Variable dimensions
Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials. One of the nine parts of this work is Page 22 (Half Folded Library) , a site-specific installation for which Pak covertly folded dog-ears on page 22 of every second book (a total of approximately 15,500 books) in the 58th Street Branch Library in Manhattan. By claiming it as a “solo exhibition,” Pak intentionally turned a public institution into a private and personal museum where his works are more or less a “permanent collection.” Being open-ended as far as further interpretation (or not) by readers who encounter the folded pages, the project tests the political and social potential of personal gestures in the public realm. It is also an ironic commentary on the increasingly self-estranged yet narcissistic art world.
Pak Sheung Chuen’s practice can be described as immaterial, everyday, process-based, and collaborative. Without producing additional objects, Pak’s projects usually start with a familiar but not necessarily acknowledged idea. However, they go beyond a conceptual gesture. Through repetition and continuously anonymous intervention, the idea gradually starts to take form and infiltrates into the surroundings, leaving subtle traces. Although never visually spectacular, Pak’s projects reconfigure a personal system that involves bodily actions and effectively challenges the existing societal logic and commodity-based culture.
The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...
In the video installation A Gust of Wind , Zhang continues to explore notions of perspective and melds them seamlessly with a veiled but incisive social critique...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Empire’s Borders II – Passage and Empire’s Borders II – Workers are from the three-channel film installation Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprise, Inc...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
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...
A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...