My career began by teaching mathematics and publishing woodblock prints in Yunnan, a rural mountainous region close to Tibet. This outset steered the course for what became a self-defined practice, involving grounded investigations on location and the production of art beyond traditional making spaces. As a result, an attempt to re-frame “labor” underlies my current work, where the conditions of creation inform the outcome with conventional and imaginative sets of expertise. More precisely, I intend to expand notions of conceptualism and time. I examine and deploy idiosyncratic parameters for art-making, recognizing the instability of my body as I include movements in my drawings. I consider atypical places as studios when drying vegetable-tanned leather al fresco. I also subscribe to specific durations: My ongoing series on daylight saving time, from 1 am to 1.59 am and immediately again from 1 am to 1.59 am on the first Sunday of November, gains its breadth and depth as I continue to live in the United States; I try adding to the sequence a new artwork during this “two hours” every year. Furthermore, I conduct my practice according to fluid interpretations of the artist’s responsibilities, zooming in less on rigid truth and packaged identity than on time- and sites-responsive pursuit of freedom.
As a Chinese artist in the United States, I am motivated by the globalizing planet but also ponder the risks with such mobility. Recent artistic and scholarly projects mine the Shanghai Biennale in 2000, the first international contemporary art showcase in a state-sponsored Chinese museum, as both history and the present tense. My painted works and drawings respond to this opening episode of Chinese contemporary art and its ramifications just over two decades later, recognizing also its concomitant interplay with unofficial art scenes. Another current research project analyzes the international programs of the Crown Point Press in the 1980s. Through this venture, artists such as Sol LeWitt, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Pat Steir produced woodblock prints with artisans in China and Japan. My inquiry surrounds the apparent but imperfect juxtapositions of “America” and “elsewhere.” Although these movements folded in the beginning of the 1990s, I seek to extend this history through exhibition-making, a new interest and reliable medium since moving to Chicago in 2023, with the possibility of a shared U.S., Chinese, and Japanese art history.
Lastly, I collect. When I travel both for leisure and business, I take home a wide range of objects, including hotel stationaries, do-not-disturb signs, and information sheets regarding, for instance, window cleaning, gym closure, and happy hours. In my studio, I use graphite and pigment markers to alter the appearance of these found works on paper. I equate this reflection on life with the process of editing, merging a subtle dosage of autobiography (who I am and where I have been) with my creative practices (what I have to do), in contrast to the artistic strategy of “de-personalizing the personal” commonly associated with movements such as Minimalism and Conceptual art. To conclude, I hope I may suggest that my projects are serial, slow, occasionally satirical, and sometimes sporty. It is like going whale-watching, where a succession of apparently unproductive yet heightened experiences ameliorate, if not encourage the confrontation with the unknown.
宁为太平狗, 莫做离乱人;
轻风不识字, 何必乱翻书.
As a Chinese artist in the United States, I am motivated by the globalizing planet but also ponder the risks with such mobility. Recent artistic and scholarly projects mine the Shanghai Biennale in 2000, the first international contemporary art showcase in a state-sponsored Chinese museum, as both history and the present tense. My painted works and drawings respond to this opening episode of Chinese contemporary art and its ramifications just over two decades later, recognizing also its concomitant interplay with unofficial art scenes. Another current research project analyzes the international programs of the Crown Point Press in the 1980s. Through this venture, artists such as Sol LeWitt, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Pat Steir produced woodblock prints with artisans in China and Japan. My inquiry surrounds the apparent but imperfect juxtapositions of “America” and “elsewhere.” Although these movements folded in the beginning of the 1990s, I seek to extend this history through exhibition-making, a new interest and reliable medium since moving to Chicago in 2023, with the possibility of a shared U.S., Chinese, and Japanese art history.
Lastly, I collect. When I travel both for leisure and business, I take home a wide range of objects, including hotel stationaries, do-not-disturb signs, and information sheets regarding, for instance, window cleaning, gym closure, and happy hours. In my studio, I use graphite and pigment markers to alter the appearance of these found works on paper. I equate this reflection on life with the process of editing, merging a subtle dosage of autobiography (who I am and where I have been) with my creative practices (what I have to do), in contrast to the artistic strategy of “de-personalizing the personal” commonly associated with movements such as Minimalism and Conceptual art. To conclude, I hope I may suggest that my projects are serial, slow, occasionally satirical, and sometimes sporty. It is like going whale-watching, where a succession of apparently unproductive yet heightened experiences ameliorate, if not encourage the confrontation with the unknown.
宁为太平狗, 莫做离乱人;
轻风不识字, 何必乱翻书.
