Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia
San Diego Museum of Art
November 6, 2004 - March 6, 2005
The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) presents a major group exhibition featuring many important established and up-and-coming artists from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Titled Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, this internationally touring exhibition organized by SDMA provides American museum goers a rare, yet extensive look at work from several vital artistic communities from Asia that are quickly gaining a foothold on the world cultural stage.
The exhibition is curated by SDMA's curator of contemporary art, Betti-Sue Hertz, and includes 21 artists and artist groups who have created innovative works representing some of the newest trends in an increasingly globalized art world. Among the featured artists are Soun-gui Kim, Cai Guo-Qiang, Wang Qingsong, Tadasu Takamine, Hiroshi Fuji, Michael Lin, and Leung Mee Ping. Major funding for the exhibition is provided by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.
This multifaceted exhibition showcases cutting-edge artists working in a diversity of media—painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, digital media—who use contemporary approaches that reflect their respective cultural and artistic backgrounds. Occupying several of the Museum's galleries, each artist's work is featured in a separate section while accompanying wall texts—in both English and Spanish—articulate how the artist is responding to historical precedents. By including recent, new, and commissioned works, the exhibition also serves as an introduction to the latest trends in contemporary East Asian art.
The artists and artist groups included in the exhibition, listed here by country or region of origin, are:
Contemporary Artists from China
- Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, born in Quanzhou, lives in New York), drawing/public events
- Cao Fei (b. 1978, born and lives in Guangzhou), photography
- Shao Yinong and Muchen (b. 1961 and 1970, born in Xining and Lianong, both live in Beijing), photography
- Wang Jianwei (b. 1958, born in Sichuan Province, lives in Beijing), video
- Wang Qingsong (b. 1966, born in Hubei Province, lives in Beijing), video
- Yang Fudong (b. 1971, born in Beijing, lives in Shanghai), video
- Yangjiang Calligraphy Group with Zheng Guogu, Sha Yeya, Chen Zaiyan, and Sun Qinglin (live in Yangjiang), mixed-media installation
Contemporary Artists from Hong Kong
- Leung Mee Ping (b. 1961, born and lives in Hong Kong), video installation/performance
- Wilson Shieh (b. 1970, born and lives in Hong Kong), drawing
Contemporary Artists from Japan
- Ryoko Aoki (b. 1973, born in Hyougo, lives in Kyoto), drawing installation
- Hiroshi Fuji (b. 1960, born in Kyoto, lives in Fukuoka Prefecture), mixed-media installation
- Mitsushima Takayuki (b. 1954, born and lives in Kyoto), installation
- Tadasu Takamine (b. 1968, born in Kagoshima, lives in Gifu), mixed media installation/performance
- Shizuka Yokomizo (b. 1966, born in Tokyo, lives in London), photography/video
Contemporary Artists from South Korea
- Flyingcity: Urbanism Research Group (based in Seoul), interventions/mixed-media installation/video
- Hee-Jeong Jang (b. 1970, born and lives in Seoul), painting
- Soun-gui Kim (b. 1946, born in Pou-yo, Chung-Nam, lives in Paris), video installation/photography
- Kim Young Jin (b. 1961, born in Busan, lives in Seoul), video installation
Contemporary Artists from Taiwan
- G8: Public Relations and Art Consultants Collaborative (based in Taipei), interventions/installation
- Hung Yi (b. 1970, born and lives in Taichung), painting/sculpture/mixed-media installation
- Michael Lin (b. 1964, born in Tokyo, lives in Paris and Taipei), architectural painting
Accessing the past to map the future, these artists explore aesthetic and conceptual principles that are rooted in the arts and culture of their particular region. Whether they work in traditional genres such as painting and sculpture or newer technologies such as photography, video, and digital media, they assert their connection to Chinese, Korean, or Japanese culture through a variety of avenues.
For example, some artists like Wilson Shieh and the Yangjiang Calligraphy Group use traditional materials and techniques while others, like Cai Guo-Qiang and Soun-gui Kim, engage established religious iconography and philosophical ideas. Others, like Hiroshi Fuji and Cao Fei, explore interactions with the everyday physical world to reclaim endemic ways of seeing and being.
Another approach employed by certain artists is to reveal new views on their cultural history and interdependencies within the region by drawing on, for instance, craft-based methods (Ryoko Aoki, Tadasu Takamine), landscape and floral imagery (Michael Lin, Wang Qingsong, Yang Fudong, Hee-Jeong Jang), family histories (Kim Young Jin), or indigenous concepts of time and space (Soun-gui Kim, Shizuka Yokomizo, Mitsushima Takayuki). Still others address modern political histories and their impact on the individual and the construction of social relations and space in urban centers (Flying City, Wang Jianwei, G8).
The selection of artists presented in Past in Reverse reveal that in spite of cultural proximity, there is as much disconnect as common ground among artists from any particular region, placing into doubt the possibility of a regional aesthetic. What is clear is that as Asia continues to participate more wholeheartedly in the international art scene, it is slowly becoming more confident that its cultural impact, while not as influential as its economic one, is steadily growing.
Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia is made possible in part by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.
Exhibition Tour
- San Diego Museum of Art, Nov. 6, 2004-Mar. 6, 2005
- Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, June 3-Sept. 4, 2005
- Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Jan. 15-Mar. 12, 2006
- Hong Kong Museum of Art (pending)
(dates subject to change), 2006
Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a 176-page soft-cover catalogue featuring an introductory essay by the exhibition's curator Betti-Sue Hertz as well as four other scholarly essays by an international team of noted experts: Taehi Kang (South Korea), Li Xianting (China), Midori Matsui (Japan), and Zhang Zhaohui (China). Also included are extended entries devoted to each artist, a checklist of the exhibition, and biographies of the artists and essayists.
SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART
1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
