Happy Holidays!

Hello everyone!

Taking a short break for the holidays, will post again after the new year. In the meantime, please go visit Altered States, Asia Society's exhibition of works by Zhang Huan. The show is up until January 20, 2008.

The Asia Society is located at 725 Park Avenue.

$10 general admission
$7 for seniors
$5 for students with ID
Free for members and children
Free Fridays from 6 pm to 9 pm. Plus, go now and you will receive a pass for free admission the next time you visit. So please go multiple times!

For more information about the exhibit, visit the website!

Artist: Bird Head

Bird Head is the name of the two-person photography team Song Tao and Ji Weiyu.

Biography
1979 - Ji Weiyu born in Shanghai, China
1980 - Song Tao born in Shanghai, China
2000 - Both graduated from the Shanghai Arts and Crafts School, China
Live and work in Shanghai, China

2004-2005 Series

According to ShangART, Bird Head works "with the theme of the city and life in the city." Photographs include pictures taken of each other and scenes with both Ji Weiyu and Song Tao against a city backdrop.

Artist: Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

1999 - Founded in Seoul, South Korea by Marc Voge (American) and Young-Hae Chang (Korean)
Based in Seoul, South Korea

In an interview, YHCHI described thier work as a combination of "text with jazz to create Flash pieces. It's a simple technique that shuns interactivity, graphics, photos, illustrations, banners, colors, and all but the Monaco font, and at the same time cuts across the lines separating digital animation, motion graphics, experimental video, i-movies, and e-poetry. To us, though, it's Web art."

Usually the works use terse prose to tell a simple, but captivating vignette, such as Miss DMZ.

For more of thier works, please visit thier website.

Artist: Patty Chang

Contortion
2000

Biography
1972 - Born in San Francisco, CA
1994 - BA from UC San Diego, CA
Lives and works in New York, NY

Fountain
1999
Video

Melons (At a Loss)
1998
Video

According to The New York Times, "Patty Chang's early filmed and photographed performances were hair-raisingly narcissistic. As in a mirror, she was always the subject. In one piece, she exchanged a passionate kiss with her own face reflected in water. In another, she seemed to engage in intimate lip-to-lip contact with her mother and father. In a third, she ate a melon inserted in one side of her bra, as if she were devouring her own breast."

Check out this short documentary on her work!

Shangri-la
2005
Video

"Having won out in an insane marketing battle among a dozen rural towns claiming to be the same, nonexistent earthly paradise, the lucky town of Zhongdian was finally christened by the Chinese government as the "genuine" Shangri-la in 1997," Papermag.com writes. In her 2005 video Shangri-la, Chang documents her journey to Zhongdian. "As part of her visually spectacular but completely ridiculous project, Chang also created a number of objects to help her tell the story of this strange, fake place -- like a model of an oxygen chamber used to treat altitude sickness."

Event: Watch a film at the Asia Society

Secret Sunshine (Miryang) directed by Lee Chang-dong shows at the Asia Society in New York on December 19, 2007.

The International Herald Tribune states that the film "is mysterious and terrifying. At times, it feels like a thriller, with surprising twists, but it has a hidden core. It is a story of faith, how it can enter a life, and how it can vanish."

The Asia Society is located at 725 Park Avenue.

$10 for members, Asian Cinevision (code: AC635), students, seniors
$12 for nonmembers

Watch the trailer!

Artist: Wang Guangyi

Biography
1957 - Born in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China
1984 - Graduated from the Oil Painting Deapartmetn at Zhejiang Academy of FIne Arts
Lives and works in Beijing

Wang Guanyi works in the style of political pop, a unique melding of Cultural Revolution propaganda with formal and stylistic appropriations from American Pop Art. Perhaps the most recognizable of his work is The Great Criticism series, begun in 1990. Wang Guangyi emblazons each painting in this series with a Western brand, showing the antagonism between socialism and capitalism.

Great Criticism: Coca-Cola
1993
Oil on Canvas

Porsche
2005
Oil on Canvas

Mao AO
1988
Oil on Canvas

This work sold for $4.1 million at Phillips de Pury & Company, London on October 13, 2007 -a record high price at auction for this artist

Has China Entered a Bear Market?

Zhang Xiaogang
Family
2000
Oil on Canvas

Zhang Xiaogang
Comrade
1999
Oil on Canvas

Two Zhang Xiaogang paintings fail to sell at Beijing Poly International Auction's November 29, 2007 evening sale, according to Bloomberg.com.

"Last week's sale contrasted with Poly's first night auction in June, when three of every four paintings on offer reached or exceeded their high estimates. The Chinese central bank raised the key lending rate to a nine-year high on Sept. 14, slowing the flow of money into the equity, real estate and art markets.

China's CSI 300 Index completed its steepest monthly plunge since at least 1995 on the day of Poly's sale, falling 2.2 percent to 4,737.41, a drop of 16.7 percent for November. The index has plummeted almost 20 percent since a record high on Oct. 16, wiping out about 4.67 trillion yuan of market capitalization, according to Bloomberg data."

Event: Irene Kung at Goedhuis Contemporary

December 8th is the last day to visit the Irene Kung exhibition of photographs at the Goedhuis Contemporary Gallery.

Casa, Paris 2007

2007
D-Print on Rag Paper

Tower Bridge, London 2007

2007
D-Print on Rag Paper

Goedhuis Contemporary is located at 42 East 76th Street.

Artist: Paul Chan

Biography
1973 - Born in Hong Kong
1996 - BFA for Video/Digital Arts from Art Institute of Chicago
2002 - MFA for Film/Video/New Media from Bard College

The Whitney states, "Paul Chan keeps his art and his politics separate, or at least he claims to. He has been involved in the aid group Voices in the Wilderness (with whom he spent an unsanctioned month in Iraq) and participated in creating The People's Guide to the Republican National Convention (an agitprop map of New York City for use by protesters in 2004). Yet while such activities may not appear to directly inform his art practice, they tie into his general insistence on "hallucinating" repressed relationships in contemporary society: between the sacred and the secular, the high and the low, the poetic and the pornographic."

My birds...trash...the future
2004
Two channel digital projection installation, 17 minutes

Chan projects his animation onto a double-sided screen. The Village Voice describes the scene: "Early on, a vulture pilfers Biggie Smalls's coat and brings it to a naked man (supposedly Pasolini) on the reverse screen. Later, photographers fire flashbulbs, lovers kiss, and hunters kill the birds. In one of the seven sequences, reams of paper blow through the air in a Jeff Wall/Hiroshige-like tempest. Finally, an army of suicide bombers triggers an Armageddon. All this to the sound of chirping birds and ringing cell phones."

1st Light
2005
Video Projection, 14 minutes

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston states that "the simple but dramatic silhouettes depict an idiosyncratic, post-9/11 vision of the Christian Rapture. As shadowy bodies fall and earthly objects rise to the heavens, the work addresses the meaning of salvation and faith in an era dominated by war, consumerism and terror."

A short clip of this piece form the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

Check out his project www.nationalphilistine.com

Today in The New York Times: Paul Chan

Paul Chan's "Waiting for Godot" makes it onto the cover of the Sunday Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times today. What's awesome about Chan's production is that it takes place outdoors. It set in a New Orleans street lined with desolate houses and debris, the still-unresolved aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Event: Art on Screen 2007

A film festival showing highlights from the 25th Montreal International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA).

When: November 30 - December 2

Where: The Paley Center for Media in New York
25 West 52 Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)

$8 with discount code FIFA
$5 for students with discount code STUDENT


Go see Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Model Works directed by Yan Ting Yuen
"Mao meets Busby Berkeley meets hip-hop in this resurgence of revolutionary Chinese opera."

New record for Contemporary Chinese Art at Auction

Cai Guo Qiang's Drawing for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a series of 14 works of gunpowder on paper sold for $9,652,175 at Christie's Hong Kong on November 25, 2007.

He is now the highest selling contemporary Chinese artists at auction, beating out former leader, Yue Minjun, whose Execution sold for $5,964,700.

$10 million paper! Back in 2000, a copy of the Declaration of Independence sold for $7.4 million. And in December this year, Sotheby's is going to auction a copy of the Magna Carta, estimated to bring in $20 million to $30 million. In this age of going green, I say we just recycle it all for sustainable living.

Event: Chance to win a free skateboard

OUR ART SITE DOT COM is giving away a free enjoi skateboard designed and signed by Michael Hsiung.

"What do you have to do to become instantly cool? Simply dress up and try and pass yourself off as The Michael C. Hsiung and send us a photo. The best photo will be picked, presented on the site in all its glory, and a shinny new deck will be yours in the mail the next day. That's it! So grab your father's mustache off his face, hang around some Asians for a few days and make sure to bring your camera!"

Contest runs until December 1, 2007.
For rules of entry and more details, visit OUR ART SITE DOT COM.

Artist: Michael Hsiung

30ish, Chinese and mustachioed, Micheal Hsiung's art "addresses gender roles/gender assignment given to mermen, the fragility of unicorn/panda dynamics, domestic violence between centaurs and unitaurs and the underlying threads of violence and danger that underpin all other-worldly societies."

Some of these themes appear in his designs for enjoi's 2007 Holiday line.

enjoi Cairo Foster Merman

enjoi Jerry Hsu Panda vs. Narwhal

Hsiung's pen drawings usually depict odd, humorous scenarios rendered in a freakishly childlike manner. In an interview with Virb, Michael Hsiung admits, "I have a retarded 8 year old boy living with me. I give him an oreo cookie everytime he draws me a picture."

Scenes from a Distraught Man trying to cure his Diseased Warthog

2007
Ink on Cream Classic paper

Check out his website and his blog.

Artist: Ken Hiratsuka

Biography
1959 - Born in Shimodate City, Ibaraki, Japan
1982 - BA in Sculpture from Musashino University, Tokyo, Japan
Lives and works in New York City

Sculptor Ken Hiratsuka uses hammer and chisel to cut "oneline design - a single continuous line carving chiselled by hand, guided by a fluid, oceanic imagery."

Lights of Istanbul
2002
Buyukcekmece, Istanbul, Turkey

He also works in other mediums.

One Line Grass Cutting Performance
1986
Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria

One Line Forged Fence
1999
West 89th Street, New York City

Check out photos of the artist at work in front of 25 Bond.

Artist: Rong Rong

Biography
1968 - Born in Zhangzhou, Fujian, China
1986 - Studied Painting at Fujian Industrial Art Institute
Lives and works in Beijing

From the series East Village Beijing
1994-1995
Photograph

Rong Rong documented the artist community gathered in the East Village outside Beijing during the 1990s. He photographed artist performances, one of the most famous being Zhang Huan's 12 Square Meters.

Beijing No 2
1997
Photograph

Rong Rong embarked on a series of photographs showing the ruins and the dilapidated landscape of Beijing.

Rong Rong and inri
in Bad Goisern, Austria, No. 6
2001
Hand-colored silver gelatin print

Since 2000, he collaborates with his wife, i n r i. A gallery states, "Rong Rong and i n r i became archetypal figures in scenarios of their own devising. Shedding their individual identities as husband and wife and residents of Beijing, they became primal figures at the birth of time, notable for their frailty and diminutive scale before the majesty of nature."

Rong Rong and i n r i
Liu Li Tun Migration
2002
Gelatin Silver Print

"The artists document their short life together in the modest house that they shared for a short but crucial time in their lives. Photographs of details from their daily life complement evocative photographs of social gatherings and art world visitors posing in front of the front door of their house. Finally, dressed in dark clothes and offering bouquets of lilies, they record the process of demolition until all that is left is a pile of rubble."

Artist: i n r i

Biography
1973 - Born in Kanagawa, Japan
1992 - Graduated Nippon Photography Institute, Tokyo, Japan
Lives and works in Beijing

From the series Gray Zone
1998-1999
Photograph

i n r i began her career as a celebrity photographer, but in 1997 she quit her job and "turned her camera on the semi-abstract shadows of the Tokyo cityscape, on the emotional vicissitudes of the human form, and to documenting performance works that explored both of these subjects" states The Chicago Journal.

From the series MAXIMAX
1998
Photograph

"Her 1998 series MAXIMAX documents a performance in which a model, clad all in white and ensconced in a white room with a white bed, progressively stains herself and her environment with bright red paint."

From the series 1999, Tokyo
1999
Photograph

Her series 1999, Tokyo "pursues a model through the city's crumbling, nondescript backstreets, portraying her hunched in corners or zeroing in on individual body parts."

Artist: Patray Lui

Biography
1980 - Born in Hong Kong
2003 - BA in Environmental Design from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
2005 - MA in Interaction Design from Institute Ivrea, Italy
Lives and works in the Netherlands

Patray Lui's Le Avventure del Cane Picio (The Adventures of Dog Picio), according to startdrawing.org, "is inspired by her everyday life experience with some fantasies. The ongoing project records the different pieces of her life, no matter happy or sad, in a way that can bring a smile to audiences."

Check out Patray Lui's blog for continued updates on Picio!