curatorial

Culture via the blogosphere, IPod, XBox, and TiVo engineers a hybrid design of the manga and hiphop aesthetic for our modern society. Wonder Ugly explores this collison of mass media and pop art through the eyes of artists whose Chicagoness, married with their Asian Americanness, results in a unique vision of this particular style.

"Coming Soon..." explores the influences and impact of film globally and Hollywood specifically on Asian and Asian American culture and vice versa through the eyes of Generation X and younger. The role film as a whole plays through moving images and spoken words in shaping ideas of the American or European mythos is inescapable. Ideologies of who represents the hero or heroine and what is the perfect or imperfect society abound, propagated by the directorial and sometimes auteuristic visions reflecting if not determining the prevailing moods of the people, place or times. But beyond the politics of representation is the worn terrain where these tropes of stereotypes still reign. So how do these issues translate for the so-called second baby boom wave fluent in pop cultural language and mass media savvy? Given their sense of the postmodern, what are the effects on their world within this context? The artwork within this show not only harbingers anotheroutlook borne of computers, anime, MTV and digital technology, but just as importantly invites viewers attending the film festival to further narrow the gap between art, life and cinema.

“100 Cuts” features local and international artists (Shelly Bahl, Millie Chen, Charlie Cho, Emily Jacir, Robert Karimi, Jung Mee Jamie Kim, Donald Lambert, Amanda Ross-Ho, Wang Wei and Chien Yuan) whose work draws out the intimate connections between body and landscape, how demarcation of land creates a psychological and metaphysical abrasion in the body to address pertinent questions about the present cultural and political climate. Ostensibly through the very broad definition of the word "cut", which could refer to a soundtrack as well as an incision, the exhibit encourages the viewer to make connections between violence, memory, the state, geography, and the body.

“Then and Now” celebrates the past, present and future of Asian American art locally that spans the decade of the Asian American Showcase being in existence through the work of Charlie Cho, Sun Choi, Drew Ee, Ruyell Ho, Michiko Itatani, Indira Freitas Johnson, Alex Lee, Eunju Lee, Jin Lee, and Howie Tsui. This coming April marks the tenth anniversary of this annual festival featuring ten days of films, art, literature, performance and music at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and these assembled works from abstract paintings exploring formal ideas to manga-inspired Pop Art to stylized figuration reflect the consistent quality and breadth as well as different approaches that sometimes overlap shared concerns among these artists.

The premise for this show is quite simple and dictates a particular approach: invite artists whose art has been shown within the city, in other states and even abroad over the last ten years or so to show new or old work alongside a group of emerging artists. The result offers a fresh perspective to how these artists think about their place in art, comparing or contrasting the styles or subject matter of both generations. In fact, some of the artists listed have participated in prior Showcase art exhibits while the rest oftentimes provided a positive role model as teacher, mentor and fellow artist.

Larry Lee and Molar Productions proudly presents a domestic exercise of the democratic process as curatorial practice whereby artists of all creeds address the Grand Tradition of what represents Painting from a hermetic perspective (those who actually paint) and from a decidedly heuristic point-of-view (those who usually don't) that affects the perception of exhibition venue.

Can a copy of something be better than the original? Is it “just as good?” Nowadays Hollywood and mass media sanctions the remake by constantly churning out sequels. A case in point is the plethora of Asian cinema, animation and/or popular culture that is literally remade by Westerners and vice versa now inculcated into our collective consciousness so that each possesses its own life or identity. But critics and pundits often stigmatize that which is copied unfairly as “unoriginal”. To misquote the Iron Chef, "Which version reigns supreme?" This exhibit will ask selected artists to or who "remake" favorite pre-existing works or classics to spark new dialogue of what is authentic or real versus fake or bogus depends on the different facets of constant reinterpretation and redefinition.