PAUL CHAN
b. 1973, Hong KongFrom video to drawing, writing to publishing, to kinetic objects and beyond, the Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Paul Chan has found ever-new means by which to realize a sprawling set of artistic, philosophical, and political positions. Well-versed in Classics and critical theory, modernist literature and ‘90s hip-hop, Chan has, since the turn of the 21st century, infused his art with a Homeric quality: cunning, which the artist describes as “twofold or dialectical.” The figure of Odysseus “illustrates in emphatic fashion what I think we intuitively understand,” Chan has said: “that reasoning is discursive and compelling when it is also aesthetical.” Drawing on a disparate array of visual and textual references, his early net-based projects and video installations like _My birds... trash... the future _(2004) illustrated Chan’s own cunning—his commitment to advancing discourse and aesthetics, each through the other. The 7 Lights (2005) would distill animation further—just light and shadow—immersing the viewer in an interpretation of the Old Testament creation story.
After his initial burst of activity and recognition, Chan withdrew from art production from 2009–14. He kept working, however, establishing the imprint Badlands Unlimited, which published over 50 titles by artistic predecessors and peers (Yvonne Rainer, Cory Arcangel, Martine Syms), philosophers (from Socrates to Wittgenstein), and Chan himself. He returned to art in 2014, staging a retrospective at Schaulager, Basel and winning the Guggenheim Foundation’s Hugo Boss Prize. Since then, he has extended his animation practice off-screen, with a series of motile nylon figures, their rippling movements propelled by electric fans and their forms and titles registering Chan-ian concerns both metaphysical and political. These so-called _Breathers _manifest what the artist theorizes as the “kairological artwork”—objects which “seize time the way a beat holds a song... They last as experiences by not staying whole as forms.”
Courtesy Greene Naftali
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