Dan in his studio with his handmade puppet.

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Dan in his studio with his handmade puppet.
What? No Ping Pong Balls? trailer
Dan Kwong collaborates with renowned taiko drummer Kenny Endo to celebrate the life of Kwongâs mother Momo Nagano (1925-2010)
IN THE STUDIO with Dan Kwong
Hi Dan, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
D:Â Iâve been a performance artist for about 26 years now. Iâm also a writer, a director, a video-maker. Iâve been at 18th street since 1992. I grew up in a family where art was a regular part of life. I was very lucky in that sense, that art and creativity was a part of our lives from very early on. We were always painting and drawing and making things with clay.Â
When I was in Chicago for college I was introduced to performance art. I found it really interesting to present your creativity to a live audience. It was so exciting. But I never really knew what I wanted to say â this was my problem in art school. I had talent, I had skill, but I had nothing to say. Iâve been a performance artist for about 26 years now. Iâm also a writer, a director, a video-maker. Iâve been at 18th street since 1992. I grew up in a family where art was a regular part of life. I was very lucky in that sense, that art and creativity was a part of our lives from very early on. We were always painting and drawing and making things with clay.Â
Where is your home?
My father grew up in Hong Kong, my motherâs family comes from northern Japan. So, I traveled to all those places. I began to appreciate my culture more and feel more connected to it. The way I grew up in LA, especially during the time I grew up in LA, culture was white. Everything in television and movies and advertising was white. I identified as white. Then I got to a point where I liked being Chinese and Japanese. Thatâs when I felt like I knew what I wanted to say with my art. I wanted to talk about my journey. I wanted to talk about my self identity and the way society confuses us about our self identity. That led to my first performance, in 1988. I used to have these huge birthday parties ⊠and I started to do these little performances there. My first major performance was when Highways was born. That was when I was born.
I donât really perform much these days. Itâs been much harder to find work. Now there are dozens of Asian-American solo performance artists. I think youâre always learning more about yourself. That never stops. Itâs never finished. As time goes by and I learn more about myself, I try to find a way to put that into my art. What did I learn from my mother? Now that sheâs gone, what can I see that I didnât see? My work is always using my own life experience to try and share something that is interesting.
What keeps you grounded in performance art?
I love it. I love the creative process. When Iâm making a performance, I feel like Iâm using as much of my brain as I possibly can. Itâs very satisfying. Iâm using every bit of my thinking ability in so many different directions with the hope of adding meaning to things. Thereâs just a lot of joy in the creative process that makes me feel the most alive. Iâve never done this because I wanted to get rich or be famous. I love this profession that I have. Yes, I would like some more money. Yes, I would like more people to see my work â of course. But thereâs a part of being an artist that is just for myself and my own satisfaction. And it seems like I think Iâm good at it. Itâs an activity in life that I have many skills for and am suited for. I feel like Iâll do it no matter what â successful or not successful.
Yvette Gellis in her studio and details of her painting
IN THE STUDIO with Yvette Gellis
Hi Yvette, howâs it going?
Y: Well.. Itâs chaotic. Itâs interesting because Iâm trying to work on this huge installation in this church thatâs in France. Itâs a 13th century beautiful space thatâs gutted. So I have the whole inside. I want to get a lot of work done in advance because I only have two weeks to really prepare this installation so the more I get done in advance the better.Â
How do you begin a painting?
Y: I start out with ideas that are sometimes little tiny thumbnail that are an inch by inch. Sometimes theyâre more fleshed out like little collage studies of things but then small paintings develop. And then thereâs a push and pull that goes on through the process. I keep trying to layer elements so thereâs more depth. Sometimes it just gets too much, too busy and I need to simplify it.
What artists do you look at?
Y: Thereâs a number of woman artists that I love and I feel when Iâm working that Iâm in conversation with these women. The German artist Charline Von Heyl - her language that sheâs developed around her own painting, theyâre so strong and so simple, and I remember that when I get complicated. Also Amy Sillman, Cecily Brown and Joan Mitchell. All these women and I say women because early on people have always compared me to Abstract Expressionists and the German Expressionist etc. And there are a number of German painters, males, whom I love. I really understand the language of Gerhard Richter - you know the painting, when it says itâs finished itâs finished, when itâs not trying to be something anymore then you know. So itâs a weird in-between place all the time with my work. Trying to make good work but yet not trying to make good work, you know? Making painting but not trying to make the painting be the painting you know.
Artist Takeovers #1 Chih-Chien Chen If the world doesnât exist until we look at it... what about existence itself?Â
your existence is how and what you think about it.Â
this is the fascinating article about a concept that fits in with what my upcoming exhibition (which opens 19 July) is all about: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3107996/Our-entire-lives-ILLUSION-New-test-backs-theory-reality-doesn-t-exist-look-it.html#ixzz3fQdDoXQr
Artist Takeovers #1 Chih-Chien Chen
âRoommates should take care of one another, youâre welcome!âÂ
2JUL- LA AIR startïŒ 18thstreetarts
Canvas unrolled, paints aplenty - canât wait to see what our newest artist-in-residence Kaoru will come up with!
Suzan Woodruff The Burning Woman Performance and solo exhibition 1999 Exhibition: Making the World
Letting go of the need to control and dominate the laws of nature is scary to some people. That letting go is operative in Woodruff's process, generating an allegorical abstraction in which the method of formal execution is more than a means to an aesthetic end, but integral to the armature of meaning. That form/content dynamic is a vector of the persistent perception of the feminine as a dangerous force. And indeed it is a fine primal line between desire and fear.Â
Someone once said to Woodruff, "I can't decide if your painting looks like the beginning or the end of the world." Her reply? "Why not both?"
Suzan Woodruff Occultation 2013 Exhibition: Making the World
"Sometimes I feel like I'm channeling the universe, working in a kind of trance like a deep meditation," Woodruff says. "In the studio, I also use my body, but to paint instead of burn." In her paintings she contains and choreographs her self-engineered chaos through a proprietary, durational, and seriously physical process, involving constant motion and remaining open to "apparitions and visitations," and what she invokes Leonard Cohen in calling the "cracks where the light comes in."Â
Alexandra Grant Residency: April 15 â June 28, 2013 Exhibition: ForĂȘt IntĂ©rieure/Interior Forest
âMy work investigates where text becomes image and vice versa. I start with specific texts for these explorations in painting, drawing, and other media, and as a result have collaborated with many diverse kinds of writing and writers, both dead and living. My preference is to work with literary texts, both poetry and prose, that are full of imagery and signifiers and lend themselves to a mapping or parsing process.â
Interview by Chiara Giovando Photo by Brian Forrest
Alexandra Grant Residency: April 15 â June 28, 2013 Exhibition: ForĂȘt IntĂ©rieure/Interior Forest
â"ForĂȘt IntĂ©rieure/Interior Forest" is really about sharing intimacy, reading together, and drawing together. Since January, we've been holding a bimonthly Cixous reading group, and I invited the public to come and draw with me for a period of seven weeks at 18th Street Arts Center. Both reading and drawing are activities that are generally done in solitude, that inspire the imagination and our fantasy lives. So in essence, both "Philippines" and "ForĂȘt IntĂ©rieure/Interior Forest" are invitations to come together to contemplate the possibility of a shared dream.â
Interview by Chiara Giovando Photo by Brian Forrest
Eamon Ore-Giron Residency: September 24 â December 14, 2012 Exhibition: Open Tuning: E-D-G-B-D-G
Referencing the alternate guitar tuning scale E-D-G-B-D-G unique to the Central Andes, Ore-Giron likens this hybrid indigenous and Spanish musical scale with the merger of folk, pop, historical and conceptual references throughout his interdisciplinary artworks. A complex interplay between themes of tourism, revolution, design, and public sculpture reverberate within the works, while formal questions regarding the relationship between functional sculpture and introspective form are explored.
Photo by Gina Osterloh
Eamon Ore-Giron Residency: September 24 â December 14, 2012 Exhibition: Open Tuning: E-D-G-B-D-G
Photo by Gina Osterloh
Alice Wang Residency Dates: January 12 - Febraury 27, 2015Â
Alice Wang Residency Dates: January 12 - Febraury 27, 2015Â