JAN UARY 13 – FE B RUARY 1 2 , 2 0 1 1 / C U R AT ED BY A NC HO R GRA P H I C S
When After
Comes Before:
Phillip Chen &
Tomas Vu
January 13 – February 12, 2011
Phillip Chen
Five Hands
relief etching
31 X 23 inches
Phillip Chen
Shooting the Devil (After Abu'l Hasan)
relief etching
46 X 31 inches
Phillip Chen
Men of Action
relief etching
31 X 46 inches
Approaching C
BY JA M ES I A NNAC C O NE
In an essay titled “Picturing States of Affairs: The Art of Phillip
Chen” written for an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Three
Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, art and cultural
historian Lenore Metrick-Chen references the concept of yi wu as
put forth by Wu Hung. Wu Hung describes yi wu:
“Any object that points to the past is an yi wu because
it is a surviving portion of a vanished whole; by arrangement
or accident, it has been severed from its original context
to become part of contemporary culture. An yi wu is thus
characterized both by pastness and contemporaneity: it
originated in the past, but it belongs to the here and now.”
According to Wu Hung any artifact of the past has to exist
in the present. This is easily seen in the example of a visitor to
a natural history museum who when looking at the stone tools
of ancient man can not help but view them with the knowledge
of their modern day equivalents lining the shelves at the Home
Depot. But the art of Phillip Chen and Tomas Vu shows that this
idea is not confined to ancient relics. It is not a one-way street
from past to present but a two-way highway that extends from
the present to both the past and the future. Their prints collapse
time creating an incongruous space where linear knowledge
is replaced by a state of simultaneity. Drawing from personal
experience, written history, and the imagination their work
incorporates long departed traditions, objects and landscapes,
along with futuristic totems, positioning all firmly within a
contemporary context. The push and pull of yesterday, today, and
tomorrow is encompassed in the very materiality of the work,
constructed using computer-controlled laser cutters combined
with old-school hand printmaking. Their work is a documentation
and schematic diagram of the past, present and future. As such
their work often takes on a cosmological appearance.
Phillip Chen
Sargasso SeaSuperfluous Things
relief etching
62 X 23 inches
This cosmic connection is intrinsic to the work. Its look
and feel reminds the viewer of images taken by the Hubble
Space Telescope of the far reaches of space, images made from
light emitted by its sources thousands of years ago. In most
cases of human experience, light can be thought of as moving
instantaneously, but over long distances the finite speed of light
becomes very apparent. Ole Rømer demonstrated that light
travelled at a finite speed by observing the periods of Jupiter's
moon Io to be shorter when the Earth was approaching the planet
than when moving away from it. Meaning the light reflected off
this distant moon was arriving sooner with the less distance
it had to traverse. The light we see from Io at its closest point
takes about 21 seconds to reach us, but for the great distances
from interstellar objects light’s journey can last for hundreds of
thousands of years. The light from these objects brings them
into our present as they once were. What we see is not how the
objects exist in the conventional sense of “now,” but how they
existed at the time the light was emitted. After thousands of years
of travelling, light reaches the camera in our orbiting telescope
which then transmits images to be viewed by our eyes, bringing a
celestial object’s “then” into existence in our “now”.
James Iannaccone graduated from Northwestern University with a BA in Art History followed
by positions with the Terra Museum of American Art and the Judy A Saslow Gallery. He is currently
Assistant to the Director of Anchor Graphics at Columbia College Chicago.
Yet our standard conception of then and now can be
pulled apart even further by Albert Einstein’s paper “On the
Electro Dynamics of Moving Bodies”. In it he lays out his
special theory of relativity, which has acutely altered our
understanding of time. Just as we perceive the speed of light
as instantaneous for practical purposes, classical mechanics
works well in the common realm of everyday experience.
Special relativity explains how these laws do not hold up when
the velocities involved approach the speed of light. In such
a circumstance special relativity has shown that two events,
simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for
another, and that the duration of the time between two events
is not equal for all observers. Time is no longer uniform and
absolute, but dependent on velocity.
Special relativity is formulated from the principle that
all motion is relative, and that there is no absolute state of
rest. Everything is always moving with respect to something
else. The theory centers on separate frames of reference
moving in relation to one another. In these frames space
and time are combined into a single continuum of spacetime where an event can be assigned a single unique time
and location. Space-time is usually interpreted using our
conventional understanding of three-dimensional space
but with the addition of time as a fourth dimension. We can
specify an event by its four space-time coordinates using
the time of occurrence and its three-dimensional spatial
location to place it at a point in space-time. According to
special relativity this point will be in different locations
for observers in different frames of reference moving with
respect to each other.
Suppose we have three reference frames, whose spatial
alignment and clocks coincide, but are moving at a constant
velocity close to the speed of light in separate directions. For
a viewer positioned in the first frame, events A and B occur
simultaneously, but for a viewer in the second frame it is
possible to observe A preceding B and in the third frame to
see B preceding A, depending on the motion of these frames
with regard to the first.
The observed timing of these events also relates to the
measured distance between them. As the time separation
between the occurrence of events changes, the distance in
space between them also changes. The relation between
the change in time and the change in space, known as the
space-time interval, however will be the same for all three
observers. This is not due to imperfections in semantics or
measurement. The underlying reality of the events remains
the same for all three observers, only their perspective of
them changes. Similarly left and right are different for
two individuals who are facing each other. If an object is
positioned next to them, for one individual it will be on the
right hand side. For the other it is on the left hand side. But
in both cases the object is still in the same place.
Thus it becomes possible for passengers in a fast-moving
vehicle to travel for great distances and over great lengths of
time while aging very little. As a rocket ship approaches the
speed of light the rate of passage of time on-board slows down.
The ship's clock and any human travelling with it will show less
elapsed time than a clock left behind on Earth. With sufficiently
high speeds, space travelers could return thousands of years in
the future. However, any such application for interstellar travel
would require advanced and as of yet undeveloped methods of
propulsion. Nonetheless, scenarios such as this have been fuel
for science fiction stories the world over including the classic
film Planet of the Apes.
Upon reentry into the gallery, one can make a comparison
between special relativity and the work of Phillip Chen and
Tomas Vu. It’s as if the artists have condensed all of the
possible frames of reference described by relativity into a single
frame. Events do not appear to happen in any discernable
order. A before B, B before A, A and B at the same time, all occur
within a single picture. The past and future come together in
the present. Furthering the analogy to special relativity, their
images similarly collapse space. Multiple scenes and objects
get layered upon each other, as if a TV were receiving signals for
multiple channels at once. Wide expanses of landscape, maps
and charts, pieces of rocket engines and satellites, hand held
objects, along with microbes and molecules are all represented
at the same scale.
Their works are visual interpretations of the complex
mathematical equations that constitute Einstein’s theory,
including its greatest claim to fame, the equation E = mc2.
Showing the equivalence of energy and mass, E = mc2 has
helped usher in the nuclear age. By looking at the masses of
atoms, one can determine which nuclei have stored energy
that can be released through nuclear reactions. This has
led to the development of nuclear power and the atomic
bomb. The implications of this formula have made it one of
the most legendary equations ever conceived while giving
rise to the specter of a nuclear apocalypse that may one day
have Charlton Heston pounding the sandy surf shouting to
the heavens “You maniacs! You blew it up!” With E = mc2,
destruction and creation run hand in hand. Likewise, Tomas
Vu and Phillip Chen pull apart and reconstruct through
images that at once resemble a world ravaged by war and
the instruction manual for its reassembly. They are following
in the footsteps of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, not
only displaying the mutability of time and space, but the
collapse and rebirth of the physical world we inhabit along
with the status quo of our daily experience.
COVER:
Phillip Chen
Sargasso Sea-Superfluous Things (detail) relief etching
62 X 23 inches
Tomas Vu
Flatland series (detail)
silkscreen, laser engraved paper
and wood veneer with
hand coloring on paper
35 x 46.5 inches
Tomas Vu
Flatland Series (detail)
silkscreen, laser engraved paper
and wood veneer with
hand coloring on paper
four panels each
35 x 47 inches
Tomas Vu
Flatland Series (detail)
silkscreen, laser engraved
paper and wood veneer with
hand coloring on paper
four panels each
35 x 47 inches
Tomas Vu
Flatland series (detail)
silkscreen, laser engraved
paper and wood veneer with
hand coloring on paper
four panels each
35 x 47 inches
A+D
art
+design
AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON
A+D GALLERY
619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605
312 369 8687
COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY
GALLERY HOURS
TUESDAY – SATURDAY
11AM – 5PM
THURSDAY
11AM – 8PM
This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design Department
and The School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago.
ANCHOR GRAPHICS
A PROGRAM OF THE ART + DESIGN DEPARTMENT AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO