New Experimental Media: Hong Kong and China
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 6pm-9pm Free Admission
6:00pm: GALLERY TALK BY HUNG KEUNG
Visiting artist Hung Keung has two exhibitions on view in Oregon, in conjunction with this year’s Cinema Pacific, at the White Box Laboratory in Portland and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. This evening, he will present and discuss the single-channel video pieces projected in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art media gallery and discuss their relationship to his current work in interactive digital media.
7:00pm: ANIMATED WORKS BY SUN XUN
Sun Xun uses traditional calligraphy and other Chinese art-making techniques to produce drawings on canvas, silk, and printed materials; when animated, the meticulously produced works reveal highly detailed and complex textures and effects. Sun Xun’s films explore the mythological construction and narration of history, and viewers will find archetypal figures such as heroic statues and top-hatted magicians recurring through his works.
8:00pm: DISORDER
Huang Weikai’s experimental news report collects raw footage from a dozen amateur videographers, filmed in Guangzhou, and weaves it into a mesmerizing, hallucinatory collage, a “city symphony of social dysfunction” (dGenerate Films).The film captures at ground level the anarchy and anxiety of contemporary Chinese urban society. As director Huang Weikai observes: “The faster Chinese urbanization advances, the stranger people’s behaviors and moral standards become.”
TWO GALLERY EXHIBITIONS BY HUNG KEUNG
WHERE TO COME FROM? WHERE TO GO?: VIDEOS BY HUNG KEUNG
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
On view: April 5 – May 8, 2011
In collaboration with the UO Digital Arts Program, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art presents several video works made by Hong Kong artist Hung Keung between 2002 and 2011, including Eating Noodle, Upstairs Downstairs: A Dialogue with HK, Sloping II and III, Laughing, Sightseeing, and his latest work, Where to Come From? Where to Go? Hung Keung will visit the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art media gallery on April 6 to discuss the video works on display there and their relationship to his present work.
BLOATED CITY | SKINNY LANGUAGE
White Box Gallery, Portland
On view: April 1-30, 2011
In Hung Keung’s Bloated City | Skinny Language, an interactive digital artwork on view at the White Box Laboratory in Portland, the viewer is recorded and projected onto two separate screens. Myriad fragmented brush strokes of Chinese alphabetical characters aggregate around the viewer’s projected body. “With the body as carrier and sensory perception as entry point, Keung uses his lively imagination to draw the audience into a lyrical, three-dimensional realm of Chinese calligraphy where subtle humor and mutual surprise come together in a crafty combination. The boundaries become blurred between change and perpetualness, movement and stillness, chasing and avoidance, real and unreal” (Fountain Contemporary Art Projects).
Hung Keung’s media art has been exhibited widely at film and video festivals and media art centers around the world. He studied art and film at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at the College of Art and Design in London. In 2001-2002, he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Germany. In 2004, Hung Keung founded innov+media lab (imhk lab), which focuses on new media art and design research in relation to Chinese philosophy and interactivity. Hung received the award for Outstanding Young Artist (Film and Media Arts) from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2007 and an Achievement Award at the 2009 Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial, among many other awards and recognitions for his art and scholarship. He is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.