My Autobiograpy

I was born and brought in Shanghai, the metropolis in China. As the inequality and inequity between urban and rural got even worse in China since the “opening and reforming policy” was implemented during the 90’s. When the number of laid-off and unemployed workers increased, the social security system was not yet in place, leading to a yearly rise in urban poverty. Besides that, the lack of resources and imbalanced distribution not only formed a terribly heavy burden of living on urban residents, but also on migrants who work in Shanghai. The burden is even worse for them. Considering of all this, when I was very young, I accepted the so call elite education and was taught mostly the cruel competition in the outside world. I call this, which influenced my work a lot, the “urbanism culture”. When great attention has been taken by other artists on the poverty of rural province or some Africa countries, my works are mostly focus on urban poverty, which is not only on material consumption but also on spirit.

I identify myself as the urbanite individual and my works are focus on the representation of urban life and visible or even invisible pressures on urbanites’ shoulders. In my art, I try to show the fierce competition in the urban life, the employment options, the fast paces of life and most important, the distant relationship between people. I named all these as urban diseases which conforms the main feature of the urbanism culture and that gave me the inspiration of creation.

My desired audiences are mostly the young urbanites, especially the young people who have already graduated from universities. As a member of them, I have a closer feeling similar to them. I, myself, was tired of the urban life and chose to “escape” from Shanghai to Hangzhou, another not that busy city, to pursue my undergraduate study. When I realized that I finally got rid of the busy traffic, the noise all around me and the serious competition sensation that accompanied with me when I was very young, I felt that I was kind of unable to survive very well outside this system. When I was in Hangzhou, I felt very uncomfortable with the uncompleted urbanism, such as the lack of subways and various kinds of stores and most important, the lack of “urban personality”. Then, I began missing the life in Shanghai.

When I created my work to present the feeling about urban life, I am interested in present the contradictive that urbanites respond to the city life. On one hand, people want to get rid of the competitive situation of life and the distant relationships. However, on the other hand, urbanites seem unable to survive outside this urban system and urban life became the only place that they can be satisfied.It is hard for me to place my situation in this culture. Even I want to be out of it, I still found myself was rooted in it very early in my life. In my work, I try to conflict the dark side of urban life and the problem of thought and action that brought by urbanism. However, on the other side, as a part of them, I myself act and think base on the same way. As being the production of elite education, I was already categorized in the particular state in urban system and I know deeply what I will face in my future urban life. Depends on this back ground, the concept that I want to present in my work are mostly about the representation of urbanite’s stress and the consequence that brought by the urban system.

autobiography

Growing up I was fascinated with everyone’s culture but my own. Every time I had saved enough money, I would blow it traveling. I went to Mexico with a Spanish class. I backpacked Europe during summer vacations. Each time I would have given anything to not be another American tourist. In college I took cultural theory seminars. Sometimes I had to hang my head and shut my mouth, but I wanted to have these conversations, to try to understand difference. I began making art to find beauty in what I thought to be a pretty boring life. Street photographers found wonder in the ordinary moments of daily life. Modernist architects and sculptors found beauty in space, light and raw materials. Although critical of their goals for objectivity, these desires are still close to my heart.

After graduating college, my friends and I began the humbling process of finding a job. I had been told how fortunate I was being an educated, white male, but now it would seem this privilege had betrayed me. I was fortunate enough to get a job at a diner across from the university. Former professors would come in and once again I would hang my head and shut my mouth. I daydreamed a lot. I have this fantasy of waking up to find that I am the last person on Earth. I don’t know what has happened, or why everyone is gone. I may be at home or in a foreign city or on an undiscovered island. The spaces in my photographs are absent of people, I choose built environments that are common, but lack diversity. The New Topographic movement photographed these kinds of places and criticized how our culture has altered our landscapes. Environmental writers, like Barry Lopez, Robinson Jeffers, and Gary Snyder echoed these concerns. My images of empty, urban spaces became metaphors for emotional landscapes. I left the diner to work for a glass mosaic studio. It was a big improvement, but more than anything I wanted to get out of town.

I started teaching in Shanghai. I was no stranger to travel but as routine set in, I felt homesick for the first time. In that situation you make friends so quickly you don’t even notice, until someone surprises you. As these surprises revealed themselves, I often found myself thinking, “How did we get so close? We have nothing in common.” But we did. We were on this deserted island for a reason and it was by choice! We chose to leave behind loved ones, homes, personal belongings, pets. I think most of us had felt alone long before coming here. During Mao’s regime, critical artwork was censored or destroyed. Some artists, through public performances, used temporary unified actions to protest oppressive regimes. They built a community based on free expression. Mark Dion worked with London students and retirees to relearn the history of the river Thames by excavating garbage. These projects built new communities out of a common need or desire.

I was brought up to believe that I had traded in my culture for privilege, or that someone had done that for me at birth. But we are fooled to believe that our culture is in our skin, blood and possessions, and it can then be used to exclude others. I admire the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alfredo Jarr, and Jim Campbell, who use light, space and ordinary objects for social and personal commentary. I believe in the power of beauty, virtue, and quiet resistance. I value civility, charity, empathy, and fidelity and I ask that my audience value these as well. If so they may come to understand my work as they would a deserted island, slowly and carefully, with curiosity, feeling their body in space and the light moving across them both.

Cultural Bio

Working at a culturally specific museum provided the opportunity to gain a significant knowledge base about a religious, ethnic, and cultural group that I previously knew little about. Organizing and arranging thousands of objects that had no personal cultural significance, but enormous significance to a specific group got me thinking about the importance of recording, saving, and responding to stories of the past. I began to understand the strong connection that is formed between people and place and people with past, especially in cases of forced diaspora. I started to become interested in ways that the past affects the present: what changes and what stays the same? Which stories are told and which are intentionally or unintentionally destroyed? How can one historical event effect masses of people for multiple generations?

Loss of culture and tradition has happened quite significantly in my family over the past 60 years as we have become more “Americanized”. My dad’s family came from Greece two generations ago and immediately changed their last name upon arrival in order to adapt their identity to their new nation (we went from Michalopoulos to Michaels). Since that time, as people with connections to Europe have died, our family has changed from a immigrant family to a domestic family that speaks a different language and has few of the same traditions that existed two generations ago.

Cultural Autobio Excerpt

As an artist I need a sense of connection and a sense of magic. I believe we are all connected and seek to bring out the latent and untapped network joining all of us. Ad agencies are adept at preying on our insecurities and playing to our desires in order to convince us to empty our pockets into their laps. My mission is to subvert the language of marketing to build our confidence and affirm our dreams. As consumers we begin to believe “self” is the sum of that which surrounds, eventually losing sight of the fact that the true “self” is within.

INTOXICATING

They were first lured by the distorted form; but as they drew near, there was an odd odor. The smell of something nutty, familiar, yet foreign. It smelled like mother’s kitchen, but more insidious. No, it was father’s garage- it was the smell of those permanent grey smears on the driveway. It was the sweet smell of gasoline that children deeply inhale while their parent pumps gas. It was the antifreeze that dogs lap up like ice cream. It is quite literally an intoxicating smell. It filled your lungs with warmth, and your brain with newly formed voids. It was dangerous- those of us who grew-up in the 80s knew the “puffers”: an odd race that were too old to still like at home, but to dumb to ever leave. But there in lies the excitement… maybe just a little whiff… a poke.

Grass. Smell.

Grass. Smell. Cut grass in the summer when I wake up smells of play, fun, sunshine, freedom, running, unstructured days. It smells green, fresh, untainted. The dew is moist and yet untouched by anyone. Afternoon wet grass combined with the metallic odor of rain is heavy and flaccid. Dry grass baked in August, dusty, barbeque grease, charcoal, crunchy Ruffles potato chip crumbs. Fertilizer abrasively attacks my nose.

sound

Whispers, gasps and groans. The background noise captured in movies if you were to erase the music and the voices of the main characters. You hear muffled sounds from the extras and whispers not meant to be heard through the microphone; the shuffling of feet dancing to nothing. The dripping faucet that fills a space during awkward silences. Loud silences and silent noises, but no loud noises and no still silences. Fidgeting.

feels like...

feels like acid rain pelting/ against unprotected skin melting/somehow pleasant/feels like acid reflux/bubblin up in ya gut/throwin up a buncha stuff/ u dont remember eatin/feels like newborns teethin gums bleedin chops bitin down too hard on the taste of somethin metallic/somehow delicious/feels like bein caught between two channels/no matter how hard u bang the set it stays scrambled/somehow pleasant.

Job Sounds

The doors swings open and the room takes a deep breath, sucking in a bit of air and dust like a vacuum just as its being shut off. A wood rubber rhythm stirs time and wakes the morning light from its slumber. Counter-clockwise rotations of plastic rings are a prelude to a murky babble into a clay cup. I sit and wait.

I poke my laptop to initiate a round of my favorite game, "I'm Awake, You're Awake" and he yawns into action. The first viewer/customer comes into my office and observes/consumes.

"I know you're doing this performance thing today, but I have a work question."

"That's fine, go right ahead."

Listen

At the beginning, I heard that a child is singing a song and the rhythm is very lithesome. Then a sound like Engine-powered voice came. It sounds like that a plane is taking off. After that, a passionate melody came the sound became louder and louder, when it got loudest, it stop. Then, after a period of music with constant rhythm, the melody became passionate again. Then a chorus song came and then after that, the melody turned in to peace and blue. Then it repeated the very first melody. Suddenly a sharp sound came. It sounds like some metal objects were broken. Then the melody turned bake to smooth and lithesome. After that is again some metal sound. With the lively rhythm of drums, the music came back to the same melody as the beginning and ended with a powerful sound.

smell

Sitting in the same place it wavers over the room, intensifying when the door is opened and when the temperature increases. Sweet and musky, it is praised and lamented from various passers by, until the sensation merits segregation from the general population. There is a sense of purpose in its charm. It takes on other scents from what it encounters adding earth and a fresh dew to its aroma. What was once sweet in a large room, then overwhelming in a small, becomes absent in its abundance. Exposure desensitizes all results from appreciation to aversion. One step in making the audience stand senseless.

Touch

I touch smooth sides and hard edges leading to even harder corners. The surface is slightly rough as if covered in tiny hairs, and only slightly colder than my own hand. It’s solid, but light, easy to lift, and somewhat soft. Its sides give as I test how much pressure it could stand before breaking. But as my pressure increases, so does its resistance. Some edges are hard, solid. Others open into narrow and shallow crevices. The top is weaker than the sides. It’s also a little rougher in patches, except for a strip, smooth as glass, which follows its weakest point. I’ve found a corner that peels apart. The top folds back easily, but the other two sides hold firm. I don’t feel anything inside. The bottom is rougher. I find two sections that cave in immediately, revealing an inner void. On another corner I feel its smoothness turn into hard ridges, then back to smooth. That strip of more mechanical smoothness is here as well.