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For Further Event Information:
215-732-FEST or
www.pridefestamerica.com
For Further Press Information:
Deborah Fleischman
215-735-7356
PRIDEFEST AMERICA 2002 SPONSORS
TSENG KWONG CHI: A RETROSPECTIVE
Exhibit, Kicking Off Tenth Anniversary,
Runs March 19 to May 5
At Philadelphia Art Alliance
PrideFest America, the nation's largest annual gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) symposium and
festival, is proud to present the first-ever retrospective
of the photographer Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990) as part
of its annual Artistic Alternatives series. Tseng
Kwong Chi: A Retrospective will be on view at the
Philadelphia Art Alliance from March 19 to May 5, 2002.
Active in New York during the 1980s, before his untimely
death from AIDS in 1990 at the age of 39, Tseng Kwong
Chi's contribution to postmodern photography is examined
in this exhibition of approximately 85 works.
This retrospective was conceived and funded by PrideFest
America, and organized by the Philadelphia Art Alliance's
curator Dr.Amy Ingrid Schlegel, in cooperation with
the Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY and estate executor
Muna Tseng.
PrideFest America will be held in Philadelphia from
April 29 to May 5, 2002. Tseng Kwong Chi: A Retrospective
kicks off PrideFest America's 10th Anniversary celebration.
This first-ever retrospective covers eleven years of
work, from 1979 to 1990, the year of Kwong Chi's death.
Highlights from the exhibit include major pieces from
his East Meets West project, his Party of
the Year series, his collaboration with Keith
Haring and Bill T. Jones, the group portraits
from The Gang's All Here, plus tear sheets from
his commercial work and a short film.
"Artistic Alternatives focuses on highlighting
important contributions that gays and lesbians make
to international arts and culture. Tseng Kwong Chi is
one of the pre-eminent post-modern photographers whose
work is not only skilled but also a unique statement
of his personality," said PrideFest America's Founder
and Executive Director Malcolm Lazin. "By virtue
of being gay, Kwong Chi operated outside society's perceived
norms and brought a willingness to transcend convention
by looking for new ways of expanding artistic frontiers."
"This is the third year Philadelphia Art Alliance
has collaborated with PrideFest America to host the
Artistic Alternatives series. We are pleased to continue
this partnership in presenting the works of outstanding
artists with the nation's leading forum on gay and lesbian
issues,"said Carol P. Shanis, President of the
Board of Directors of Philadelphia Art Alliance.
Tseng Kwong Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1950, emigrated
with his family to Vancouver, Canada in 1966 at age
16, received artistic training in Paris, and settled
in New York City in the late 1970s. Though trained in
traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy in Hong
Kong and western painting in Vancouver and Paris, Kwong
Chi found his metier as a photographer. His body of
photographic work engages with major aspects of the
history of photography: the tourist snapshot, the Sublime
tradition of landscape photography, formal portraiture,
and tableaux histoire. In addition to his fine
art photography, Kwong Chi also pursued documentary
photographs--of Keith Haring making his renowned
subway drawings and murals--and commercial photography
for several fashion and lifestyle magazines. Examples
of all three strains of Kwong Chi's work are included
in this retrospective exhibition.
In 1979, Kwong Chi embarked on a decade-long project
called East Meets West (also referred
to as "The Expeditionary Series"). He posed
in approximately 150 images in this series as a self-described
"ambiguous ambassador" from the East, wearing
a vintage Maoist uniform (which he purchased from a
second-hand store in Montreal), Velvet Underground-style
sunglasses, a "visitor" identification badge,
and camera shutter release in hand. In this extensive
series of self-portraits taken at tourist attractions
in the U.S., Europe, Puerto Rico, South America, and
Japan, Kwong Chi presented a complex persona of the
Everyman Tourist and of the stereotyped "inscrutable
Asian" standing, for the most part, impassively
before western sites such as the Hollywood sign, the
Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, Checkpoint Charlie,
the Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, and Cape Canavral, as
well as iconic buildings such as The World Trade Center,
the Empire State Building, and the London Parliament.
In the very first image in the series, taken on the
dunes of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Kwong Chi established
his pseudo-identity as "ambiguous ambassador"
but he also established his personal identity as a gay
man, paying homage to a significant destination for
the gay community.
Dressed in the same uniformed outfit and sunglasses,
Kwong Chi posed in 1980 as a French-speaking Chinese
diplomat as a ruse to attend a private opening reception
of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. He stood in the same spot on the Met's Grand
Staircase and posed for his self-portrait with unsuspecting
celebrity attendees such as Yves Saint-Laurent,
Halston, Andy Warhol, and Paloma Picasso,
among others. He purported to tape record his interviews
with the party-goers, in French, about their thoughts
on fashion. Party of the Year, Metropolitan Museum
of Art (1980) features: Andy Warhol and
entourage; Nancy Kissinger; Paloma Picasso;
Pauline Trigere; Fran Lebowitz; Yves
Saint Laurent; Gladys Solomon and Jean
Talier; Adele Simpson; Louise Nevelson;
Jacqueline de Ribes; Halston and entourage,
as well as an unidentified party-goer, all posing with
Kwong Chi, who holds a tape recorder and his camera
shutter release. This portfolio of twelve gelatin silver
prints titled "Costumes at the Met" announced
his interest in high society and his related interests
in the New York art world and the East Village club
scene.
Kwong Chi made over 50,000 photographs of his
friend Keith Haring working in the New York City
subway and on murals. In 1984 the Semaphore Gallery
inaugurated its East Village space with a show called
"Art in Transit," which included light box
Cibachrome transparencies, wall drawings by Haring,
and photographs of Haring at work. This exhibition includes
six newly-restored light boxes, twelve vintage Cibachromes,
and seven vintage gelatin silver prints of Haring's
subway drawings made between 1982 and 1985. These photographs
document not just how Haring created the white chalk
on black paper drawings that catapulted him to international
art world stardom, but also document the original context
in which these ephemeral works were made, and the reactions
of subway riders to Haring's artistic interventions
into commercial space reserved for advertising.
The exhibition also includes a collaborative series
of black and white vintage photographs from 1983 taken
by Kwong Chi of choreographer/ dancer Bill T. Jones,
whose nude body was painted by Haring. Jones is photographed
by Kwong Chi in motion, while dancing. His acrobatic
movements are characteristic of his choreography and
also capture the energy of Haring's leaping figures.
Kwong Chi was a denizen of the East Village and photographed
its clubs as well as the artists who lived the neighborhood.
In a series of studio set ups, Kwong Chi assembled various
configurations of friends, most of whom are bedecked
in costumes, to pose playfully for group portraits he
titled The Gang's All Here (ca. 1980)
(including Katy K., Keith Haring, Carmel
Johnson, John Sex, Bruno Schmidt,
Samantha McEwen, Juan Dubose, Dan Friedman,
Iowrow, Kenny Scharf, Tereza Goncalves,
Min Thometz, and Tseng Kwong Chi). In
these group portraits, Kwong Chi remains "in uniform"
though he abandons the stiff, impenetrable "ambiguous
ambassador" persona of the East Meets West series,
smiles broadly and adopts fun-loving, informal poses.
A selection of Cibachrome prints from the series Portraits
of the Artists taken primarily during the early
1980s features sympathetic portraits of artists--who
were also friends of Kwong Chi's--in their studios:
Jean Michel Basquiat alone and with and Andy
Warhol; Kenny Scharf in Brazil, Eric Fischl,
Keith Haring, and Peter Halley.
Like the Party of the Year, Metropolitan Museum
of Art portfolio, Kwong Chi also enjoyed photographing
at the dance clubs of the East Village and did so with
a Polaroid camera. He created unique collaged works
of art incorporating dozens of Polaroids taken during
thematic parties such as Royal Wedding at
the "Underground" (1981); East Meets
West at "Danceteria" (1980), and the
Reagan Inauguration at the "Mudd Club"
(1981).
Unlike previous exhibitions of Kwong Chi's work, this
retrospective includes selected tear sheets of his
commercial work for publications such as The
SoHo Weekly News, Vogue, House & Garden,
GQ, and Vanity Fair, as well as selected
contact sheets of unpublished photographs from the series
The Gang's All Here and double portraits of Kwong
Chi and Haring.
A short film made in 1984 by Christine Lombard,
with the help of Kwong Chi, will be screened continuously
during gallery hours.
Since its founding in 1993, PrideFest America has become
the nation's largest annual gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender (GLBT) symposium and festival. It has expanded
from a three-day conference of regional organizations
to a full week of events featuring international, national
and regional leaders on a broad range of compelling
issues. With more than 60 programs and social events
presented by 50 regional, national and international
organizations, PrideFest America 2002 is the nation's
most in-depth program of the emergence of a vibrant
GLBT community and its civil rights aspirations.
The Philadelphia Art Alliance, founded in 1915, is
the oldest multidisciplinary arts center in the United
States devoted to presenting the work of emerging and
established contemporary artists that might otherwise
not be seen in Philadelphia. The PAA also presents high
quality literary and performing arts events and serves
as a meeting place for non-profit arts groups and a
forum for the exchange of ideas. Its mission is to lead
and respond to the changing needs of artists, the arts
community, and the role that art plays in the continuing
education of general audiences.
For further information, call 215-732-FEST or visit
the website at www.pridefestamerica.com.
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