We are thrilled to share that Tishan Hsu’s Outer Banks of Memory has joined the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art. We would like to express our gratitude to everyone involved who made this possible. It is significant that Hsu, a Chinese-American artist, is taking a place in the art historical canon during this pivotal moment when Asian-Americans are re-asserting their presence in American culture.
“Outer Banks of Memory (1984) is one of the prescient works [Tishan Hsu] created to address screen-based interaction and was just acquired by the Whitney. The large-scale painting-sculpture hybrid depicts illusionistic, organic folds and wrinkles in addition to orifices that resemble technological input/outputs. It brings together the artifice of the screen and its self-reflexivity with the contortions of the human body—the body that responds to and integrates with the technology it has created.”
Para Site and Rockbund Art Museum are thrilled to continue their fruitful collaboration with the new exhibition, Curtain, opening on 14 May 2021 at Para Site’s home and on 15 May 2021 at the institution’s temporary venue in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan. Curtain is a continuation of the unique dialogue and partnership between the two institutions, which began in 2019 with An Opera for Animals that premiered at Para Site, with a jointly curated edition travelling to Rockbund Art Museum subsequently.
Artists: Chantal Akerman, Xyza Cruz Bacani, Leigh Bowery, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cao Guimarães, Ho Sin Tung, Hu Yinping, Hu Yun, Derek Jarman, Shuang Li, Minouk Lim, Gustav Metzger, Ocean & Wavz, Jacolby Satterwhite, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Tan Jing, Robel Temesgen, Jason Wee, Cici Wu, Wu Jiaru, Stella Zhang, Jasphy Zheng, and Zhou Tao
Curators: Cosmin Costinas, Larys Frogier, Celia Ho, Anqi Li, Billy Tang, and Xu Tiantian Collaborators: Biljana Ciric and Mathieu Copeland
James T. Hong was awarded the Grand Prize in the Taiwan Competition of the 2021 Taiwan International Documentary Festival for Opening Closing Forgetting (2018). This film is a visual record of long-lasting open wounds and the disappearance of collective memory. Hong examines the current plight of a group of elderly Chinese peasants, who, as civilians, have been made victims of the Imperial Japanese Army’s lethal human experimentation in Northeast China, suffering from festering wounds for over 70 years. Hong also visits some surviving soldiers of Unit 731——Japan’s notorious regiment devoted to biological warfare during World War II.
In the competition judge Dimitris Kerkinos’ words: “[Opening Closing Forgetting is] a powerful, courageous and well-researched film which brings to light an unknown historical trauma that seventy years later hasn’t healed yet. A topic with universal resonance, a visual record of the horror of biological experimentation and warfare on humans, that comments, at the same time, on the disappearance of memory and the denial of assuming responsibility.”
The Liverpool Biennial plans to launch its Second Chapter on 19th May, 2021. “Liverpool Biennial 2021 opens the second ‘inside’ chapter of exhibitions across the city on 19 May, bringing together the complete presentation of the 11th edition, The Stomach and the Port. In line with Government guidance, this final chapter will open the doors to the city, welcoming visitors from across the country to safely enjoy the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary art.”
Jes Fan presents three new works at The Lewis’s Building titled Network (For Staying Low to the Ground) (2021), Network (For Survival) (2021) and Network (For Dispersal) (2021), as part of his series Networks (2020-ongoing). The sprawling new work takes the form of an entangled network of borosilicate tubing, punctuated with biomorphic forms. The sculpture also acts as an incubator for black mould, which reflects on Fan’s sustained interest in racialised fear of contamination, as well as his engagement with interspecies kinship – as allegorized by the fungal mycelium. It describes a way of learning to care for what is not human.
Supported by Empty Gallery, Canada Council for the Arts, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, London, and The High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom.
Pavel S. Pyś explores Jes Fan’s work in the Futurity issue (#36) of CURA magazine:
“In 1986, performance artist Stelarc wrote: “skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality […] technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” While Stelarc posited on the cybernetic—hybridizing the bodily with the robotic—his assessment shares common ground with the work of New York-based artist Jes Fan, whose works often begin with a contemplation of skin. Drawing on laboratory processes of distillation, ex- traction, and injection, Fan turns our attention to the skin as a coded boundary that conceals a vast unseen molecular world inextricably linked to our assumptions of identity, race, and gender.
The fifth iteration of the Hammer’s acclaimed biennial opens on April 17, bridging east and west with complementary presentations at the Hammer and The Huntington. Free, advance reservations are required. Capacity is limited. Reservations are made available on a first come, first served basis every other Tuesday. Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s installation the input of this machine is the power an output contains (2020) will be on view at The Hammer Museum. Register for admission at the link below.
On the occasion of Hello America at Karma International, curator Gianni Jetzer will talk to artist Tishan Hsu on Karma International’s Instagram Live on April 6, 12PM EST. View a recording of the discussion at the link below. The exhibition is on view until May 8, 2021.
We are pleased to share that two new works by Henry Shum, Sol and Memory Fallacy, are on view in Fifteen Painters at Andrew Kreps Gallery’s 22 Cortlandt Alley location from April 2 – May 8. Occupying both floors of the gallery, the exhibition brings together fifteen artists born after 1980, who each take distinct and diverse approaches to the medium of painting. From those that use painting for its immediacy to those who utilize it for project-based investigations, the exhibition does not aim to identify a specific theme or trend. Instead, it demonstrates the continued mutability of painting as a practice, and its malleable nature that extends beyond its physical application. The exhibition features works by Han Bing, Gabriella Boyd, Guglielmo Castelli, Bendt Eyckermans, Daisuke Fukunaga, Lewis Hammond, Behrang Karimi, Dominique Knowles, Dana Lok, Megan Marrin, Leslie Martinez, Matt Morris, Sophie Reinhold, Henry Shum, Kate Spencer Stewart.
The 13th Gwangju Biennale opens today (April 1), and will run through May 9, 2021.
Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning sets out to examine the spectrum of the extended mind through artistic and theoretical means. Directed by Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala, the 13th Gwangju Biennale (1 April–9 May, 2021) will feature a dynamic program encompassing an exhibition, a performance program, an online publishing platform and publications, and a series of public forums bringing together artists, theoretical scientists, and systems thinkers. The Biennale argues for the primacy of plurality, positing that points of origin and influence ought to be accessed not only through the dominant technological systems and machinic vocabularies traceable to the West but also relate to heterodox ancestries.
Tishan Hsu is one of the 70+ artists featured in the exhibition. Outside the installation in Gwangju, visitors can also support the exhibition with their robust online programming.
Opening today Karma International in Zurich— Hello America, a group exhibition featuring Jennifer Bolande, Jessica Diamond, Tishan Hsu. Curated by Gianni Jetzer, it will be on view through 8 May 2021.