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 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...
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...
A residency program in the blazing hot city of Honda, Colombia, inspired artist Nicolás Consuegra to consider the difficulty in understanding the needs of a distant community...
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 lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
The central point of Vanishing Point is the most direct physiological reaction of the body to the environment...
In the six-minute single-channel video Higher Horse , Kate Gilmore perches herself on top of a tall pile of plaster blocks, in front of a pink colored wall with vein-like streaks of red...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
State Terrorism in the ultimate form of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood features a portrait of the artist wearing a zipped utilitarian jacket reminiscent of a worker’s uniform, with one arm behind his back as if forced to ingest a bundle of stick—a literal portrayal to the definition of fascism...