Chin Chih Yang will exhibit his works at the Five Myles Gallery, 558 St. Johns Pl., from May 5 through June 6, 2012.
The installation will be primarily made of cans and other recyclable materials including industrial cables, plastic and hospital-use oxygen tubes and more. The artist is looking for a conservational aesthetic in a society dedicated to waste.
Recently, Five Myles exhibition and performance space hosted a dialogue with exhibiting artist Edouard Steinhauer. The Haitian-American sculptor and photographer uses found and transformed objects expanding the medium with his imagination.
The exhibition included two large kinetic pieces made from common household items that rotate, beginning and stopping seemingly at random. Foil, a conductor for electrical charges, is an important aspect in his choice of materials.
His illuminated photographs were created by charging the medium of his sculptures and in complete darkness photographing the discharge, just a fraction of a second recorded on 4×5 film.
This multi-media installation called “No Strange Land” pays homage to John Hampton, an “outsider” artist who worked 14 years in obscurity in his garage in Virginia. Hampton’s sculpture “Millennium General Assembly” found a new home in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington after his death.
Steinhauer was inspired by using common materials to create a religious shrine both by Hampton and by the religious shrines he sees in Haiti. While highly influenced by the juncture of material culture and the mystical, art itself may be closer to Steinhauers’s religion.
The artist who teaches at Montclair State University in New Jersey is getting ready for a new phase of his life, resettling to Berlin, Germany, in order to create art in a completely foreign environment and provide an opportunity to travel more.
The evening was co-sponsored by Haiti Cultural Exchange as one of its An n’Pale (We Speak) monthly salons.
Photos by Tequila Minsky
