On the occasion of Frank WANG Yefeng’s solo exhibition, The House of the Solitary, Smack Mellon hosted a discussion on December 17, 2023 with esteemed panelists Natasha Chuk, Qianfan Gu, and Barbara Pollack. The panelists discussed the work on display and the artist’s relationship to technology and Chinese contemporary art.
Panelists:
Natasha Chuk, PhD (she/her) is a media theorist, writer, and educator whose work is situated at the intersection of art, philosophy, and creative technologies. She is the author of the book Vanishing Points: Articulations of Death, Fragmentation, and the Unexperienced Experience of Created Objects (Intellect, 2015), and she is currently working on a book that traces post-photographic digital art from its arrival in the 1990s through to the emergence of AI-generated images. Her writing on film, photography, and digital art has been published in Millennium Film Journal, Ultra Dogme, Kolaj Magazine, the Institute of Network Cultures, Virtual Creativity Journal, Baltic Screen Media Journal, FLAT Journal, and others. She lives and works in New York City.
Qianfan Gu is an art critic, writer, and translator with an extensive portfolio that includes publications in Artforum, Artforum China, Spike Magazine, Art in America, Ran Dian, BLAU International, among numerous others. She has received notable recognition, being shortlisted thrice (2015, 2016, 2021) for the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC). In 2019, Qianfan earned a Special Honorable Mention from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) for the Incentive Award for Young Art Critics. Venturing into editorial roles, Qianfan co-founded Heichi Magazine (2020-2021) as an editor and has served as a co-founding publisher of Gong Press since 2018.
Barbara Pollack is a curator, educator, and writer who has been involved in global contemporary art since the late 1980s. She is the co-founder of Art at a Time Like This, a nonprofit organization providing a platform for free expression to artists addressing pressing issues of the 21st century. This organization’s projects have been covered by publications and news outlets ranging from the New York Times, Hyperallergic, Gagosian Quarterly, The Art Newspaper and Artnet to the Jakarta Post, Bijitsu Tokyo, Latina Prensa and Capital Ethiopia.
Since 1994, Pollack has contributed articles, catalog essays and books on emerging art centers, especially China, for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Village Voice, Artnews, Art in America and Art and Auction, among others. More recently her writings have appeared in Ursula, Plus, and Screenbodies. A leading expert on Chinese contemporary art, Pollack curated Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity at Asia Society in 2022, among other significant exhibitions in the U.S. and China. Pollack has published two books, Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise (Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Wild, Wild East: An American Art Critic’s Adventures in China (Timezone 8, 2010). Most recently, she contributed an essay on a new monograph on Zeng Fanzhi. She has been awarded two Asia Cultural Council fellowships and an Andy Warhol Creative Capital Arts Writer grant.
Artist:
Frank WANG Yefeng is a trans-disciplinary artist and researcher situated in-between New York City and Shanghai. Initially trained as a sculptor, his current practice spans a wide range of media, including video installation, 3D animation, writing, painting, and drawing. His art explores the experience of “in-betweenness” that arises from a nomadic transnational existence. Interweaving physical and digital realms, Yefeng critically examines fixed identity formations, the history of racialized others, and the alienation in dominant cultural and technological narratives.
Yefeng’s work has been featured in exhibitions internationally, including the BRIC Biennial (NY, USA), the OCAT Biennial (SZ, CN), the WRONG Biennale (USA), The Armory Show (NY, US), Times Sqaure (NY, USA), CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (NY, USA), Royal College of Art (LDN, UK), Gasworks London (LDN, UK), Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art (Jeju, KR), Pylon Lab (DRS, DE), Tai Kwun Contemporary (HK, CN), Hyundai Motorstudio (BJ, CN), Duolun Museun of Modern Art (SH, CN), etc. I have also been awarded solo exhibitions, residencies, and fellowships at K11 Art Foundation (WH, CN), Smack Mellon (NY, USA), International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) (NY, USA), New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation (NY, USA), Pratt Institute (NY, USA), Asia Art Archive in America (NY, USA), MacDowell (NH, USA), Vermont Studio Center (VT, USA), among others.
Image (clockwise, from top left): Frank WANG Yefeng, Natasha Chuk, Qianfan Gu, Barbara Pollack