Through a semi-fictional approach, Extrastellar Evaluations envisions a version of history in which alien inhabitants, the Lemurians, lived among humans under the guise of various renowned conceptual and minimal artists in the 1960s (Carl Andre, Mel Bochner, and James Turrell to name a few). If humans interpreted and appropriated the geometric-shaped works they created as conceptual and minimalist artworks, the objects were in fact transmission devices the Lemurians used to report back on human actions to their mother planet. The video takes the form of a channeled message from Adama, High Priest and spiritual leader of the Lemurians. Adama attempts to give viewers clues to decipher the history of the Lemurians, the purpose of their existence on earth, and information about the identities of their agents (artists).
Yin-Ju Chen is a multidisciplinary artist, working in video, photography, drawing, and multi-media installation. She interprets social power and history through cosmological systems, using astrology, sacred geometry, and alchemical symbols to consider themes of human behavior, nationalism, imperialism, racism, state violence, totalitarianism, utopian formations, and collective thinking. Recent works illustrate the inevitability of cycles of history, developing the scope of Chen’s long-term consideration of notions of power and collective (un)consciousness. Chen was in residency at KADIST San Francisco in 2016.
This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
The Striation Scrap Lamps (vertical and horizontal) although functioning as utilitarian objects also represent Jason Meadows’s interest in a certain kind of crafted sculpture...
Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
The version of Frontier acquired by the Kadist Collection consists of a single-channel video, adapted from the monumental installation and performance that Aitken presented in Rome, by the Tiber River, in 2009...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
In the Collage II (Marie) (2013), Shorr seems to have an ostensibly clear subject, a female subject identified in the work’s title as “Marie,” a slim but athletic woman with brown hair pictured reclining atop a brilliantly white sheet draped against a marbled tan-and-white backdrop...
Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
Jason Meadows’s Do Not Pass Go (2011) depicts Richie Rich, “the poor little rich boy” of the 1950s comic strip...
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...
This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...
In the early 20th century, the Hercules Engine Company was doing a brisk business producing customized, heavy-duty engines...
Titled afterTruman Capote’s protagonist famously played by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Holly Golightly (2011) captures the essence of the character: seductive and bold, mysterious and capricious...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...
Blindseye Arranger (Max) (2013) features a greyscale arrangement of rudimentary shapes layered atop one another like a dense cluster of wood block prints, the juxtaposition of sharp lines and acute angles creating an abstracted field of rectangular and triangulated forms composed as if in a cubist landscape...
Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city...
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...