This week: Four events in Chinatown this Saturday by W.O.W. Project, Think!Chinatown, Chatham Square Library, and a panel discussion we’ll be part of inspired by a public art installation by artist Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong and that contemplates about the future of Chinatown; talks about immigration, an important criminal justice case involving a Chinese American that established rights of the arrested before Miranda rights were established, a sacred mountain in China, and the lasting consequence of the Opium War, an experimental drama and dance piece inspired by qigong practictioners; new exhibition listings featuring artist Po-Yen Wang and shows at Sean Kelly Gallery and Gagosian Gallery; and more….
Coming up:
May 18 – 27 – Sylvia Chang retrospective and in-person events at Metrograph
May 19 – Author Lauren Hilgers talks about her non-fiction work about a family’s escape from China
May 22 – A conversation with Xioyu Weng, Associate Curator at Guggenheim Museum
May 27 – Annual Passport to Taiwan Festival
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Our weekly listing includes open calls and other opportunities for artists, filmmakers, and others involved with Chinese culture in this intro section.
1) 4th D.C. Chinese Film Festival – The DC Chinese Film Festival has announced its open call for submissions. The Festival is determined to provide a global platform for Chinese-speaking filmmakers, films in the Chinese language, and films about Chinese-speaking cultures. We have been very impressed by the depth and breadth of its programming. Two years ago, we happened to be in DC during the festival and caught ‘The Chinese Mayor’ and was really impressed by the inquisitiveness of the audience and the long, unrushed, and thoughtful conversation with director Zhou Hao following the film.
Extended deadline: May 31, 2018
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2) 1st Dafen International Oil Painting Biennale – This inaugural international exhibition scheduled for October 2018 seeks works with the theme “Opening-up and Integration”. The call for submission explains the theme: “Since implementing the policy of opening to the outside world, China has been closely connected with the world. With the opening-up attitude, integrated with global regional culture, it deepens the thought and participation for this era of various countries and nations. It realizes the diversity and multiplicity of culture.”
International submission deadline: May 15, 2018
3) Lotus Lee Foundation Travel Fellowship – Through the Travel Fellowship, Lotus Lee Foundation hopes to stimulate an in-depth discussion on the future development of the theater and performing arts industry. The fellowship aim to encourage students and young professionals to exam this topic from different perspectives including business model, the market expands, art & technology integration, investment, cross-cultural communication, etc.
The fellowship will provide its recipients an opportunity to explore the theater industry in Shanghai, China; to broaden their experience and knowledge on the cultural exchange; to deepen their insights on the future of international performing arts field.
Further details to come.
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We add talks, films, performances, exhibitions, featuring or relating to Chinese, Taiwanese, diasporic artists and topics to our event and ongoing exhibition calendars as we learn of them.
We post frequently on our Facebook page. So check the page for links we share and get a heads up on events before we include them in these weekly posts. For art, images, and other instances of Chineseness we see, follow us on Instagram.
We’re looking for contributors! If you’re interested in writing an article, contributing photos or artwork to be featured with our weekly events and exhibitions listing, letting us know about an event, send a pitch at beyondchinatown@gmail.com.
UPCOMING EVENTS
1) Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story – While in prison, Eddy learned English, earned his college degree, published his poetry, and transformed into a nationally recognized leader—inspiring youth, activists, and politicians on issues of prison reform and youth violence prevention. As an advocate for Ethnic Studies in the prison college curriculum, Eddy was sent to solitary confinement for 11 months, where he garnered support from community activists and leaders. Even as Eddy fought systemic injustices, he continued to fight an internal battle. Spending nearly two decades in prison left a physical and mental toll on him, an all-too-common phenomenon for the incarcerated. Despite being released from immigration custody in 2007, Eddy has been ordered deported to China and awaits the final court decision. With the looming possibility of deportation, Eddy must negotiate what it means to “live freely”—attempting to rebuild a family, reconcile with his victims, and make a lasting change in society at large. (Synopsis from Breathin’ official website.)
Breathin’ is the winner of the Audience Award for Documentary Feature at CAAMFest, Jury Award for Best Documentary and Audience Award for Best Documentary at Austin Asian American Film Festival, and the Jason D. Mak Social Justice Award at the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon. This screening aims to highlight a highly unique and lesser known immigrant story, as well as celebrate up-and-coming independent filmmakers from the AAPI community.
Saturday, May 12, 1 PM
Chatham Square Library, 33 E Broadway
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2) Speculations: The Future of Chinatown – The last in a series of discussions inspired by artist Cheryl Wing-zi Wong’s Constellations, a public art work placed outside Seward Park Library and whose reconfigurable arrangement represents the changes in cities and communities. The first talk was about the history of the LES/Chinatown and changes leading to the present day. The second was about current issues facing Chinatown.
This third discussion will explore Chinatown as an enclave for immigrants; the specifics of Manhattan’s Chinatown as well as Chinatowns as a nation-wide network. What is the future of Chinatown? Who are the shareholders? What are their goals? Who writes its future? What are Chinatown’s less visible social infrastructure and social networks? Is Chinatown representative of changes in other neighborhoods and immigrant communities?
Discussion will be led by Wellington Z. Chen, Executive Director for the Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation; journalist Alan Chin, and Beyond Chinatown editor Andrew Shiue
Saturday, May 12, 2 PM
Seward Park Library, E. Broadway and Jefferson St.
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3) Resist Recycle Regenerate: ROOTS Final Showcase – Join Resist Recycle Regenerate fellows in celebrating their end-of-year art projects, a culmination of skills they have learned and shared through the series of community papermaking workshops. Incorporating handmade paper recycled from Lunar New Year confetti, these projects weave together and reflect on themes of lineage, personal/collective histories, and the role of art in centering women and resisting forces of erasure and invisibility. The RRR Fellows projects respond to questions of Chinese-American identity and heritage, contextualizing our lives within local and national histories of migration.
The afternoon will begin with a walk-in showcase from 5 – 6 PM and conclude with a conversation from 6 – 7 PM with the fellows about their experience being a part of the Resist Recycle Regenerate program as well as how they developed their projects from inception to implementation.
Saturday, May 12, 5 PM
Wing On Wo & Co, 26 Mott Street
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4) The Wind Flower 《风花》 – Columbia University School of the Arts will present the 31st annual Columbia University Film Festival to showcase the 37 short films made by this year’s film graduates. The films will be curated into 7 packages and to be screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from May 10 through to 14, and from June 10 through to 12 in Los Angeles.
In this year’s graduation show, Xi’an born female director Yuxi Li will be showing her most recent film The Wind Flower 《风花》 as a summary to her 9 years of studying filmmaking in the US. The film is a Chinese period drama and Wuxia fantasy, inspired by a mother-daughter relationship and teenage girl’s inner sentimentality. Two people imprisoned in adjacent rooms during the Tang Dynasty struggle to break free. As they escape, a truth is revealed about their identities.
Director Yuxi Li aspires to make films that are seriously cool, utilizing spectacles derived from ancient Chinese tales and wild contemporary fantasy and without being limited to the set conventions of a particular film genre. Yuxi’s previous film Tear of the Peony is a Wuxia queer period drama, which premiered at 2016 Telluride Film Festival and was recognised as “Best of Fest” at the 2017 Outfest.
The Wind Flower was an ambitious project that involves building two Tang Dynasty period film set from scratch in a film studio in New York, and involve extensive swordfight chorography, while capturing all these on 16 mm film. The project involved a majority young talents from China and studying in the US, including lead actor Yifan Luo and Nicky Zou, co-producer Sipei Fang, Haichao Fang, script supervisor Xixi Wang, and composer Nancy Li, amongst many others.
This 22-minute work-in-progress film joins five other films in the screening block
Sunday, May 13, 5 PM
Walter Reade Theater
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5) Fallen Empire, Rising Nation: Why the Opium War Still Matters Today – The Opium War has come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. As China reclaims its position as a world power, the humiliations of that conflict and the carving up of the country by Western colonial powers continue to haunt the national psyche, fueling nationalism. China Institute is proud to host Steven R. Platt, author of a new book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, for a conversation about the historic roots of China’s national insecurity, and a discussion of nationalism today.
Stephen R. Platt is a professor of Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His last book, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War, was a Washington Post Notable Book, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and won the Cundill History Prize. Platt lives with his wife and children in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Tuesday, May 15, 6:30 PM
China Institute, 40 Rector Street
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6) Here To Stay: The Asian American Immigrant Experience – The positive impact that immigrant populations bring to their adopted countries is now well documented and widely accepted. This is perhaps most evident in the U.S., where immigration has proved a remarkable engine of economic and demographic growth. However, the current political climate and the ongoing debate on immigration reform have not only questioned these contributions but has also led to what some have described as a “criminalization” of immigrants — in a country long known as “a nation of immigrants.”
Join Asia Society and Asian American Bar Association of New York for a special gathering to mark Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, when we will hear an array of moving personal stories and firsthand accounts of journeys to America. “Here To Stay” will present both the human impact of the modern immigrant journey, the tensions of the current moment, as well as an understanding of how these individuals are contributing to enrich the fabric of American life – just as so many have before. Personal stories will be followed by a moderated panel of experts to discuss the context of the immigration debate today.
Tuesday, May 15, 6:30 PM
Asia Society
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7) Crime and Mystery in Translation – Writer and translator Jeremy Tiang will read his translation of The Borrowed by Hong Kong writer Chan Ho-Kei as part of Us & Them, a a quarterly Brooklyn-based reading series dedicated to giving literary translators with parallel careers as writers and artists a place to showcase both sides of their work.
The Borrowed tells the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a Hong Kong detective whose career spans fifty years of the territory’s history. A deductive powerhouse, Kwan becomes a legend in the force, nicknamed “the Eye of Heaven” by his awe-struck colleagues. Divided into six sections told in reverse chronological order—each of which covers an important case in Kwan’s career and takes place at a pivotal moment in Hong Kong history from the 1960s to the present day—The Borrowed follows Kwan from his experiences during the Leftist Riot in 1967, when a bombing plot threatens many lives; the conflict between the HK Police and ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in 1977; the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 to the Handover in 1997; and the present day of 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve his final case, the murder of a local billionaire, while Hong Kong increasingly resembles a police state. Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultra-violent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing–all coalescing into a dynamic portrait of this fascinating city.
Tracing a broad historical arc, The Borrowed reveals just how closely everything is connected, how history always repeats itself, and how we have come full circle to repeat the political upheaval and societal unrest of the past. It is a gripping, brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice.
Tuesday, May 15, 6:30 PM
The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street
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8) Studies: Three Hypotheses –
Hypothesis: Labor is the body
Hypothesis: The surface contaminates
Hypothesis: Collectivity exists only in a vacuum
Through close study of archival photographs of Qigong practitioners in 1980s Beijing, Studies approaches Qigong as an alternative body demonstration born of ideological command: thou shalt produce desirable bodies, which, in modern biopolitical terms, are measured by health and productivity. Departing from commonly accepted, oppositional relations in recent history of protest in China, as manifest in the iconic Tiananmen Square Tank Man image, Qigong provides an interface that allows individuals to exercise their bodies as a last resort in public space for the momentarily ungoverned—an impossible, ungainly, precarious position that begs the question: What kind of body can we possibly cultivate other than the one that stands alone, stiff, in opposition, immobile? What craft exactly is our craft that allows us to exist while protesting a political reality, which is not just an event but also a transformative apparatus?
This installment is a trio in the Studies dance cycle, presented as part of the Crossing Boundaries series at the Dixon Place, curated by Marcia Monroe.
Choreographed by Tingying Ma
Dramaturged by Connie Kang
Sculpture by Jessi Ali Lin
Interpreted by Jessica Lam, Fumihiro Kikuchi, and Jiyon Song
Tuesday, May 15, 7:30 PM
Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street
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9) Mount Wutai, Buddhist Sacred Geography, and the Bodhisattva of Wisdom – The northern Chinese mountain range of Mount Wutai has been an important site of international pilgrimage for over a millennium. Home to more than one hundred temples, the entire range is considered a Buddhist paradise on earth, and has received visitors ranging from emperors to monastic and lay devotees. On May 16, join art historian Wen-shing Chou and preeminent Sino-Tibet expert Gray Tuttle to explore the changing meaning and significance of one of the world’s greatest religious sites. The event is held in conjunction with China Institute’s current gallery exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens, and will celebrate the launch of Chou’s new book, Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain.
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30 PM
China Institute
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10) Rebirth: Artist Talk with Kang Muxiang – Artist Kang Muxiang will discuss his art and the creative journey of Rebirth, a new public art installation located in Midtown Manhattan’s Garment District Plazas and made up of monumental embryonic sculptures, created using recycled elevator cables from Taipei 101.
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30 PM
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York
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11) 和 [hé] – Preview and Panel Discussion – This month the Taiwan Academy in New York will present a contemporary art exhibition and film screenings centered on “multiculturalism and immigration.” This series of events aim to capture the impacts of globalization on Taiwanese society through various lenses, and through the perspectives of the participating artists.
As of now, the foreign worker population in Taiwan has grown to over six hundred thousand people, yet they exist outside of Taiwanese society. [和heʼ] presents a diverse collection of mediums including photography, videography, art installation, and sculpture. The exhibition uses Taiwan as a subject to question our ideas and interpretations of commonality, of being-in-common without presuming a common-being, of searching for commonality without defining that one specific thing we all share in common.
Curated by FOGSTAND Gallery, the contemporary art exhibition [和heʼ] features 9 artists : Chang En-Man, Lee Jo-Mei, Lin Jin-Da (from Taiwan) and other artists including Joo Choon Lin, Chun Kai Feng (Singapore), Song-Yun Kim (Korea), Fiona Burke (Ireland), Samuel Weinburg (USA), and Brandon Cramm (UK).
Thursday, May 17, 6:30 PM
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York
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12) The Third Degree by Scott D. Seligman – Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Law and Order or almost any crime drama on American television can probably recite a suspect’s “Miranda rights” by heart. You know – the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, etc. But what most people don’t know is that these rights had their roots in the compelling case of a young Chinese man accused of murdering three of his countrymen in Washington, DC in 1919.
The nation’s capital had never seen anything quite like it: three foreign diplomats with no known enemies assassinated in the city’s tony Kalorama neighborhood, and no obvious motive or leads. The Washington police were baffled. But once they zeroed in on a suspect, young Ziang Sung Wan, a sometime Chinese student living in New York, they held him incommunicado without formal arrest for more than a week until they had browbeaten him into a confession.
Join Scott D. Seligman for the launch of The Third Degree: The Triple Murder that Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice, part murder mystery, part courtroom drama and part landmark legal case that tells the forgotten story of a young man’s abuse by the police and his arduous, seven-year journey through the legal system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis and even J. Edgar Hoover. It culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice Louis Brandeis that set the stage for Miranda v. Arizona many years later.
Thursday, May 17, 6:30 PM
Museum of Chinese in America
ONGOING FILMS, SHOWS, AND EVENTS
1) Come You Back to Maynila Bay – A community engagement printmaking project by Karl Orozco that uses hand-carved mahjong tiles to retell family narratives of his lola’s* underground gambling den in the Philippines. In partnership with Think!Chinatown and Chashama, Orozco activates the space at 384 Broadway to create a public gambling hall and lead inter-generational printmaking workshops with Chinatown’s youth and elders.
Orozco will run printmaking workshops on Sundays throughout May. where he will invite audience members to play games of mahjong and create printed “bills” recording their winning hands. Inspired by his lola’s Manila gambling den – conceived to keep her absent husband homebound – and by his own childhood experiences being told that mahjong was “a game for adults,” Orozco hopes to create an inclusive gambling space where participants of all ages feel engaged and leave lucky.
Opening reception: Saturday, May 12, 6 – 8 PM
Open Hours: Monday and Tuesdays, 2 – 7 PM
Saturdays and Sundays, 12 – 6 PM
Workshops: Sundays, May 13, 20 and 27, 1- 5 PM
Closing Reception: Sunday, May 27, 4 – 6 PM
Presented with Think!Chinatown
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2) I Am Your Mom 《我是你妈》－ Away at school at last, a lonelier Zhao finds there may be more to miss at home than there is to discover on her own. Meanwhile, things are not all well with her mom, as career troubles and domestic problems collide to overwhelm her. (synopsis by Mubi)
At AMC Empire 25
ART EXHIBITIONS
Group Shows, Local Artists, and Other Art Events:
Hong Kong artist Wong Ping and Chinese artists Song Ta and Shen Xin are part of the New Museum’s triennial group show Songs for Sabotage which “questions how individuals and collectives around the world might effectively address the connection of images and culture to the forces that structure our society. Together, the artists in Songs for Sabotage propose a kind of propaganda, engaging with new and traditional media in order to reveal the built systems that construct our reality, images, and truths. The exhibition amounts to a call for action, an active engagement, and an interference in political and social structures urgently requiring them.”
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Opening and Newly Listed:
1) Po-Yen Wang – An Obscure Silhouette (Flux Factory, 5/18 – 5/20) – A solo exhibition by Po-Yen Wang. It brings together a body of work exploring the multi-layered identity within a person, incorporating video, installation and sculpture. ‘Six Excerpts from a Journal’ juxtaposes outer space imagery and a monologue addressing the relationship between Taiwan and the US weaved with personal narratives. ‘Crossing’ utilizes the interior of rooms as a metaphor to illustrate an immigrant’s mindset in two different time zones. ‘A Fabricated Personal Archive’ manipulates childhood imagery found on the Internet to question the relationship between human memory and digital archive. ‘Construction of Intimacy’ seeks to expose the fragility of a digital portrait yet consolidate it with the physical self.
Po-Yen Wang is a visual artist living and working between New York and Taiwan. His art practice primarily takes the form of video and installation, creating an immersive environment to evoke the viewers’ emotions and imaginations. His work usually derives from a personal experience and then evolves into a broad research of the people or place he is associated with, in order to explore the collective history and memory. Using digital media especially moving images and 3D animation as primary medium, he is concerned about how complex and intricate our identities are under the influence of digital culture and globalization; how we perceive outside world and our own existence in an age when our bodies are extended by advancing technology and our perceptions of reality are deeply intertwined with the cinematic.
Opening reception: May 18, 7 – 10 PM
Po-Yen Wang – ‘A Fabricated Personal Archive’
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2) Qiurui Du – A Bizarre Dream (Van Der Plas Gallery, 5/9 – 5/15) – Through his vibrant paintings and illustrations Mr. Du offers a perspective on the rapidly changing landscape of the world, particularly his hometown of Beijing, China.
In an age where technology proliferates at breakneck speeds, the world we live in is rapidly evolving, reducing landmarks and nostalgic locations to memories. It is through this lens that Mr. Du depicts his hometown with nightmarish clarity. In a world gone mad, Du questions the good, the bad and the ugly of
contemporary culture with a self-conscious and wry wit.
Du populates his urban landscapes with a combination of familiar accoutrement such as fruit stands, lanterns or subways and quirky, warped creatures, who often come from cult horror films. Each painting has been derived from a reference photograph and the artist’s personal memories and opinions regarding the scene at hand. Often influenced Du’s own warped sense of humor, fueled by his own social anxieties. Beijing Bikini makes reference to the street culture of Beijing, their efforts at good business and theinclination of old men to show their swollen bellies or bikinis as Du playfully refers to them. These paintings act as a space of comfort. While his former hometown now has a nightmarish haze over it, Du’s commentary breathes life into the technological wasteland.
In his series of illustrations I Feel Green Sometimes, Mr. Du embodies himself as a green creature. This creature is equal measures critical and fabulous often clad in fishnets and stilettos or pigtails. In this series he skewers the notion of the “summer bod” among other ridiculous tendencies within our culture. He eschews gender norms in exchange for confidence. Of his work, Du says, “[He takes] serious bsituations and transforms it in a silly way…you only live once, be happy.” Somewhere along his journey to rediscover his hometown, he found a new place to call home within the dreamy oddities of contemporary life.
Qiurui Du – ‘A Bizarre Dream: Scenario 2’, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 60 in.
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3) Cecile Chong – El Dorado / The New 49ers (Lewis H. Latimer House Museum, 5/12 – 10/14) – El Dorado (meaning “The Golden” in English) is an art installation that celebrates the 49% of New Yorker households that speak a language other than English. This installation consists of 100 colored “guagua (infant)” sculptures, 49 of them painted gold to reflect the 49% New Yorkers, presented as a contemporary archeological site. It also pays tribute to Lewis H. Latimer’s contribution to electrical light by adding a glowing-in-the-dark element in the guaguas.
Cecile Chong has received fellowships and residencies including the Joan Mitchell Center, Wave Hill Winter Workspace, the Lower East Side Printshop, MASS MoCA Studios, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, The Center for Book Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, AIM – Bronx Museum, Urban Artist Initiative NYC, Aljira Emerge and the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. Solo exhibitions include Selena Gallery, BRIC House, Emerson Gallery Berlin, Germany, Honey Ramka Project Space, Figuresworks, Praxis International Art Project Space, Corridor Gallery and ArtSPACE. Group exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio, Nevada Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Arts, Hunterdon Museum, CUE Art Foundation, Wave Hill, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Sue Scott Gallery in the US and the Cynthia Corbett Gallery in London. Cecile’s work is in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, Museum of Chinese in America, The Center for Book Arts and Citibank Art Advisory. Her work has been reviewed in Artnet, Huffington Post, El Diario La Prensa, Singtao Daily,3dotswater.com and The New York Times. She received an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design in 2008, an MA in education from Hunter College, and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College. Her early schooling took place in Ecuador, Macau and China. Cecile lives and works in New York and is currently part of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program.
Cecile Chong – El Dorado
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4) Liu Wei – 180 Faces (Sean Kelly Gallery, 5/5 – 6/16) – This first exhibition of new work by revered Chinese painter Liu Wei to be shown in the United States since 2000 comprises 180 unique “portraits”, paintings that build upon an array of influences informing the artist’s work, from Chinese calligraphy to Expressionism, whilst marking an extraordinary foray into totally new territory. These paintings were first exhibited at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing in March 2018. There
Liu Wei placed each painting in a hand carved, Rococo-style frame lushly and viscously painted with white acrylic, evoking a sense of delicacy and expressiveness. The works combine a mixture of acrylic, charcoal, markers, pen and other pigments that are used to create distinctions in texture and color. Drawing further attention to their materiality, Liu Wei intentionally broke the glass panes on many of the paintings. Conjuring references as diverse as Velasquez and Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin, Ensor and Brueghel, Liu Wei expertly depicts the human condition, combining figuration and abstraction in a manner reminiscent of Bacon and Freud. With this body of work, Liu Wei creates a visual language that veers between reality and artificiality, inviting the viewer to look closely and draw their own judgments between truth and illusion.
Liu Wei – ‘180 Faces’, 2017 – 2018. 10 framed paintings, dimensions variable.
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5) Hao Liang – Portraits and Wonders (Gagosian, 5/8 – 6/23) – An exhibition of new works by Hao Liang, one of the foremost contemporary artists working in traditional Chinese ink painting. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in the United States.
Seeking to revivify and extend the conventions of ink and wash painting, Hao spent many years studying Chinese classical paintings, acquiring vast knowledge of historical works, as well as the many motifs and poetic traditions related to them. Yet, in his silk handscrolls, portraits, and landscape paintings, Hao filters these techniques and themes through a contemporary cosmopolitan consciousness, effortlessly weaving together Su Shi and Shostakovich; Zhao Mengfu and Sergei Eisenstein; Wang Wei and Gilles Deleuze.
In this exhibition, which includes intricate, masterfully painted landscapes and portraits, Hao considers the perpetual flux of nature and time. Streams and Mountains without End (2017) is a silk scroll measuring more than thirty-two feet. Departing from his previous narrative scrolls, Hao seeks to unite the details and symbols of traditional Chinese landscapes with twentieth-century art theory, bringing together Ming dynasty scholar and artist Dong Qichang (1555–1636) and Russian modern artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) in a panoramic sweep. Reading from right to left, the viewer first encounters a man’s profile, an interlocutor between reality and representation. Implying multiple dimensions, various strange scenes unfurl and intersect. Mountains, trees, waves, and rolling clouds give way to sinuous patterns painted in gray, blue, green, and red, inspired by the muscular and vascular systems of human anatomy. Then, Kandinsky’s telescoping circles are launched into swirling orbit while a man in red views the scene from outer space, suggesting a divine, cosmic perspective. At the end of the scroll, the same figure from the beginning stands naked in a refracted abstract realm, looking back at a journey that is both micro- and macrocosmic.
Continue reading press release on the exhibition page.
Closing soon:
Yingqian Cao – The Illusion of Certainty (Pearl River Mart Gallery, 5/12)
Qiurui Du – A Bizarre Dream (Van Der Plas Gallery, 5/9 – 5/15)
Po-Yen Wang – An Obscure Silhouette (Flux Factory, 5/18 – 5/20)
Jia-Jen Lin – Funes’ Broken Mirror (Rubber Factory, 4/21 – 5/23)
Cici Wu: Upon Leaving the White Dust (47 Canal at 291 Grand Street, 4/18 – 5/27)
Crystal W. M. Chan Solo Exhibition (The National Arts Club, 4/30 – 5/25)
Current shows:
Visit the exhibition calendar for details for the current shows listed below. Check the museum’s or gallery’s website for hours of operation.
Yingqian Cao – The Illusion of Certainty (Pearl River Mart Gallery, 5/12)
Qiurui Du – A Bizarre Dream (Van Der Plas Gallery, 5/9 – 5/15
Po-Yen Wang – An Obscure Silhouette (Flux Factory, 5/18 – 5/20)
Jia-Jen Lin – Funes’ Broken Mirror (Rubber Factory, 4/21 – 5/23)
Cici Wu: Upon Leaving the White Dust (47 Canal at 291 Grand Street, 4/18 – 5/27)
Crystal W. M. Chan Solo Exhibition (The National Arts Club, 4/30 – 5/25)
Subject: China (NYU China House, 4/13 – 5/31)
Dik Liu: Still Lifes (Gallery 456, 5/4 – 6/1)
Yan Shanchun: West Lake II (Chambers Fine Art, 4/19 – 6/2)
Yun-Fei Ji – Rumor Ridicules and Retributions (James Cohan Gallery (Grand Street), 4/28 – 6/17)
Hao Liang – Portraits and Wonders (Gagosian, 5/8 – 6/23)
Chen Dongfan: Nevermore (昨夜星辰昨夜风) (Fou Gallery, 4/14 – 6/24)
The Fuck Off Generation Chinese Avant Garde in the Post-Mao Era, Part 2 (Ethan Cohen, 5/10 – ??)
Liu Wei – 180 Faces (Sean Kelly Gallery, 5/5 – 6/16)
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong: Constellation (Seward Park, June 2017 – June 2018)
Spirited Creatures: Animal Representations in Chinese Silk and Lacquer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 10/21/17 – 7/22/18)
Mel Chin: All Over the Place (Queens Museum, 4/8 – 8/12)
Land: Zhang Huan and Li Binyuan (MoMA PS1, 4/15 – 9/3)
Chinese Medicine in America: Converging Ideas, People, and Practices (Museum of Chinese in America, 4/26 – 9/9)
On the Shelves of Kam Wah Chung & Co.: General Store and Apothecary in John Day, Oregon (Museum of Chinese in America, 4/26 – 9/9)
Cecile Chong – El Dorado / The New 49ers (Lewis H. Latimer House Museum, 5/12 – 10/14)
One Hand Clapping (Guggenheim Museum, 5/4 – 10/21)
Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 8/26/17 – 1/9/19)
Lead image: Nanjing Sun Yat-sen Memorial. Photo by Andrew Shiue