Alan Kwan was born in 1990 in Hong Kong, China. Kwan attained his BA in Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong in 2012, followed by an MSc in Art, Culture and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, USA in 2016. Kwan currently lives and works in Boston, MA, USA.
Read MoreAlan Kwan transforms his personal experiences through the mediums of film, video games, and immersive virtual reality to study the nature of pain, human memories, and simulation technology. Kwan is an independent filmmaker and media artist. With more than 10 years of filmmaking experience, he wanted to use technology to bring cinema to another level, which prompted him to transfer invented ideas from real life to film. In Kwan’s Bad Trip (2012), the artist used a video camera mounted on his glasses to document his life. Having started this in November 2011, the artist has produced an expanding database of digitised visual memories. Using custom virtual reality software, Kwan has created a virtual mindscape that people can navigate to experience the artist’s memories and dreams. The virtual world is perpetually evolving as he loads fresh virtual memories every night.
Kwan’s previous projects were shown at international venues including the Ars Electronica Center in Austria, the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Germany, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Shanghai. In 2015, Kwan was awarded first prize by the MIT Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts. Other recent accomplishments include the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Award for Young Artist (Media Art) for his body of work that combines art and technology.
Text courtesy Pearl Lam Galleries.
Entering The Interstitial, one feels as if one is intruding on the private diary of a teenage boy, or boys. In a world where sentimentality is frowned regularly upon (secretly or not), The Interstitial, which debuts two young Hong Kong artists, is refreshing. Graduates of the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong Creative...
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The connection between an exhibition and its installation space can define a show. Even the most carefully curated shows may, in the wrong environment, result in an unpleasant experience. But such is not the case for The Interstitial at Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong SOHO, whose space compliments the works of two young Hong Kong artists, Alan Kwan...
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Ten years ago, Hong Kong’s only fine arts undergraduate course was offered by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, which produced less than thirty graduates a year. Since then, government funding for fine arts and cultural management courses has substantially increased and graduation numbers have increased ten-fold. Coinciding with the art...
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