'One Way or Another' : Asian American Art Now at Blaffer Gallery

Wednesday, 22 November 2006 10:34

Houston, TX - Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is pleased to announce the exhibition One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now featuring new paintings, sculptures, installations and video works by seventeen emerging Asian American artists born in the late 1960s and 1970s, including Michael Arcega, Xavier Cha, Patty Chang, Binh Danh, Mari Eastman, Ala Ebtekar, Chitra Ganesh, Glenn Kaino, Geraldine Lau, Jiha Moon, Laurel Nakadate, Kaz Oshiro, Anna Sew Hoy, Jean Shin, Indigo Som, Mika Tajima, and Saira Wasim. The title is drawn from a 1978 Blondie hit.  While it is indicative of the visible influence of popular culture on these artists’ work, it also hints at the cultural duality informing each artist’s existence and the degree to which this duality may or may not inform their practice.

One Way or Another concentrates on artists whose home, permanent or temporary, is here in the United States.   This exhibition seeks to expand the notion of what it means to be Asian American in the twenty-first century.  Post-1965 immigration and increased globalization have complicated the constituency called Asian American.  The term now comprises not only immigrants born elsewhere or those born here, but also those who are able to travel back and forth in an ever-expanding, dynamic Asian diaspora.  Many of the participating artists live in or are otherwise firmly based in Los Angeles, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Aside from being major arts centers, these regions are also significant population centers of Asian Americans with the attendant resources serving those diverse communities.

The exhibition presents a fresh generation of Asian American artists who have highly divergent points of view and who use a startling array of practices and media to address a new generational sense of identity.  Together, they define a particular moment in the American cultural landscape and suggest entirely new meanings for the ‘Asian American’ experience.  On exhibition January 20–March 31, 2007.

One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now is curated by a national, three-person team: Susette S. Min, former curator at the Drawing Center in New York and now Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies and Art History at University of California, Davis; Karin Higa, Senior Curator of Art, Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles; and Melissa Chiu, Director of the Museum and Curator of Contemporary Asian Art, Asia Society.

This exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 128-page catalogue distributed by Yale University Press, with commissioned essays by leading authorities in the field demonstrating the new artistic approaches of this generation of artists.  Short entries on each artist including biographies and discussions of their work are also included.

One Way or Another is made possible with support from Altria Group, Inc.  Additional support provided by the W.L.S Spencer Foundation, Nimoy Foundation and Asia Society’s Contemporary Art Council.

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston’s main campus, entrance #16 off Cullen Boulevard.  The museum is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm and closed Sundays, Mondays and on University Holidays.  The museum is ADA compliant.  For more information please visit our web site at : www.blaffergallery.org