Paul Chan: Three Easy Pieces

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University presents Paul Chan: Three Easy Pieces, on view from Nov 6–Jan 4, 2008. This installation will showcase two digital projections and a single-channel video piece. There will be a public lecture by Chan on Nov 13 at 6 p.m. in the Carpenter Center Lecture Hall. A reception will follow.

One of the most dynamic artists working today, Paul Chan’s work uses animation and video projection to probe historical concepts of utopia as well as interrogating the psychological ramifications of the so-called war on terror. In a May 2008 New York article, Kathy Hallbreich, the new associate director of MOMA, said, “[Chan’s] work is really about dissolution. Dissolution of faith, dissolution of the worlds we know. . . . He has figured out a way to make the perils of our time accessible.” From November 6, 2008–January 4, 2009, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts will show three of Chan’s pieces: Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization—after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier; 5^th Light; and Baghdad in No Particular Order. In conjunction with the exhibition, Chan will give a talk on his work on November 13 at 6:00 p.m.

Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization (after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier) is an animated digital video projection on a sparkle vellum screen that conflates Charles Fourier’s utopian aspirations with Chicago-based outsider artist Henry Darger’s mythical Vivien Girls. The result is a simultaneously bawdy and lyrical work that exemplifies our struggles to create a fair, pleasurable and self-sustaining society. It speaks to Chan’s uncanny ability to intertwine the social and the aesthetic, offering both an escape from and a critique of our current conditions. Baghdad in No Particular Order similarly straddles the seeming divide between social and aesthetic as Chan turns his lens on the conflict between the current administration’s drive for war and the civilians of Iraq forced to live through it. Traveling to Iraq at the end of 2002 as a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated group Voices in the Wilderness, Chan used footage from that trip to create Baghdad in No Particular Order. Rounding out the installation is 5th Light, a video projection in which silhouettes magically float upwards, in defiance of gravity, a somber and moving elegy to the losses—both human and material—of 9/11.

Paul Chan: Three Easy Pieces is curated by Helen Molesworth, the Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums.

Paul Chan

Born in Hong Kong and raised primarily in the United States, Paul Chan received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in video and digital art and an MFA from Bard College in film, video, and new media. He is represented by the Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: New Museum, New York, 2008; Serpentine Gallery, London, 2007; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2007; Portikus, 2006; Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan, 2006; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2005; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2005. Group exhibitions include: Traces du sacre, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; 16th Biennial of Sydney, Sydney, 2008; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2007; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006; Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, 2006; Utopia Station, World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2005; I Still Believe in Miracles, Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2005; Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, 2005; and New Work/New Acquisitions, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005. His work has appeared in Artforum, Felix, Harpers, and Between Artists: Paul Chan/Martha Rosler (A.R.T. Press, 2006). He has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.