Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
show at A Space, Toronto
Memory and Place
Jing Yuan Huang, Hye-Seung Jung, Marissa Largo
Exhibition runs January 9 – February 6, 2009
Opening Reception Friday January 9th from 7-9pm
Essay by Dina Georgis
Memory and Place does not offer consolation or imaginary safety for diasporia's losses. The subjectivities that are symbolized by the artists are looking here and there, backward and forward, inward and outward, but none of the migrations of time, place or memory are linear, easily mapped, or complete. Not only do the works of Jing Yuan Huang, Hye-Seung Jung, and Marissa Largo not invoke tradition or recoup 'ethnic identity' – which might fill the gaps of diasporic emptiness – the images refuse the stability of identity. And what they communicate are openings and new beginnings: not answers or cemented memories, but subjectivities in motion.
credited to Dina and A Space (http://www.aspacegallery.org/programming.html)
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Jing Yuan Huang
Transmigrating Inadequacy
Jan 9th - Feb 21, 2009
The Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba
Curated by Amber Andersen
NO MANS LAND: Introduction
As an immigrant to Canada and later to the United States, Jing Yuan Huang is both a participant and a keen observer of how identity is attached to place. Her interests are in the results achieved by removing people/objects from specific spaces. Originally from China, Huang has, as child and an adult, by force and by choice, been up-rooted or removed from one region/country to another. The artist’s transitory lifestyle is the focus of her art practice. Existing in a state of neither this nor that, Huang’s installation Transmigrating Inadequacy applies the theory of liminality. A conscious state of living that is on the threshold between two different existential planes, liminality provides Huang and her audience with a way to understand the experiences of immigration. Her exhibition, Transmigrating Inadequacy, captures and confronts feelings of disorientation, dislocation, and finally resolution through the voice of a self-proclaimed diasporic immigrant to North America.
NEITHER THIS NOR THAT: Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series
The installation Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series involves several different procedures. Starting as drawings/paintings, Huang photographs the works, re-capturing them in black and white photography to create photograms. The resulting photographs are then scanned onto a computer to become digital representations. In the last process, the works are printed out, enlarged and photocopied onto the tabloid (11’’ by 17’’) sized paper. Afterwards the Xeroxed papers are pieced together to create extremely large-scale installation pieces. Both the installation and the images presented in this exhibition elicit feelings of fragility and temporality. The images are composed of mixtures of abstract line work, washes, fragmented representations of female figures, and aspects of the Chinese creation myth. The representations/images for Huang have equal importance to the processes used to create them. Both reference transitions from one state of being to another, mimicking the experience of moving from one country to another, of shift, removal, and re-birth. However, with all regenerations, there are elements that are lost and specific ones that are gained.
A person’s place of origin is important. It can represent a multitude of things such as custom, belief, and race. Where a person has come from defines aspects of who they are. This part of our identity, already a complex issue for most and especially in a post-colonial society, becomes even more difficult when issues of migration/diaspora are added into the mix. Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series is a response to these complexities.
The “Brandon Series” of Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series title references the fact that this particular installation was created specifically for the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. As with all installation art, it was created with a particular space in mind. Meant to alter the way an environment is experienced and/or perceived, installation art allows Huang to confront audiences’ expectations while also disorienting them in a space that is familiar. This underlines and echoes Huang’s thesis. The concept of the work remains the same but its external environment influences character. In terms of spatial matters, Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series exists in a liminal state. Exhibited previously in Kamloops and Chicago, the Brandon series remains in a state of limbo, physically different yet conceptually the same as in either city. Continually changing scale and installation from (mural vs. Tapestry vs. floor piece) this particular work exists in a state of neither this nor that, never being fully assimilated, permanent to one scale or particular layout.
Beyond challenging the viewer’s expectations of what they see in a gallery, for example, paintings and sculptures, Huang also questions how they see it. Certainly, there are technologies available to create large format works, instead of using multiple smaller papers. Huang intentionally chooses photocopies. The tiled Xeroxes create a grid, thus breaking with the seamless viewing pleasure offered by murals/paintings/photos, etc… What this grid does is create yet another moment of disruption hinting that there is more to Huang’s work than meets the eye.
BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: Inadequate Transmigration-underwater Series
In previous work, Huang has explored the act of removal. In the series entitled Anachronism, 2005, Huang depicted imagery of Terracotta warriors found in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di. Thousands of these life-sized sculptures surrounded the first emperor of China’s final resting place. Through this work, Huang connected with her Chinese history and identity. However, in removing detail and exaggerating/diminishing bodily perspective, Huang created her own version of her Chinese legacy, adding her own narratives while removing traditional associations with these sculptures. Huang continues to explore these concerns in Inadequate Transmigration_underwater series. These four works are variations on originals consisting of pen and acrylic on paper. Unlike the large overwhelming works in Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series, these works are small and intimate. Also containing aspects of the Chinese creation myth and the female form, these organic and fluid works exist in a state of being neither abstract nor strictly image based. Rather, Huang’s fusions of both styles create “an aesthetic of interchange, erosion, and synthesis”, referencing, once again, her intention to connect her art practice to her life experiences both emotionally, and conceptually.
The Inadequate Transmigration_underwater series, unlike the Transmigrating Inadequacy – Brandon Series, remains fixed. The synthesis of both abstract and representational models evokes an image that is lyrical and exists between two positions. However, Huang is also exploring the limitations of liminality. Based in anthropology, liminality cannot exist as a permanent condition. Eventually all humans and Huang herself must either assimilate into the social structure or operate outside of it. We cannot continually live in a state of betwixt and between. In Huang’s case, she learned English and became part of an education system, thus adapting to her environment and becoming absorbed into societal structure. Although no longer in a liminal state, she can still feel that she exists amid two worlds, between eastern and western hemispheres. Although able to return to her native land where she would be accepted, the question remains; would she be able to “belong” in the same way she did before she left. Huang, like her works, is altered, a composition of hybrid realities.
THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION: SUMMARY
For Huang, the well worn phrase “it’s the journey, not the destination” rings as true for her artistic processes as it does for her own travels. The numerous procedures Huang uses to create her work metaphorically stand in places for the artist’s many dislocations. Whether created by machine or hand, it is in these processes that we see Huang’s perspective on identity reflecting alienation, loss, resolution, removal, and finally, synthesis.
Amber Andersen
Curator, Exhibtions and Education AGSM, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Transmigrating Inadequacy (projects started from 2007 chicago) 中文叙述紧随其后
My works are not drawings on paper, nor are they the representations of drawing. I use the darkroom to mediate original drawings by making contact prints (photograms), and scanning those silver gelatin prints to computer. The final presentation is a site-specific installation of a tiled print comprised of 11" by 17" photocopies joined together – the image and the grid it is presented upon are inseparable. In this process, drawing is one step and "the image of drawing" is a part of the end result.
The subjects I choose seem private, narrative, and have associations with the Chinese creation myth and female identity, but I objectify the images through a selective process of overwriting & redefining. My attitude towards the images is skeptical rather than celebratory.
The tension between the content of the image and the presentation of the image is my way of considering limits and excesses in assimilation of removing, failure and paradox, and how that makes this leads to an inadequate transmigration, yet this particular inadequacy itself could be an aesthetic. The way that form shifts through different media creates an aesthetic of interchange, erosion, and synthesis but one that is distant, abstract - without material reinforcement. The contrasts between these media (hand-drawing, black & white photography, and low-tech/disposable Xerox printing) expresses a void, an absence, that invites viewers to close the circle, replace the absence by crossing the distance and having a tactile interaction with the forms.
I live in diaspora by choice; from time to time during my upbringing I was uprooted and removed from one landscape to another. To draw and to transmigrate what I draw is a response to my life experience. Using transmigration as a metaphor for my processes, allowing inadequacy as its nature, welcoming constant flux in balancing transmigration and inadequacy, it is an aesthetic of appreciating the strange human act of removing; whether it is the removal of a mark or removal from a place: it can involve a certain dignity as long as the removal is a response to change with grace and purpose.
作品的材料是上百张日用激光打印图像拼贴出来的大型图物，这些图物多数以建筑体的方式来干预展示空间。 他们不是手绘，不是手绘的再现，更不是手绘作品照片的放大。作品的创作工序包括：通过暗房制作接触影像得到最初图像，输入电脑利用数码科技重组，用低质量（低像素）激光打印机分块打印，最后拼贴而成。
这个特殊的工序产生了一种别样的图像。既有手绘的蜿蜒和亲密，又有黑白摄影的颗粒和光晕感，还有简易激光打印的机械语言。展出形式沿袭了绘画的图像感，又渗透雕塑的空间干预力。而且这些语言的特质在被另外一个语言修改，拓展，转移的同时保留下了强烈的程序残余感。比如，拼贴留下的每张纸的边缘形成了机械的格子印迹，不断的干扰着原图的阅读。再比如 ，数码打印把一个原来小小的一根线描迁移成的庞然的低质量的伤痕。
这个工序的必然性还不仅服务于最后的视觉效果，它在概念上也直指图像制作的发展历史：从最传统的亲密手绘，到黑白暗房印制（接触影像），从具有强烈指示性的摄影语言，到架上绘画展示方式的权威性，从现代复印设备低信息高重复性，到数码科技的低像素和精确模拟。 (注： 接触影像, 是一种暗房技术；可以理解为在光关注下，一个图吻下去在像纸上印下的痕迹。 接触影像和原手绘图的关系因此不是一种“再现”“翻译”，而是一种相互触摸后产生的痕迹，这个行为情感意义强调了材料体表和交流的姿态之间的关系) 。“以建筑体的方式干预空间”也是作品的一个很重要的意图。更多的是让观看者变成被迫参观者，减慢读图速度，延迟熟悉和同化作用，强化材料体表和交流姿态不可割裂性。
作品图像的主题借鉴神话中转世瞬间的气息，采取一种非宗教性非描述性的切入方式，使得这种“转世”更多暗示一种当代世俗生活中繁复的情感与肉体的转移所带来的错位，牵挂和断裂。线被大量运用：线自身是边界，构成轮廓，但是又穿越轮廓，在游走，游离：在转世转向瞬间， 它们并不走向完整，而是无限停留在不充分上。故此，作品的主题，艺术语言和制作工序都体现了对“不充分迁移”本身携带的自我完整性的尊重。
思维的意义以层的方式叠加开放，透明而有韧性；身体的接触以波的形式起伏推进，时涨时落；回忆以网的气势，构勒起来忽近忽远；情感则像穿隐身衣的魔术师，很早就走进你，突然给你一拳，让你无处回击无处追溯。层，波，网，埋伏，是整个系列想带给人的立体体验。不管是使用平面语言，材料的语言，还是空间的语言，这种对话的意愿是强烈而冷峻的。现场上，有对图的怀疑和依赖， 对物的消逝的挽留，对所有一切需要落到体之表的肯定。无论世界是图的，物的，还是体表的，对于个人而言，世界更多是肌肤的，存在是在欲触和触之间; 在这样一个交错的转世中，由于不同的时间性和可见性，人，无法转身，无法来临。
创作手记
藏就是觉
如果说欲望的形式是速度，速度因文化历史和空间背景产生速度差。
速度差，就是我相信的"时代误植"，是命运的，也是反命运的。
我想要的想像力悲情而流畅，是清新的荒芜，壮丽的无序，野性的优雅。
孤国寡民，穷山恶水，刁民的绝望，女人的弱势是最容易得分的构思，但是这不是我的选择。
我甚至不关心人性本是善或恶
这里是变者的优雅， 雅行者的尊严， 改革者的私人空间
了解身体的性别需要眼观手触，而感知理念的性别，山水的性别，国度的性别，则有待内心的姿势去构勒。
性的姿势，是最深切的姿势
时代误植
让我们以成年之身，在童年相爱
Saturday, October 20, 2007
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