Each Modern is pleased to announce "Either is Good," a group exhibition that gathers young overseas Chinese and Taiwanese artists that live in the USA and frequently exhibit there and in Europe. The exhibition will focus on how life and culture are integrated, transformed, and displayed in the new forms of painting and mixed media happening in the Western world by these overseas Chinese and Taiwanese artists, and the characteristics that distinguish them as some of the most talented within the trends of international contemporary art.

Stanley Chen (b. 1997, Australia) moved to Foshan, Guangdong as a child and later graduated from School of Visual Arts, New York in 2020. Living back and forth in various countries, Chen's painting focuses on his lingering identity. He paints his thoughts, behaviors and feelings toward himself into self-portraits as a way to write his own autobiography and to challenge the cultural differences and the restraints of the tradition. In Wild Stanley Jumps Out From the Bush (2020), Chen appears on the canvas like how a Pokémon appears on a Game Boy screen, inviting the audience to confront his appearance. Sorry I can't turn into moth (2020) sees the artist covering his face with a silkworm, implying his resistance to some kind of expectation. In 2022, Chen exhibited with YiRui Jia, another artist in the show, in the group show "Conceive" at LATITUDE Gallery, New York.

Jeffrey Cheung (b. 1989, USA) is an artist and a skater from California who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz. The figures in his painting demonstrate his exploration towards the human body and sexual identity. In some ways, the gender identities of the figures in his works cannot be determined. Rather, the emphasis lies on how they flirt and connect to each other. Through this depiction of bodies in states of joy, play and close relation, the artist expresses the unity of communities of queer and trans people, and people of color. The figure in I Love My Ass (2021) looks at their private body part with a pleased gaze and gesture. However, it is also the frankest acknowledgement to their own body. In the end of 2021, Jeffrey held his solo exhibition at pt.2 Gallery, Oakland and participated in a two-person exhibition "Jeffrey Cheung and Humberto Ramirez" at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York which ended in January, 2022.

Currently a student of the School of Visual Arts, New York, YiRui Jia (b. 1997, China) moved to the USA in 2015. Her painting presents a straightforward directness. Exaggerating colors, lines, gestures, and shapes that look like creatures, Jia's works are energetic movie scenes full of interesting and bizarre scenes. However, we will probably not find hints of a specific city, object, or figure. To Jia, it is more important to see the universality of different surroundings. In A half hour before Mama Bride gives birth (2021), a one-eyed pregnant woman in a wedding dress is walking with many big "dogs" on the beach with palm trees under the chill blue sky. On one hand, the drama distracts us from "giving birth"; on the other hand, the complex feelings of "giving birth" are all contained within the scene. In 2022, Jia's latest solo exhibition, "Drink An Overloaded Bowl Of Chaos Soup", was held at IRL, New York. She was also included in the group shows "Moon in Virgo" at Bill Brady Gallery, Los Angeles and "Conceive" at LATITUDE Gallery, New York with Stanley Chen.

Antonia Kuo (b. 1987, USA) graduated from Yale University and her work has exhibited in many international institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1 and has been collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Centre Pompidou. Her art begins with photographs and image making and tends to discuss the fast, overflowing images of our present. She combines technologies from different time periods, such as analog and digital images, gelatin silver prints, as well as experiments in exposures and printing to create mixed media works that simultaneously carry photographic sharpness and abstract softness which look back at the past while questioning the future. Kuo paints gelatin silver paper with chemicals in Sieve(Blue Stripe) (2021) and Egress (2021), keeping the production of the photograph but also rejecting its function. Red Eye (2021) collages laser-cut photographic materials, storing light as a physical existence. Kuo's solo show "Mercury and Salt" was held at Chart Gallery, New York from February to March, 2022. She will also participate group exhibitions in London and New York in May and June this year.

New York-based artist Cole Lu (b. 1984, Taiwan) spent his youth in Taipei and he later graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. His artbook Smells Like Content (2015) was collected by the Museum of Modern Art Library. Lu's work surrounds the concept of "creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothingness)." Through reinvention, renaming, and rewriting, his art discusses how contemporary cultural beliefs frame and restrict our world. With narrative titles, Lu's works are almost like the illustrations within a novel: a demon is writing some kind of banned story, yet another demon is kissing a man in a dark alley. However, the extract text "I live in America, I don't have to love it, nothing sound less than freedom to me, you do that. Everybody's got to love something" from one of the titles seems to remind us of a contradictory approach to freedom. In 2022, Lu will present two solo exhibitions in Chapter, New York and Nir Altman, Munich.

Ni Hao (b. 1989, Taiwan) graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design. He was granted the 2014 Taipei Art Award and was internationally exhibited in cities such as Shanghai, San Juan, Los Angeles, and New York. His works have been collected by Videotage Media Art Collection, Hong Kong and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Seoul. Ni's mixed media work The Harvester (stationery store abstraction) (2021) is inspired by the pen testing papers in almost every stationary store in Taiwan. To Ni, the meaningless drawing on the papers could be seen as an unconscious collective expression happening outside of our jobs or schools. He later collected, cut, and collaged these papers and eventually built a functional bulletin. The artist and the audience are allowed to interact and change the appearance of the work with the knife and the cutting mat when it exhibits. In June 2022, Ni's solo exhibition will take place at Liste Basel with Vacancy.

Ang Ziqi Zhang (b. 1994, Canada) moved to San Diego when they were six. They later graduated from University of Chicago and are currently studying at Yale University. Zhang's paintings make nearly no attempt to deliver any meaningful message. Rather, the works are more akin to a conversational space for our mind and senses. They describe this experience similar to how we enjoy music: regardless of if we understand the lyrics or not, the music will always "correct" us to its temple; and when we neglect the textual part of painting, we may still receive their poetic abstract signals. Zhang's recent works are more about the visual expression of emotion and feelings, aiming to create a dialogue with something without painting it. In the circular works, we will find some ambiguous indications; in other works, there are also warm and soft rhythms, leading us to explore deeper. Zhang's solo exhibition "Fleece Engine" was held at Produce Model Gallery, Chicago in April 2021.

Press release courtesy Each Modern.