Video Art Screening Programs

Toshio Matsumoto
May 14–July 21, 2013

Kwan Sheung Chi
May 14–July 14, 2013

ONE MILLION(New Taiwan Dollar Ver.), 2012, HD Video, color, sound, 9 min. 43 sec.
ONE MILLION(Japanese Yen Ver.), 2012, HD Video, color, sound, 1 min. 8 sec.
ONE MILLION(Hong Kong Dollar Ver.), 2011, HD Video, color, sound, 8 min. 18 sec.

As the title suggests, One Million is a video work depicting the counting of one million bills. Divided into three versions, the first shows a huge number of ten-thousand-yen bills (from Japan) being counted without the slightest hint of disarray followed by a similar scene with one-thousand-dollar bills (from Hong Kong), and one with one-thousand-dollar bills (from Taiwan). But looking more closely, we realize that the video was created by repeating the same scene of moving fingers, and that though it looks as if many bills are being counted, there are actually only a few.

In our age in which, due not only to various economic developments but also to the rise of the Internet and a variety of other media, information is constantly being converted into data, the distinction between things that seem to exist and things that real do exist has grown increasingly vague. At the same time, these systems are fraught with the danger that everything will be lost when they break down. In a simple manner, One Million asks us to consider the current state of our society in which a huge degree of instability underlies the desire for convenience and rationality.

Kwan Sheung Chi:
Born in 1980 in Hong Kong, where he currently resides. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003. While still in school, in 2002, he received widespread attention for a solo exhibition that was held at ten venues, including a museum, in Hong Kong. In his practice, Kwan uses a variety of expressive methods including a video, three-dimensional, and installation format.

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2009: No matter. Try again. Fail again., gallery EXIT, Hong Kong
2011: New Media Section, Art Taipei 2011, Taipei World Trade Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2012: Collected Works, Yuka Tsuruno, Tokyo, Japan

Selected Group Exhibitions
2010: Videozone V, The 5th International Video Art Biennial in Israel, Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
2012: Mobile M+: Yau Ma Tei, Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong

Greta Alfaro
March 19–May 12, 2013

IN PRAISE OF THE BEAST, 2009, Single channel HD Video, 14 min. 58 sec.

The work begins with a cake sitting in the middle of a forest, decorated in celebration of the beasts that live out in the wild. These celebrated beasts, however, do not understand that the cake is food, let alone its celebratory intent. The wild boars that emerge stamp on the cake and destroy it, and begin to roll all over it as though they are playing in mud. Some viewers may think these boars are ugly and monstrous, and others may think they are rather cute. Wild beasts are portrayed in many fables and other stories as representations of the ugly and chaotic. But to these beasts that actually live out in the wild, such images made by humans bear no relevance. In fact, the humans who presented them with the cake can be said to be arrogant. Humans are supposed to be animals, no different from these wild boars, yet we have burdened ourselves with a host of problems, such as the destruction of nature and environmental pollution caused by mass consumption. Is it truly the beasts who are barbaric, or is it we? The work poses us viewers with this question through the image of the wild boars innocently frolicking in the cake.

Greta Alfaro: Born 1977 in the historic city of Pamplona, located in northern Spain. Graduated from the Polytechnic University of Valencia with a degree in Fine Arts in 2001. MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London, 2011. Lives and works in London. Alfaro questions the true nature of order and ethics, with religion and native mythology or fables among her primary motifs. Her works are presented in a variety of different forms, such as photographs, video, and installations. Selected for participation in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010 and awarded with a grant from the Genesis Foundation that funded her 2012 solo exhibition A Very Crafty and Tricky Contrivance (London), Alfaro is among the leading artists of her generation.

collectif_fact
January 26–March 17, 2013

The Course of Things, 2012, HD Video, sound, 9 min. 30 sec.

Through the skillful use of several ingenious tricks, The Course of Things presents footage of the unpredictable actions of the visitors at the Natural History Museum in London as fiction rather than documentation. One trick is the narration by the British-born film director Alfred Hitchcock, which leads us through the story. The director’s voice, extracted from his television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, is meticulously edited to form a monologue on the essence of the suspense genre. Further tricks such as the film-like camera angles, zoomed-in footage, and the insertion of background music transform the museum into a stage and the visitors into actors, creating a suspense theater of sorts. Going back and forth across the boundaries between fiction and reality, The Course of Things presents a humorous demonstration of how everyday life can be more dramatic than fiction.

collectif_fact: collectif_fact, formed by Annelore Schneider (b. 1979, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) and Claude Piguet (b. 1977, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) and based in London and Geneva, is an artists’ group that mainly works with video. Using the method of taking apart existing stories and reconstructing or re-editing them to create different stories or to add different meanings, collectif_fact explores the narrative possibilities in video. The group creates multilayered, collage-like video works composed of fragments such as words excerpted from books and other sources, bars of music, memories and reality.

Zhou Tao
November 20, 2012–January 14, 2013

Times in New York, 2009, Single channel HD Video, sound, 16 min. 55 sec. South Stone, 2010-2011, Single channel HD Video, sound, 24 min. 51 sec.

Time in New York is a documentary video recording of Zhou Tao going on with his life in a New York apartment, while putting on a modest performance wherein the artist attaches balls of thread to his waist, tacking the string onto the walls so as to leave visual traces of his movement. His bodily movement becomes a material in itself through this visualization, and with the passing of time, these visual traces gradually emerge as a detailed drawing of sorts.
South Stone is set in an underdeveloped region of the same name, located in the city of Guangzhou in China. The artist and his friends appear with serious expressions against documentary-style footage of the region’s landscape, delivering a string of unrelated performances with a somber attitude, as though in response to the quiet passage of time in South Stone. These works are a humorous expression of what performance is for Zhou: a means for building relationships between unfamiliar places and himself.

Zhou Tao: Born 1976 in Changsha, China, lives and works in Guangzhou, China. BFA in oil painting and MFA in mixed media at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Zhou creates theater-like films that are neither realistic nor unrealistic by capturing daily life using documentary-like methods and using it as a stage for his performances. Solo exhibitions at Times Museum in Guangzhou (2012) and Queens Nails Projects in San Francisco (2011), among others. Also participated in various group exhibitions, such as the 6th Curitiba Biennial (2011) and Yes, But… at Location One in New York (2010), attracting attention as a leading young Chinese artist.

Khaled Hafez
September 19–November 18, 2012

11.02-2011: The Video Diaries, 2011, color, single-channel (original: three-channel) video, sound, 6 min. 19 sec.

On Feburary 11, 2011, the news of former president Mubarak’s downfall in Egypt shook the entire world. However, this revolution was covered in detail from earlier on by video-sharing websites and other online media. These videos captured the voices of countless citizens standing up against terror, as well as images of those who were victimized. The same could be said of artists. In this work, such video footage from various sources are combined in order to reconstruct the revolution as a ‘diary’ of sorts, or imagery from a personal perspective that is not portrayed in journalistic media.

Khaled Hafez: Born 1963 in Cairo, lives and works in Cairo. Creates paintings and video works that carry political messages by depicting Egyptian popular culture and the image of Egyptians as seen from Western society. Hafez has participated in many international exhibitions, including Manifesta 8 (2010). Awarded by the Fondation Blachère at the 9th Bamako Encounters African Photography Biennial (2011).

Sutthiart Supaparinya
July 18-September 17, 2012

Shooting Stars, 2010, HD, color, sound, 9min

Countless glimmering lights stream down the screen, accompanied from time to time by echoing metallic sounds. When viewers learn that this beautiful, enchanting work was inspired by the repeated clashes between protesters and the military in Thailand in 2010, the impression they receive will surely be an entirely different one. In Shooting Stars, Sutthirat Supaparinya demonstrates the characteristic of the medium of film, or how it can transform reality into something entirely different. When we are faced with a beautiful film that is dissociated from reality, we are led to ask ourselves what we truly ought to believe.

Sutthirat Supaparinya: Born in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 1973, lives and works in Chiang Mai. BFA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University and Postgraduate degree in Media Arts from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany. Awarded a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council in 2011 to conduct visual arts research as an Artist in Residence of the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York. Exhibits internationally, including the 4th Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in 2012.

Shahar Marcus
May 15-July 16, 2012

1, 2, 3, Herring, 2011, color, sound, 2min27sec

Shahar Marcus’s artistic practice is centered on performances that he acts out himself. In 1, 2, 3, Herring, he casts himself in the role of a World War II-era soldier and plays the children’s game of “1, 2, 3, Herring,” similar to the American game of “Red Light, Green Light,” with three other soldiers who are in fact cardboard cutouts of himself in costume. The scene takes place on a reconstructed war site in Israel, of the 1948 war with Egypt, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence. By placing himself in this memorial site and using both humor and irony in the act of fighting against himself, the artist invites viewers to contemplate how various perspectives of ‘manipulation’ and ‘censorship’ become involved in the process of ‘historification’ of such events.

Shahar Marcus: Born in Petach Tikva, Israel in 1971, lives and works in Tel Aviv. Creates works that involve his own body, crossing boundaries between different modes of expression, such as performance, video, and sculpture. Won the Experimental Cinema Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2009. Also exhibited in international exhibitions such as the 3rd Moscow Biennale in 2009 and the Mediations Biennale in 2010.

Sumiljan Radic
February 7-April 22, 2012

Larissa Sansour
November 29, 2011-February 5, 2012

Atsushi Yamamoto
September 21-November 27, 2011

Yuichiro Tamura
July 12-September 19, 2011

Cinthia Marcelle
April 26-July 10, 2011

Yoshinao Satoh
March 8-April 24, 2011

Suki Chan
January 18-March 6, 2011

Michael Bell-Smith
November 23, 2010-January 16, 2011

Choy Ka Fai
October 5-November 21, 2010

Ziad Antar
August 24-October 3, 2010

Tsui Kuang-Yu
July 6-August 22, 2010

Naoyuki Tsuji
May 25-June 20, 2010

Torbjørn Rødland
March 13-May 9, 2010