May 5, 2024 – May 18, 2024
Tuesdays – Sundays • 12 – 4 pm
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 5, 2024 • 2 – 5 pm
The George J. Doizaki Gallery
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC)
244 S. San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Human beings are born with a body, and this body is the ground of primordial limitations of human existence. —Hyong-hyo Kim
The spark that ignited my idea for self<not>self was lit by Hirokazu Kosaka’s visiting artist lecture at CalArts in 2022. During that lecture, Hirokazu presented his collection of calligraphy brushes whose bristles were made from his son’s hair. The lecture prompted an “ah ha” moment for me, a sudden realization that the brushes were not a sentimental object, they were a poignant homage to his son, a devotional votive in the form of an anomalous portrait. His lecture then led me to recall the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta, or non-self, the act of considering ourselves as a blending of experiences and ever-changing processes over time.
Conventional portraiture renders the human figure as a direct representation, freezing the present for a future immortality. However indirect images, objects, gestures, actions, performances, and texts can also capture the human form as something that is transcendent and imagined through a combination of metaphor and abstraction.
Presently, in our age of data mining and accumulation, information has become a meta-record leaving phantom traces of the self within a fractured archive of human agencies. Twenty-first century portraiture can be characterized as transformational and mutable, an ever-changing dynamic act.
The root concept of Anatta illustrates how the mind creates many senses of a non-essential self. The trans-disciplinary artists in the exhibit use physical objects, painting, ceramics, virtual data, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, animation, and image processing to express the precarious nature of the self and our time-based sensations.
The artists are all CalArts alumni. They collectively share a common impulse to subvert, reinterpret, and critique commonplace renderings of the body through a disruptive approach to art, technology, and time.
Participating artists are: Cheng Cheng, Beth Fiedorek, Alex Hawthorn, Sterling Hedges, Catherine Hsu, IMUU (Weilu Ge and Kelon Cen), Chris Johst, Hirokazu Kosaka, Kai Luen Liang, Dongpu Ling, Malte Sanger, Kathi Schulz, and Jordan Wong.
Bios
Cheng Cheng
Cheng Cheng, born in China, is a diverse and dynamic artist currently residing in Los Angeles. Cheng’s artistic journey encompasses a range of mediums including sculpture, photography, printmaking, and involvement in theater productions. The essence of Cheng’s work lies in his deep engagement with the themes of industrialization and modernity, which he explores through his distinctive choice of materials and subjects. His approach to reimagining industrial processes and adopting a formalist view of structure imbues his creations with a controlled yet subtly disruptive quality, where the intentional ‘glitch’ emerges as a poetic statement within the meticulousness of his work.
Cheng is an alumnus of the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Art. Furthering his education, he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Art and Technology from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA. Cheng’s creations have graced various exhibitions, including showcases at The Box, Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall, student galleries at the Art Center College of Design, ArtCenter DTLA, Keystone Gallery, and Gallery ALSO. Professionally, Cheng simultaneously developed his career as a Printer and a Digital Project and Prototype Specialist at Gemini G.E.L., a renowned printmaking workshop. In these dual roles, he deepened his understanding and proficiency in the art of printmaking while also honing his skills in digital art and technology. Cheng Cheng stands out as an artist who skillfully navigates the intersection of technology and art, bringing forward a unique perspective that challenges and redefines the conventional boundaries of artistic expression.
Beth Fiedorek
Beth Fiedorek is a Los Angeles-based artist working in painting, ceramic, and graphic illustration. She engages these mediums to develop narratives and situations that explore questions of comprehension, humor, and psychology. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Monte Vista Projects (2022) and MOTOR Los Angeles (2021). Recent group exhibitions include ArtCenter DTLA (2021, 2020), Torrance Art Museum (2021), and The Box (2018). She received an MFA from CalArts in 2018 and a BA from Yale University in 2008.
Alex Hawthorn
Alex Hawthorn is an artist, composer, and technologist whose work flows between performance, installation, object-making, and sound-making. As a non-binary interdisciplinary artist, Hawthorn is most comfortable outside prescriptive boxes, allowing their research and intuition to shape the form and medium of their projects. They use their work as a lens through which to investigate the natural world, specifically focusing on time: how we experience it, how we have codified it, and how
we exist within it. Hawthorn’s recent research has focused on geological timescales and the shifting tectonics of Los Angeles.
Alex Hawthorn received an MFA in Art and Technology & Composition and Experimental Sound Practices from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in theater from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. They have performed at sound art festivals nationally and internationally, most recently as part of the opening of the Floating Transmissions festival in Hamburg, Germany. Hawthorn’s work in theatrical sound design has garnered them an Obie award, LA Ovation Awards, and has been heard across North and South America, Australia, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Their work has been featured in Live Design Magazine, Stage Directions Magazine, and Performance Research Journal. Hawthorn has been a guest lecturer at Yale School of Drama and Emerson College and is currently adjunct faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and special faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. Hawthorn lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.
Sterling Hedges
Sterling Hedges is an artist that produces experiments and reflections on but not limited to: visibility & invisibility, presence & absence, grief, loss, death, rebirth, transformation, and trace.
Catherine Hsu
Born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Catherine Hsu is an artist and designer. After graduating with her B.A. in Art Practice and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in May 2021, Hsu began further exploring human-to-human or human-to-machine relationships, leading her to the Art &Technology program at the California Institute of the Arts, where she graduated with a Masters Degree in May 2023.
Although Hsu’s practice began with traditional and digital illustration, she has come to regard technology as her favorite medium. To Hsu, because it is so ingrained in our lives as a form of communication and interaction, it can actually pass off as unassuming, essentially “hiding in plain sight.” Through works such as The Gallery of Post-Mortem Portraits, Hsu has also begun exploring artificial intelligence, which she views as another opaque tool that is becoming more common in our everyday lives and changing how people interact with technology and with each other.
Hsu is currently working in Columbus, Ohio as a designer, and she continues working on her studio practice in her free time.
IMUU (Weilu Ge and Kelon Cen)
IMUU is an artist collective that utilizes light as paint and music as dialogue to create an episodic narrative about a futuristic dystopia. The team consists of animators, composers, directors, and creative technologists doing experiments in creative expressions via VR/AR, interactivity, and performance in transformative physical or virtual spaces.
Weilu Ge is a composer and media artist based in Cambridge, MA. She works with various media forms, from concert music, installation to video and innovative technology. Her recent practice explores theatrical expressions of sonic, visual, and spatial media in interactive and immersive spaces, taking composition and space as critical means to examine relationships between power, system, body, and technology in a social-cultural context. Weilu’s works have been performed and exhibited internationally. Weilu holds an Interschool MFA in Art and Technology & Composition & Experimental Sound Practice with a concentration in Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry at Harvard University.
Kelon Cen has worked in many forms of media, from traditional academic art paintings to digital animation and programming. He has explored animation in film and digital forms along with its integration into video installation, dome, and theater projection. “Fluidity” is the word to describe his mastery of the smooth lines in his calligraphy and paintings, the animation of metamorphosis and body movement, and sound-driven editing. His works are influenced by surrealism and have been exhibited in various festivals, including Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo, Animamix Biennale in Hong Kong, Japan Media Arts Festivals, etc.
Chris Johst
Chris Johst works with digital fabrication and repurposed technology to examine current modes of social engagement. Scraping cultural archives and developing new ones is a core component of his practice and process. Johst received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (Printmaking, 2015) and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts (Art & Technology, 2023). He is currently based in Los Angeles.
Hirokazu Kosaka
Hirokazu Kosaka is a Japanese-born American artist, ordained Shingon Buddhist priest, and the Visual Arts Director at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. In 1966 Kosaka moved from Kyoto to Los Angeles where he attended Chouinard Art Institute and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts. While at Chouinard he became influenced by conceptual art, leading to his participation in L.A.’s emerging conceptual art scene during the 1970s. Eventually moving back to Japan, he then traveled to Europe and South America before returning to Los Angeles to live in 1976. In addition to his B.F.A. he also holds a Master of Arts in Theology from Columbia University. His multi-disciplinary practice spans performance art, sculpture, calligraphy, conceptual art, and Kyūdō (Japanese Zen archery). In 2004, Kosaka performed “In Between The Heartbeat” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, using Kyūdō, electric blankets, and copier machines to comment critically on technology.
Kosaka has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Brody Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund, and the California Arts Council. He was a 2016 USA Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. Notable exhibitions include “On the Verandah: Selected Works from 1969-1974” at Benton Museum of Art, Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles Art, 1945-1980 at the Getty, and “In the Mood” at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Kai Luen Liang
Kai-Luen Liang is a Chinese-American composer and sound artist based in Los Angeles. His work/research is interested in exploring various dimensions of sound and digital media as it relates to technology and erasure, surveillance/prediction, algorithmic divination, identity and migration, and data hacking. He received his undergraduate degree in Asian American Studies from UC Santa Barbara and a MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Music Technology as well as a specialization at the Center for Integrated Media.
His work has been shown at XCOAX Conference for Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, South By South West(SXSW2017), ARS Electronica, Beijing 751 Design Week, Małopolski Ogród Sztuki, and the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts Gallery. He has performed all over the world at venues and festivals including the Boiler Room (Beijing 2016), Shanghai International Jazz Festival, and Clockenflap Music Festival (Hong Kong). His music has been released on SVBKLT, Ran Music, Modern Sky, and Robox Neotech (Berlin).
He currently is associate faculty at California Institute of the Arts teaching at the Center For Integrated Media.
Dongpu Ling
Dongpu Ling is an intermedia artist born in Shanghai, China, currently based in Los Angeles, California.
She is working at the intersection of art and technology. Her works explore the space among digital and physical entities by creating a multidisciplinary relationship with machine intelligence, focusing on the unseen aspects. Her work spans multiple media formats including interactive installations, sculptures, sound, videos, and performances.
Malte Sänger
Found objects are the crystallization points of Malte Sänger’s photography-based works. The human and geological time planes entangled in them are made visible by means of extensive research work, travel, and self-built camera systems. His artist books resulting from the projects have received several awards. Malte Sänger holds a Master’s degree from the University of Art and Design of the State of Hesse, Germany in Philosophy & Aesthetics and Photography, is a recipient of the “new german photography—gute aussichten” award, a fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and received his MFA in Photo & Media and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2022.
Kathi Schulz
Kathi Schulz is a multimedia artist and creative technologist. Working in various media such as installation, sculpture, performance, video, and sound, she explores the interdependence between technology, body, and mind. Schulz’s practice creates a tension between the overly intimate narratives of digital networks and the exploration of systematic schisms of neofeudalistic structures. By using her own body, voice, and practice of digital communication, her work investigates notions of feminism in the digital age. Her practice conjures a space in which technology is not separate from but a part of us, allowing a critical and generative perspective that unfolds new possibilities and means of perception. Schulz holds an MFA in Art and Technology from the California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
Jordan Wong
A collector of souvenir state spoons and overpriced Uni Alpha Gel lead pencils, Jordan Wong is a Chinese-American experimental animator and object maker driven by emotional honesty and analog processes. His practice explores concepts of escapism, loss of control, struggling to remain present, and our inability to communicate with one another. Drawing on autobiographical experiences, his works engage rules, repetition, trauma, and efforts to create a queer lens through which to view the world. His goal is to produce socially engaging, empathetic work from the viewpoint of a queer person of color. His films have screened internationally, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, DOK Leipzig, NewFest, Animafest Zagreb, Japan Media Arts Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival, where he was awarded the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker in 2018.
Exhibition Matterport
viralnet-v4.net 