Exhibition
July 8–October 2, 2015

Ishu Han: Memory of Each Other

Ishu Han was born in China and raised in Japan; his work continually questions his own migration and issues of national identity. This is an unlikely direction for an artist living in Japan, a country which often is perceived to have a homogenous population. His video work, Memory of Each Other, shows one of the five uninhabited Senkaku Islands slowly fading into the sea, ending up level with the horizon line. This work addresses a highly charged territory in the East China Sea where the ownership of the five islands has long-been disputed between China and Japan. One newly commissioned work in the exhibition, Reclining Animals, provides a novel reading of iconic patriotic symbols; it is a sequel to Reclining Statues, also on view. Reclining Animals, shows the costumed artist, transformed into an eagle, lion and beaver – symbols of the US, UK, and Canada – gradually assuming the reclining Buddha pose. In a second commissioned work made this year, Han traversed the US to see the Grand Canyon for the first time, resulting in a digitally produced photograph of this natural wonder made up of identical one-cent coins, problematizing US politics and society through its currency.

Ishu Han (born 1987, Shanghai, China) currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Han’s works have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions including Life Scan, Tokyo Frontline, Japan, 2014; Study Country, VCA Gallery, Australia, 2013; Form of Sea, Kyoto Art Center North Gallery, Japan, 2012; as well as groups shows such as In the Wake, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015, and Whose Game is it?, Royal College of Art, UK. Ishu Han’s residency is sponsored by the Asian Cultural Council.

Ishu Han: Memory of Each Other is presented in conjunction with Saskia Janssen: Everything Is One. Although these exhibitions were independently conceived, many of the works in both exhibitions contemplate Buddhist ideas and forms in a contemporary world.

Exhibition support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Greenwich Collection, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

The exhibition is curated by Kari Conte with Shinnie Kim, and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalog available for free to the public.

Opening Reception: Jul 07, 2015, 6-8pm

Participating Residents

ISCP Talk
June 30, 2015

Salon: Hannah Heilmann and Mark Hilton

Hannah Heilmann will present her current project Estrous.life which combines future science with ancient techniques of soap-making. She will discuss how this project is connected to her past work as well as ideas of objecthood and authorship.

Mark Hilton will discuss what it is to be human in contemporary society by asking the question: is altruism really a form of self-interest? Working across drawing, painting and sculpture, Hilton’s work both confronts and universalizes issues in society. Most recently, Hilton has focused on how ethics are formed across generations and impacted by biological, cultural and sociological factors.

Participating Residents

Exhibition
June 10–June 19, 2015

A Rehearsal by Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta

Artists and Beta-Local collaborators Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta will present original artworks and documentation of work by Margarita Azurdia, Felipe Mujica, Jorge González, Ana Maria Millan, Javier Tellez and Johanna Unzueta in ISCP’s exhibition galleries. The exhibition will reveal contrasts between Geometric Abstraction, with its idealistic and formalist characteristics, and more personal, exotic and political forms of expression. Works include a video of a flying body crossing the US-Mexico border in a semi-circle trajectory, a ceramic turtle resting over a neo-geo-style cube, and a group of photographs of Minimal-like sculptures and paintings with the artist fashionably posing next to them, among others. This presentation is a prelude “test-drive” or “rehearsal” for an exhibition scheduled for later this year in Santiago, Chile at Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo.

Margarita Azurdia (Antigua, Guatemala, 1931–1998) studied at Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Guatemala City and at McGill University of Liberal Arts-College of San Francisco, California. She exhibited her work in Mexico, the United States, France, and Central America. She was also part of a generation of Guatemalan artists who experimented with performance art in the 1970s.

Ana Maria Millán was born in 1975 in Cali, Colombia. She lives and works between Bogotá and Berlin. Millán’s work explores different forms of transmission of information in relation to subcultures, violence and exclusion discourses. Her work has been shown at El Matadero, Madrid; Video Sector, Miami Art Basel; Instituto de Visión, Bogotá; Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Cartagena de Indias, Cartagena; 12th Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca; SFMoMa, San Francisco; and Creative Time, New York.

Jorge González was born in 1981 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he currently lives and works. González has exhibited at Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany; Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Jardín Borda, Cuernavaca, México.

Felipe Mujica is a New York-based artist born in 1974 in Santiago, Chile. In 1997, he co-founded the artist run space Galería Chilena, which operated between 1999 and 2005, first a nomadic and commercial art gallery and later as a collaborative art project, a curatorial “experiment”. He has exhibited his work  at Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City; Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City; Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto; Fundazione Merz, Turin; Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo; Biennial of the Americas, Denver; 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou; and most recently at the 12 Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador.

Javier Tellez is a New York-based artist born in 1969 in Venezuela. His work reflects a sustained interest in bringing peripheral communities and invisible situations to the fore of contemporary art addressing institutional dynamics, disabilities and mental illness as marginalizing conditions. He has exhibited in major institutions worldwide and recently had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zurich, SMAK, Ghent; San Francisco Art Institute and REDCAT,Los Angeles. His work has been included in exhibitions such as dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, Whitney Biennale, Manifesta, Sydney Biennale and Venice Biennial.

Johanna Unzueta is a New York-based artist born in 1974 in Santiago, Chile. Working primarily with sculpture and installations, her work focuses on the notion of labor. She has exhibited at Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City; Christinger De Mayo, Zürich; David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile; The Queens Museum of Art, New York, and Or Gallery, Vancouver.

Opening Reception: Jun 10, 2015