Present Tense: The art of emerging Chinese Americans March 2, 2007

On Friday, March 2nd, the Chinese Culture Center, in partnership with Kearny Street Workshop, presents the opening reception for Present Tense, a new visual exhibition showcasing the talents of young, emerging Chinese American artists. Featuring work by Susanna Kwan, Lauren M. Wong, Niana Liu, Max Chen, Amy Ho, Lucy Kalyani Lin, Marcus Lo, Sylvia La, Erin Ng, Jocelyn Shu, Sharon E.O. Hing, Stephanie Lie, and Amy Lam, this group exhibition offers a vibrant, lush, and expansive view into the intriguing work of new voices from the San Francisco Bay Area.

From Amy Lam’s Anita Mui Yim-Fong-inspired video altar installation, Madonna of Asia, to the grafitti-influenced Bay Area visual serenades of Marcus Lo, to Lauren M. Wong’s ink-and-colored-paper commentary on The Matriarch, to Sylvia La’s quietly powerful paintings on the Asian American experience, to the uncomfortably intimate sound installation of Lucy Kalyani Lin, this show promises to intrigue and challenge its viewers, presenting a diverse portrait of young Chinese America.

On display from March 2 to May 19th, Present Tense opens alongside In Search of Roots, a presentation of the Chinese Culture Center in partnership with the Chinese Historical Society of America.

Event: Opening Reception for Present Tense and In Search of Roots

Date/Time:

Opening reception: Friday, March 2nd , 2007; 6 -9pm
Exhibition runs 3/2 – 5/19; gallery hours are Tues – Saturday, 10am – 4pm

Location: Chinese Culture Center gallery, 750 Kearny Street, 3rd floor of Hilton San Francisco Financial District Hotel, San Francisco.

Cost: free

Info: CCC: 415.986.1822 or [email protected]; KSW: 415.503.0520 or [email protected]

About the artists
Max Chen was born and raised in the Bay Area. Needing a change of weather, he went to college in upstate New York and came back with a degree in mechanical engineering. Since then it has been a mix of industrial/product design and metalworking. The only constant is comics and bicycles.

Sharon Elaine Ong Hing is a fifth generation Chinese American who was born and grew up in San Francisco, California. After graduating from University High School in 2001, she attended UCLA where she earned three degrees (Fine Arts B.A., International Development Studies B.A., and History B.A). In 2006, Ms. Hing moved to Hong Kong to study Cantonese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. While in Hong Kong she also worked at the legal aid organization, Helpers for Domestic Helpers, volunteered at the Asian Human Rights Commission, and taught English at Po Leung Kuk Orphanage. She currently works at Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy as a Membership and Program Assistant and volunteers at several Bay Area community organizations as an art teacher and set designer.

Amy Ho works mainly in the mediums of video and performance. She is particularly interested in using art to investigate individual experience and relations between action, space and time. Amy Ho graduated with a Practice of Art degree at the University of California Berkeley.

Susanna Kwan uses ink, water, and words to tell stories. Her work stems from observations of the tension and grace that can be found in any relationship. She is a native of San Francisco.

Sylvia La explores human stories through the visual narrative tools of figure, gesture, and cultural and personal symbols. She is a mixed media artist and works with oils, watercolor, ink, papers, resistance, accidents, and other material the world offers. Sylvia was born into a Chinese family in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam during a time of tumultuous political upheaval and change. She fled Vietnam with her parents before she was two. She remembers meeting America at the age of six. She recalls a whirlwind of impressions in those few months -- the millions of lights in New York City, arcades in blonde, dusty Kansas, long distances by car across unfamiliar terrain, and the watery San Francisco bay area, where she has been living since.

A native of Dublin, CA, Amy Lam is a graphic designer currently employed in Berkeley. Amy can be found lurking in the background of Kearny Street Workshop and Locus events posing as an artist/writer type. Visit her online at www.mobilerepublic.net.

Stephanie Lie was born in San Diego, California in 1977 and now lives in San Francisco. She received two Bachelors degrees in Art and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Lie worked with sculptor Jane Rosen as a studio assistant for five years, where she assisted in the fabrication of works at the Pilchuck School of Glass in Seattle and at Public Glass in San Francisco. Lie was an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where she worked with installation artist Judy Pfaff.. While working with Rosen, she was a teaching assistant of drawing classes at UC Berkeley. She developed drawing workshops with Rosen based on these classes, which are now in their third year. She is designing a book based on this teaching with Rosen and Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Rhodes. Lie has collaborated with performing artists as a musician and as a developer of multimedia tools for live performance.

After graduating from a Swiss Hotel School, Niana Liu started to teach herself painting and photography. Discovering the passion of her life, she devoted herself to art making ever since. Mixing her Eastern roots with Western influence, she often focuses on the interplay between cultures in her artwork. In July 2006, she was invited to demonstrate painting at the San Francisco Asian Art Musuem, in conjunction with their special exhibition: A Curious Affair. In her artworks, she demonstrated the tug of war between globalization and cultural identity. For more information, please visit www.nianaliu.com.

Lucy Kalyani Lin is a digital video installation artist currently living in Oakland, CA. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Fine Arts in 2005. As another transplant from southern California, she has no plans of returning. Lucy has recently become a vegetarian after watching a video clip on foie gras.

Born and raised in the bay area. Marcus Lo loves working in a variety of mediums including pencil & ink, watercolor, charcoal, paint, pastel, mosaic, collages, oils, acrylic, and many more. Some of his influences include comic books, graffiti, hip hop art, fine art, Chinese brush painting, and photography. He also volunteers teaching art weekly at Manzanita Elementary in Oakland for SPORTS 4 KIDS. You may be able to find him at Frank Ogawa Plaza or Jack London Square on certain weekends selling and doing art. If you need any custom artwork done, feel free to contact him. He also has a lot of prints of his past works for sale. For more information, please visit www.myspace.com/sosar1

Jocelyn Shu currently lives in the Bay Area from which she is a native of. She received a B.F.A. degree in Painting/Drawing in 2005 through a joint-degree program with the University of San Francisco and the California College of the Arts. She spent a year studying at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. Her work is highly influenced from her experiences living abroad and her travels have included extensive portions of Europe and Taiwan.

Lauren M. Wong works primarily in drawing and digital media. She received a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art, with a concentration in Digital Media, at Scripps College- a part of the Claremont Consortium of Colleges- in Claremont, California. In the past she has worked under the direction of artists Sol LeWitt, Seyed Alavi, and Rigo and her debut exhibition/installation was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Garage. Post-college, she continues to seek new meaning in the process of art making through collaborative projects, including the co-creation a weekly web-comic involving ponies eating cakes, and actively showing her work in San Francisco and outside the Bay Area. To see more of her work visit: www.laurenmarikowong.com.



About the Chinese Culture Center
The mission of the Chinese Culture Center is to foster preserve promote and influence the understanding and appreciation of Chinese and Chinese American arts and culturein the United States. This exhibition gives Chinese American artists the opportunity to network with other artists and to gain confidence in promoting their work in public. For more information please visit http://www.c-c-c.org

About Kearny Street Workshop
KSW, a non-profit, community-based organization, is based in San Francisco, where the majority of our artists and clients live and work, and serves the Asian Pacific American communities of the entire Bay Area. We serve our community as an information resource and through our four areas of arts programming: Adult arts education, Next Generation arts support and training, Multidisciplinary arts presentations, and publications.

KSW uses music, performance, words and images to empower and enrich the people of the Bay Area. Can art-making help achieve a more just society? KSW believes it can.

For more information about KSW, go to our website at http://kearnystreet.org/about_ksw/index.html

Official Website: http://kearnystreet.org/programs/calendar/2007_03.html#18mmw