sure how that works without getting clichéd in a world and an art system which is pretty international and lets face it, has it an audience that is quite jaded. But some artists have been very clever at dealing with these issues in their work, which is pretty cool and inspiring.
Yes, my personal and cultural background does play a part in my work. The collage work specifically deals with miniature painting and the poster’s with a particular kind of Lahori kitch… Before I dealt with these things and used them in my work a lot of people tended to project an ethnicity that I hadn’t intended, regardless, so it can be a pretty tricky thing.

7. Is there anything you would like to say about your local art scene or the international art market, art education, and or system for art exhibition?

A lot. It would exceed the word count for this interview so I’ll maybe I should start a blog or write a pamphlet.

8. How does your current portfolio fit into the rest of your body of work?

I’m still dealing with a new conceptual direction that I started last year, so its quite different from work I was developing in film and photography and also in terms of what its about. But there are probably a lot formal similarities that you can see as thread.

Back to Open Portfolios

I grew up in an intellectual’s family that never kept me distanced from, if not very close to, art scenes. Meanwhile, having lived among commoners in the age before the market boom and witnessed their desires, ambitions and personal disasters, I have had a life that is dense enough for telling a vivid story. Initially, I made art only as a compliment to those “major” things more closely related to my professional interests – my literary writings (illustrations to The Fireworks of Chang’an), architectural researches (an interpretative project about Battery Park City, New York), curating projects (Chinese Gardens for Living, Germany), and so on – but I soon found they could stand alone to be a different kind of stories. My works may be appropriately categorized as the “visionary” but cannot be completely separated from the “necessary”: on one side there is my intellectual curiosity and on the other is my instinct out of real life experience.

2. Briefly describe your art from the perspective of what it could tell us about you?

My art is what they called “art in general,” where the concept of “work” is intentionally kept ambivalent. To put this in another way, my works pay less attention to media, subject or “authorship” than to the larger context where they are created. This concerns an exploration of the artist/curator/designer overlap – the act of sifting through a scholar’s mindset for vivid stories, or of exhaustive inventorying of things for a personal history emerged out of world-making. Like-minded, I do not mind being called a scholar, a curator, a novelist or an artist, yet with the only wish to be consistent in addressing artistic, architectural or urbanistic issues as a whole. For my artistic pursuits I prefer to be a “Renaissance Man” than to be a specialist.

3. What experiences have most influenced your choice of subject matter, medium and style?

As mentioned above, I have lived a real commoner’s life. Such a life can never be furnished with a thin veneer. Nor need it be too “avant-garde.” As Chinese always believe, there is a more “natural” attitude towards artistic creation as long as you could maintain an appropriate balance between the articulated and the “chance-upon.” For the above reasons the (Chinese) “garden” become an important framing concept for all my art. My professional trainings render more affinity to space-making as well as a Constructivist appearance for my work. But they are also tangible, detailed and story-telling. My world-making strategies grew out simultaneously of sociological concerns and of aesthetic appeals. They imply not only collaged images, but a softer and more idiosyncratic approach to the generic enormity of the built environment.

4. Is your formal or informal training as an artist useful? How?

I learned essential art skills and most common senses from my grandparents and parents, artist neighbors and friends, not from any professional training. In fact I have found that this is very useful because it taught you why to make art on top of how.

5. Does your work reflect issues in yourself, in society or community? What would you say is the purpose for making art?

Yes, and it has to. Or we cannot imagine other reasons why we would need such a thing. But it also need do so strategically. Against two popular myths about “creativity” and about “societal merits,” I want to argue that art should get neither too close to nor too far from social appeals. For example, I made a series of visionary architectural drawings, wrapped up by a fabricated medieval tale, to illustrate my reflection on the current Chinese urbanist discussion. The story needs be novel enough to refresh people’s thoughts and distance them from various cultural and professional clichés. Meanwhile, it still needs be appropriately supported by arguments and premises that are generally accepted by most scholars in the related field.

6. Do you appreciate culturally specific works of art? If so how does your personal and cultural background show up in your work?

In my opinions, it is healthy not to be too self-conscious about your cultural identity. As an artist and author living in New York City for most of the year, I simply cannot be blind to what happens under your nose. In addition to my New York researches, for example, I have had my own visionary reinterpretation/intervention of Battery Park City (say, a city hooligan’s unexpected visit to the banker’s backyard, which is against the initial wishes of the planner). The topic about two contested views of urban environment is simply becoming universal, immediate and not bound to your cultural background. On the other hand, you need be persistent on your own approach and perspective. I recently translated Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York into Chinese and I particularly like his idea of “retrospective manifesto”: as a cultural outsider may help your theoretic perfection of the ready-made reality. The only condition is that you cannot be both onshore and drifting away.

7. Is there anything you would like to say about your local art scene or the international art market, art education, and or system for art exhibition?

So far, I am a beneficiary of such a system, not its victim, so I am probably not in a good position to make very objective and critical comments. In general, I think that contemporary art should open its door to a wider variety of audience. As my New York photography series suggests, our visual culture now presents a kind of peculiar “translucency” that is optically intriguing yet politically uncertain. The openness that it reveals is somehow still an illusion. The in-between status is aesthetically interesting, but there also lurks a danger that it leads to nowhere.

8. How does your current portfolio fit into the rest of your body of work?

They are highly correlated though they may look very different. As stated, my works can be summarized as a variety of different representation of “gardens.” As a subject matter, the “garden” first of all embodies an interdisciplinary, trans-scale approach, as opposed to a simple division of the physical reality into humane construct versus regional operation. Despite the popular impression that a garden might satisfy only trivial horticultural interests, as an artistic notion the “garden” introduces a phenomenological view of the built environment that is especially meaningful in our rapidly urbanized world. To design a “garden” necessitates a synthesis of numerous things: not only structure but also infrastructure, not only schemes and ideas, but also materials and textures, not only the static composition but also an eidetic memory, not only a top-down conception but also a bottom-up process of implementation. To perceive a “garden” will require a flexible and liminal perspective, in which solid, triumphal spaces are often collapsed into indefinite and intimate experiences. Altogether my works form a complete typology of “garden space” as embodied in today’s architectural practices.

Back to Open Portfolios