What Is My Work About? 

Artist Statement
My work to date assumes a biological and behavioral impulse at the heart of every technology. Whether it’s YouTube (a service), the iPhone (an object), or motion capture (a process), these are all technical formats through which humans mirror and extend their primordial compulsions, but with dislocative behavioral and cultural baggage.

The basic aspiration of my work is to model a more realist methodology towards composing with these formats by opening them back up to their behavioral, bodily, and evolutionary influences, while not denying their advanced cultural function.

IMAGES 1-5
In “This Papaya Tastes Perfect”, I have corrupted the motion capture process in order to achieve a more physical recording of human motion that is as unprofessional and messy as homo sapiens really move, while simultaneously foregrounding the inherent friction in transforming living matter into digital information.

IMAGES 7-8
In “Touch”, I used a jailbroken iPhone to record and condense months of its own touch-screen interactions until it finally broke, resulting in a birth-to-death biopic of the iPhone object.

IMAGES 9-12
In “Liars — Brats”, I used the format of a professional YouTube video commission as a pop context to transition from an expected archetypal animated narrative toward an exploration of entropy and chaotic unscripted choreography, all in formal synchrony with an increasingly corrupted motion capture process.

IMAGES 6, 13-14
Expressions of evolutionary realness for social network circulation.

NOW
Currently I am extending my corrupted motion capture methodology to encompass artificial intelligence simulations that can produce emergent, unscripted behavior and choreographies in order to cinematically model the evolutionary processes found in primordial biological systems. I am working toward the production of feature-length animated works in which I will be able to push motion capture and AI simulation far beyond their elegant use in Hollywood movies, and materialize a radically economical form of visually unbounded filmmaking.

NOTE FROM FAMILY
“Truth is, the homo sapien has not biologically and cognitively evolved as fast as it has externally manipulated its landscape and advanced its conditions of living. This dislocation between our (still) primordial internal instincts and the external prosthetics we have advanced is precisely the gap that homo sapiens now need to account for and unnaturally correct. Undo your humanity. Learn from flora, fauna, molecules, and dust. Go be something and then not be, son.”
– ♥ Mom & Dad & Grandma & Grandpa & Grandma & Grandpa &…

CV
Ian Cheng
http://iancheng.com

Born 1984, Los Angeles
Lives and works in New York

Co-director, Badlands Unlimited publishing
http://badlandsunlimited.com

EDUCATION
2009 MFA Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York NY.
2006 BA Cognitive Science, UC Berkeley, Berkeley CA.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2013 Off Vendome, Dusseldorf, Germany (forthcoming)
2013 The Vanity, Los Angeles, CA (forthcoming)
2011 This Papaya Tastes Perfect, Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami Beach, FL.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012 A Disagreeable Object, curated by Ruba Katrib, Sculpture Center, New York, NY.
2012 A Programming Language, organized by Kari Rittenbach, Primary Work Surface, London.
2012 Group Show, West Street Gallery, New York NY.
2012 How To Download a Boyfriend, curated by Badlands Unlimited, Apple iTunes.
2012 POST MoDERN, curated by Clayton Deutsch, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami FL.
2012 You Told Me The Other Night, West Street Gallery, New York NY.
2011 December: Organized by Howie Chen, Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York NY.
2009 Columbia University MFA Thesis Show, Fisher Landau Center for Arts, New York NY.

COMMISSIONS
2012 Liars “Brats” music video http://youtu.be/uL9jtjJ3zv0

SCREENINGS
2012 BUG, British Film Institute, Southbank, London.

RELEASES
2012 TPTP TONES, custom iPhone ringtone set, published by SIM (Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja, Natasha Isaacs and Petros Moris)
2012 This Papaya Tastes Perfect, limited edition catalog, published by Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club.
2012 Forest Hills Literary Journal, April edition.
2011 Spring Break, e-book, published by Badlands Unlimited.

AWARDS
2008 Ninah and Michael Lynne Fellowship
2006 Eisner Award for Film and Video, Berkeley Pacific Film Archive
2005 Townsend Center Fellowship for Art and Science, UC Berkeley

PRESS
2012 Mousse Magazine Dec2012 Interview with Ruba Katrib
2012 Modern Painters Dec2012 Artists To Watch
2012 Dazed Digital Interview http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/14856/1/liars-selects-ian-cheng
2012 Luke Egan NYPOP http://nypop-art.tumblr.com/post/33598613515/andro-wekua-and-ian-cheng
2012 John Haber http://www.haberarts.com/2012/11/agree-to-disagree/
2012 ArtInfo http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernpaintersdaily/2012/09/17/a-disagreeable-object/
2012 A.E. Benenson @ Rhizome http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/aug/14/i-iv-alex-benenson/
2012 GalleristNY http://galleristny.com/2012/07/badlands-director-ian-cheng-makes-liars-video/
2012 CartoonBrew http://www.cartoonbrew.com/music-videos/brats-by-ian-cheng-67255.html
2012 Rhizome http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jun/18/new-e-books/
2012 Brooklyn Rail http://brooklynrail.org/2012/02/artseen/december-organized-by-howie-chen
2011 Art Fag City http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/12/16/five-shows/
2011 CartoonBrew http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/this-papaya-tastes-perfect-by-ian-cheng.html
2011 Triangulation Blog http://www.triangulationblog.com/2011/09/this-papaya-tastes-perfect-by-ian-cheng.html
2011 Animated Review http://animated-review.blogspot.com/2011/09/ian-cheng-this-papaya-tastes-perfect.html

What Is My Work About?My paintings are never planned. Through an amalgamation of gestures and negations, form is produced. They are intuitively constructed and rely heavily on improvisation. I think of my paintings as being like maps or diagrams of thought. Their surfaces act as a site of rumination, in which traces of decision-making are revealed and obscured. The collection of chance elements such as masking tape bleeds, drips, and pentimento not only speak to the process, but are often highlighted and guide composition.

 

Artist Statement
My paintings are objects that reveal the process of their making through a layered transparency. The structural seams of the paintings are laid bare, their surfaces acting as diagrams of thought processes and decision-making.

Making paintings is a physical activity that is performative. The tactility of painting and the use of concrete materials is a way of responding to visual and physical experience in a tangible way. I am interested in painting ( and abstraction in particular) not only as a way of responding to these experiences tangibly, but also as a vehicle to communicate a narrative or psychological affect that attempts to exist outside of language or representation.

In my recent paintings, compositional elements are organized in a way that recalls an operating table, in which the anatomical parts of a painting are dissected. The compositions swing between harmony and a kind of dissonance. I’m interested in the paintings resting in this state of almost falling apart, and how this status may create a tension that challenges and questions the expectations of a painting.

CV
Education:
2012 University of California, Irvine: Studio Art M.F.A.
2007 UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, B.A.
Area (s) of Specialization: Painting and Drawing

Group Exhibitions:
2013 Group Exhibition, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Black Rabbit, White Hole, Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Paradox Maintenance Technicians, Torrance Art Museum
2013 Kamikaze, Post, Los Angeles ,CA
2012 UCI Graduate Exhibition, LAXART, Los Angeles, CA
2012 A Romantic Measure, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 Thesis Exhibition, University of California, Irvine
2012 Traumatic Materiality, Autonomie, Los Angeles, CA
2012 You Do This To Me I Do This To You, Autonomie, Los Angeles, CA
2011 My head is falling out, so I’m standing on my stomach, Artist Curated Projects at The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena.
2011 Ne Me Quitte Pas, University Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA
2010 Action (Un)Packed: Abstraction After Action, Commonspace, Los Angeles, CA
2010 Cal State Long Beach, GLAMFA 2010
2010 Workspace Selects, House on Genesse, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Undergraduate Scholarship Exhibition, UCLA
2007 No Art Today, INMO Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Awards/Honors:
2012 Fees Fellowship, University of California, Irvine.
2011 Fees Fellowship, University of California, Irvine.
2010 Fees Fellowship, University of California, Irvine.
2009 Fees Fellowship, University of California, Irvine.
2007 Edward J. and Alice Mae Smith Award, UCLA Department of Art