One Million is a video work depicting the counting of bills. Divided into three versions, the video first shows a number of Japanese ten-thousand-yen bills being counted without in an orderly, efficient manner. In Two Million , a similar counting of one-thousand-dollar bills from Hong Kong follows. However, a closer viewing of the videos reveal that they were created by looping the same scene of moving fingers, giving the illusion that many bills are being counted when, in fact, only a few are in the scene. Beyond commenting on the illusions of transactions and interdependencies in a regional economy, the video calls attention to the way media distort quantity as well as manipulations of values occurring with the transcoding of economic units into visual data. The false appearance of accountability presented in One Million and Two Million highlight the instability underlying the desire for convenience and efficiency in a globalized, media-dependent economy.
Kwan Sheung Chi obtained a third honor B.A. degree in Fine Art from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2003, Kwan manufactured an exhibition history and CV for himself, hosting a retrospective as his first solo show towards the end of art school in order to critique the unspoken conventions of the contemporary art system. In general, Kwan’s works explore the nexus between art and text and use repetition as a constant measure of time and a metaphor for life, as he states: “Repetition gives the work power.” He is especially interested in how meaning is constructed, who makes art, and its interactions with other people, places, and things as part of the work’s cultural context.
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...
In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...
In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...