Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles is proud to present “Atlas Portal” by two featured artists, Poyen Wang and Kio Griffith. From October 12, 2018 to January 4, 2019, the exhibition will feature the artists’ video narratives, objects and installation about identity roles within cultural circulations and informational exchanges. The artists both straddle dual cultural boundaries and changing social landscapes. As a portal into their private atlases, this exhibition will explore through an alternate window of personal post-cultural politics.
“Atlas Portal” will showcase five pieces of video art installations, including Poyen Wang’s “Six Excerpts from a Journal”, “Crossing”, “A Fabricated Personal Archive”, “Route of Obsession” and Kio Griffith’s “improvideo logue #88”. Wang is from Taiwan, and currently a visiting artist at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica from October 1 to December 31, 2018. His practice primarily takes the form of video and installation, creating an immersive environment to evoke the viewers’ emotions and imaginations. The subject of his works usually derives from a personal experience and then evolves into a broad research of the people or place Wang associated with, in order to explore the collective history and memory.
Curated by Kio Griffith, “Atlas Portal” serves as a virtual guide and sensory reference for the ever transforming 21st century world: one that is metamorphosing from analog to digital; cross pollinating from eastern to western, northern to southern cultures; supernatural to hyper-virtual objects; and life’s lost and found knowledge to be logged in and archived as digital data.
At the opening reception on October 12, Alma Ruiz, former senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), will join Wang and Griffith’s conversation, along with Peter Frank, an art critic, curator, and poet who was the Senior Curator at the Riverside Art Museum and an art critic for Angeleno magazine.
Poyen Wang
Born in Taiwan and based between New York and Taipei, Wang received his master’s degree in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts in 2015, and his second master’s degree at the School of Visual Arts with a Paula Rhodes Award in Computer Art in 2017. He was the fellowship recipient of a government sponsorship for overseas study from Taiwan in 2015 and won the Gold Medal Award at Taiwan National Art Exhibition in 2017. He completed the AIM program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City in 2018.
Kio Griffith
Based in Los Angeles and Japan, Griffith is a visual and sound artist, independent curator, writer, and producer. His work includes drawing, painting, sound, video, performance, electronics, language, sculpture and installation. He has exhibited in the UK, Japan, Germany, Croatia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Turkey, Belgium and the U.S. His current projects include founder / project director at TYPE (Tokyo+Yokohama Projects Exchange), co-founder of Transit Republic, IMMI, and Genzou, independent curator, associate editor at Fabrik and Art Bridge magazines, former art director at Angel City Jazz Festival and has designed over 300 music album packaging.
Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles
Established by the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture, Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles is a non-profit cultural institute with an aim of promoting Taiwanese arts and culture. By disseminating information, organizing exhibitions, screenings and other activities, the institute features Taiwanese visual and performing arts as well as film, literature and music, with the goal to enhance cultural exchanges between Taiwan and the international community.
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