16:50 minutes
Extrastellar Evaluations is a multimedia installation produced during Yin-Ju Chen’s residency at Kadist San Francisco in the spring of 2016. Chen’s project departs from a 19th century theory popular within Western biogeography that posited the existence of a “lost land” or ancient continent called Lemuria that had sunk beneath the Indian and Pacific Ocean due to cataclysmic geological change. As a result, its inhabitants, the Lemurians, found refuge in Mount Shasta, California. Through a semi-fictional approach, the video component of the installation Extrastellar Evaluations III: Entropy: 25800 envisions a version of history in which the Lemurians lived among humans in the 1960s under the guise of various renowned conceptual and minimal artists (Carl Andre, Mel Bochner, and James Turrell to name a few). The video proposes that humans interpreted and appropriated the geometric-shaped objects the Lemurians created as conceptual and minimalist artworks, when in fact, the objects were transmission devices used to report human actions to their mother planet. Key to understanding the entire installation, the video component takes the form of a channeled message from Adama, High Priest and spiritual leader of the Lemurians. In the video 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). The work questions our understanding of our past, while raising consciousness toward our existence on earth. In this context, the installation highlights the risks of human activities, echoing today’s anxieties toward issues of global warming, ongoing conflicts, and exploitation of resources. Addressing earlier signs of humans’ loss of faith in the reality of life, Chen’s work suggests a larger, long-term phenomenon rather than a recent trend linked to the development of media and information technology.
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.
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...
Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
Hill of Poisonous Trees (three men) (2008) exemplifies the artist’s signature photo-weaving technique, in which he collects diverse found photographs—portraits of anonymous people, stills from blockbuster films, or journalistic images—cuts them into strips, and weaves them into new composition...
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...
Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art...
In Restaurant, Canton, Ohio (2011), a convenience store offers food, liquor, and Coca Cola to an empty street...
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...
Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...
Gutmann’s photographs Untitled Nob Hill and From the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge are some of the oldest pieces in the Kadist Collection and serve as historical anchors for many of the more recent works...
This artwork was part of a group of projects presented in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013...
War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist...
The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) is titled after a 14th-century medieval treatise on faith, in which “the cloud of unknowing” that stands between the aspirant and God can only be evoked by the senses, rather than the rational mind...
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...
His series, The Golden State, harkens back to his early career and his photographic training...
Tarantism is the name of disease which appeared in southern Italy, resulting from the bite of a spider called Tarantula...
In the early 20th century, the Hercules Engine Company was doing a brisk business producing customized, heavy-duty engines...