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 future2004
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 Light2005
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
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