The opening of “Next Kite, Next Weather” will be held at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts at the Taipei National University of the Arts on Friday, May 16, 2014, in Taipei, Taiwan. The exhibit brings together the work of two artists and professors, Mark Geil and Chung-Fan Chang, of the Department of Art at Jackson State University.
Geil’s work highlights visually and fundamentally how knowledge is conveyed through systems of museum display, using both historical precedent and contemporary practice. Through his photography, Geil seeks to visualize knowledge.
Chang initiated “Next Kite, Next Weather” in the fall of 2011 with funding from Jackson State University. The project was collaboratively organized by the Department of Art at JSU and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Art (KdMoFA) at the Taipei National University of the Arts. The exhibition will be on view at Gallery 402.
Chang’s work identifies the relationship of color and its significance in society. Both bodies of work exhibit a unique internal logic. For Chang, this internal logic is the byproduct of the states of mindfulness of meditation that inhabit her artistic process. In Geil’s work, the stillness of the photograph and the stillness of the museum display become a “stillness doubled.” This synergy works to highlight both the knowledge these museum displays were meant to convey and the overarching machinery and politics of display. In juxtapose, Chang’s drawing and painting assemble into a singular voice historical concerns, social signifiers and meditative practice. Geil’s photographs investigate the institutional organization of knowledge, the locality of American History and the anatomy of display.
The exhibition invites and encourages the viewer to interrogate what is real and who is the authority from the messages extracted from the work. Both artists Geil and Chang pose questions and offer hope for the viewers to contemplate the weather of color, the wind in the drawings, and the singular curiosity of photography.
View video of Chung-Fan Chang’s drawing installation “Kite: Reborn” Exhibition here.