Press

 

I am pleased to announce the launch of the publication and exhibition ’Invisible Twinning’ at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, created during a year long project I developed in Berlin with artist Guilia Giannola and curator Francesca Mila Nemni, which was commissioned for Meridian Urban by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. The publication was designed by Anja Lutz and is published by The Green Box, Berlin, and is on sale at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and The Green Box:

‘Invisible Twinning’
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
September 6 – 17 2011
www.invisibletwinning.blogspot.com

Referring to the unofficial twinnings that reflect Berlin’s current immigrant population instead of the official equivalents of the city, the project explores the city’s long tradition of urban horticulture and reveals ideas of health in the widest sense: as balance and imbalance as well as on a societal and personal level, looking at how people navigate and share resources within a city.

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June – July 2011 54th Venice Bienniale

 

Laura McLean-Ferris, The Independent ’54th Venice Biennale: Tapping the light fantastic’, 7 July 2011
‘The Palace Zenobio houses ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion, which showcases the work of artists who have had residencies there.  Gayle Chong Kwan’s diorama photography and Chriss Orr’s painted miniatures stand out.”

Tessa Jackson, Director, Iniva, London, July 2011
“I think its a really interesting show and combination of artists. What it has made me think about is the make up of all of us as individuals, where we are outwardly from and where we are inwardly from and I think the imagery of the different worlds is fascinating…I very much enjoyed Gayle Chong Kwan’s work, and again her background of Asia and Scotland and her extraordinary images, allowing you to go on an imaginary journey of your own, even though it is partly her journey, just the imagination, its really very good.”

Maggie Warren, Exhibition Organiser, Collection, Lincoln, July 2011
“I liked the work and the ideas of artefacts and remains and the landscape and what those mean, it is a work that gets to the heart of universal meanings of place and what those mean to us all.”

 

ArtSway New Forest Pavilion 2011 publication available from ArtSway
www.artsway.org.uk 

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July 2011 Beaux Arts Magazine, France

 

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7 July 2011 ’54th Venice Biennale: Tapping the light fantastic’, The Independent

 

Laura McLean-Ferris, The Independent ’54th Venice Biennale: Tapping the light fantastic’, 7 July 2011
‘The Palace Zenobio houses ArtSway’s New Forest Pavilion, which showcases the work of artists who have had residencies there.  Gayle Chong Kwan’s diorama photography and Chriss Orr’s painted miniatures stand out.”

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May – June 2010, Sergio Giusti on ‘Sensorial Universe’, Galleria Uno + Uno, Milan

 

“Made up of food, leftovers and waste, the universe in images by Gayle Chong Kwan is a dialectic universe…. The mythological constructions of Chong Kwan are sensorial in nature because they are saturated in mythical thought. Thought, as Claude Lèvy-Strauss wrote, that is drawn from sensory qualities: in it the raw and the cooked are associated with the question of the binary opposition nature/culture to lead to the understanding that cooked corresponds with socialised. We could therefore say that Chong Kwan does not structure her photos, she cooks them. It is not only to underline a process of fictionalisation, but even more to highlight a cultural process and all of its implications. It demonstrates the action of culture on a basic need: food is definitely sustenance, but it is also a collector of belonging and a building block for social community. And yet, on the other side, it may also be curiosity for the exotic which is always an attempted appropriation and – in the worst cases – a touristic almost neo-colonial devouring….Even in her most recent work Senscape Scotland, the relationship with the senses remains a central theme. Food is still present, but it becomes only one of the ingredients. The Scottish scenes are in fact constructed with other objects including photographs and materials found while travelling to Scotland. The models that inspired it are the scenes that Daguerre prepared to recreate the Scottish beauties used for  of light, which may be considered as a sort of virtual experience precursor. If we add that Daguerre, the official inventor of photography, prepared these dioramas without ever having visited Scotland, it becomes clear why it appealed to the contemporary sensitivity of Gayle Chong Kwan. It is again the ambiguous relationship between reality and photography, the first media copiers of reality, which however create doubles, mirrored images – they are already virtual images.”

Read full critical text written by Sergio Giusti on my solo exhibition ‘Sensorial Universe’, Galleria Uno + Uno, Milan
Chong Kwan ‘Sensorial Universe’

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