7 May – 21 June 2022

Organized by Danielle Shang

 

Galerie Marguo is pleased to present The Hearing Trumpet, Part II, the second installment of a group exhibition gathering artists of Asian descent from North America and Europe. The title of the exhibition is adopted from the late Leonora Carrington’s fantastical novel The Hearing Trumpet (1974)

 

The participating artists include Carl Cheng, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Damien H. Ding, Heidi Lau, LIU Xin, Amanda Ross-Ho, Runo B, Catalina Ouyang, Dianna Settles, Kyungmi Shin, Astria Suparak, Ziping Wang, Miranda Fengyuan Zhang, and Stella Zhong. Their works span all disciplines and articulate negotiations of multiple and sometimes clashing histories and identities, the processing of trauma and new awareness, and different notions of temporalities and spatialities that are informed by personal memories, collective experiences, and conceived in different social and cultural contexts.

 

Full Press Release ↓

Explore The Hearing Trumpet, Part I 

  • Installation views

  • The Hearing Trumpet, by Leonora Carrington, 1947

    Leonora Carrington, The Giantess, 1947

    Cover artwork of Carrington's novel

    The Hearing Trumpet

    by Leonora Carrington, 1947

     

    The Hearing Trumpet (1974) brings with its protagonist, the ninety-two year old Marian Weatherby who is nearly deaf, being forced into a retirement home, and ends in an ecstatic post-apocalyptic utopia peopled with all sorts of creatures and fantastical beings. In between, the reader is brought on an adventure that crisscrosses centuries and dimensions; encountering everything from a scheming New Age cult, a failed assassination attempt, a hunger strike, bee glade rituals, a witch’s sabbath, an angelic birth, and a quest for the Holy Grail.

     

    An accomplished surrealist artist, Leonora Carrington was nevertheless dismissed in her time as a muse for male 'geniuses.' Despite its emphasis on imagination and liberation of the mind, Surrealism was a movement that reinforced patriarchal social structures and objectified women. In the novel, Carrington tells the story of women ostracized from society for their old age and disabilities, who band together against all odds to celebrate their subversive power, nurture their souls, and find promises of joy.

     

    In light of Carrington’s radical spirit – that expands not only our expectations of time and space, but also the boundaries of the human mind – the group exhibition brings together artists and cultural workers of Asian descent working in the West, who seek camaraderie, self-empowerment and visibility, and offers a space for healing, solidarity and celebration in a precarious time.

  • Participating artists

  • The fourteen artists’ eloquent articulations—expressed through material, object, mark-making and formal language— result from their critical quest into the past and imaginative investment in the present. Collectively, The Hearing Trumpet presents a site of fecund artistic and curatorial experimentation in the search for knowledge and memory. It is also a space for us to make our own claims within the global narratives of contemporary art, highlighting both hybridity and contradiction, in a hope to encourage future projects that challenge the stereotypes about artists of Asian descent and enable a critical dialogue with the East and the West.

     

    This exhibition celebrates the creative agency that pushes limits to re-imagine possibilities for representation, visibility and inclusivity. At the heart of The Hearing Trumpet is the collaborative spirit of community organization that has armed us to survive colonialism, racism, inequality, atrocities and natural disasters. In times of great uncertainty, we hope our presentation will radiate optimism and uplift us all.

  • Amanda Ross-Ho

     

  • Amanda Ross-Ho’s text-based textile work is derived from the detritus of everyday life, arranged and rearranged into combinations that imply visual poetry and unsolvable puzzles, creating a space of public address, declaration, and resistance. 

    • Amanda Ross-Ho LESS IS NOT MORE, 2013-2022 Cotton jersey and rib, thread, acrylic paint 190.5 x 129.5 cm 75 x 51 in
      Amanda Ross-Ho
      LESS IS NOT MORE, 2013-2022
      Cotton jersey and rib, thread, acrylic paint
      190.5 x 129.5 cm
      75 x 51 in
    • Amanda Ross-Ho LEAVE ME ALONE (INVERTED WITH TIMESTAMP), 2014 Dyed cotton jersey and rib, thread, acrylic paint 190.5 x 129.5 cm 75 x 51 in
      Amanda Ross-Ho
      LEAVE ME ALONE (INVERTED WITH TIMESTAMP), 2014
      Dyed cotton jersey and rib, thread, acrylic paint
      190.5 x 129.5 cm
      75 x 51 in
  • For many years I have been interested in the T-shirt as a mode of communication and the ubiquity of these particular shirts as a known cultural quantity. In the late nineties, already working with scale and appropriation, and urged on by the suggestion of an intentionally oversized T-shirt as well as its intention to be perpetuated, I decided to make a VERY large version which I first showed in Chicago. Over the past decade I have made several other versions, leaning into repetition as part of the logic of commodity, the bootleg, and mass reproduction.

     

    — Amanda Ross-Ho

  • Amanda Ross-Ho, Leave Me Alone (INVERTED WITH TIMESTAMP), 2014 (detail)
  • Catalina Ouyang

     

  • Meanwhile, Catalina Ouyang's menacing chairs address how a subject orients in physical and sociopolitical space: what histories and discourses are inscribed on the body, how the body exists contingent on architectural and bureaucratic structures.

  • I work with materials, ideas, and stories that over years I build relationships with. An object or material lives with me for any period from a few weeks to a few years until it expresses how it wants to live. A block of stone, a bone, a knife, a broken chair, an image, a certain kind of beeswax or clay or gel medium. I used to do a lot of intentional/cerebral brainstorming around this--writing, making charts, attempting taxonomies, whatever, trying to establish a diagrammatic logic in the connections--but I have found that the most profound assemblies come to me gnostically. Sometimes a certain phrase or image will get stuck in my head for months or years--'to attend violently,' 'look what you made me do'--and the materials will fall into place around that. Like tetris, but messier, where you are hacking off toes to make the shapes fit.

     

    — Catalina Ouyang

  • Catalina Ouyang, crisis management (invocation of losses counted, suckers had), 2019 (detail)
  • Astria Suparak

     

  • Astria suparak Tropicollage, 2021 Video (1’20’’), looped Edition 1 of 3+2AP Astria Suparak’s short, looping video collages thirty-years worth of...

    Tropicollage, 2021
    Video (1’20’’), looped

    Edition 1 of 3+2AP

     

    Astria Suparak’s short, looping video collages thirty-years worth of footage from futuristic sci-fi movies and television shows in which tropical lands are presented as escapist fantasies and prizes for white Americans and Europeans, while dehumanizing Pacific Islander, Asian, Caribbean, and Indigenous peoples. 

     

  • Kyungmi Shin

     

  • Kyungmi Shin dives deep into both personal and collective fragmented memories, investigating global connections by looking at her father’s life to explore cultural hybridity and monsterization represented in European Chinoiserie objects, as well as the complex narratives of displacement, shifting identity, colonization, and the global economy.

    • Kyungmi Shin Le Déjeuner, 2022 Acrylic on archival pigment print, UV laminate 154.9 x 218.4 cm 61 x 86 in
      Kyungmi Shin
      Le Déjeuner, 2022
      Acrylic on archival pigment print, UV laminate
      154.9 x 218.4 cm
      61 x 86 in
    • Kyungmi Shin Pompidour Fantasy, 2022 Acrylic on archival pigment print, UV laminate
 152.1 x 114.3 cm 59 7/8 x 45 in
      Kyungmi Shin
      Pompidour Fantasy, 2022
      Acrylic on archival pigment print, UV laminate

      152.1 x 114.3 cm
      59 7/8 x 45 in
  • Through layering on top of photographs with painting that creates opacity and transparency, I was creating narratives that allude to the complicated stories of the cultural identity, immigration, colonization, and the global economy that drives these movements... In my works presented at the Galerie Marguo, I continue this practice of layering these narratives. I juxtapose archival photographs with chinoiserie artwork images by Jean-François Boucher, layering painted elements over semi-transparent photographic image.

     

    — Kyungmi Shin

  • Kyungmi Shin, Le Déjeuner, 2022 (detail)
  • Carl Cheng

     

  • Carl Cheng Alternative TV #1, 1974 Plastic chassis, acrylic water tank, air pump, LED lighting and controller, electrical cord, aquarium...
    Alternative TV #1, 1974
    Plastic chassis, acrylic water tank, air pump, LED lighting and controller, electrical cord, aquarium hardware, conglomerated rocks, plastic plant(s)
    34.29 x 42.545 x 22.86 cm
    13.5 x 16.75 x 9 in
     

    Carl Cheng'Alternative Television features highly detailed interiors illuminated by LED lights. In lieu of a screen, their dioramas combine natural elements and small sculptures made from found materials to produce a syntax of corporate language, addressing the power of image and media in relation to both technology and nature.

     

  • ziping wang

     

  • Albeit from 50 years apart, Ziping Wang’s physical descriptor of work also addresses mass media. Her colorful, pixelated, graphic paintings or drawings are informed by the overload of visual information that characterizes the attention economy in the digital sphere, as well as the artist’s enduring interest in the gulfs and slippages between representation and meaning. 

  • Ziping Wang Butterflies in your eyes, 2022 Oil on canvas 80 x 60 cm The dreamscape series of paintings and...
    Butterflies in your eyes, 2022
    Oil on canvas
    80 x 60 cm
     

    The dreamscape series of paintings and drawings use ambiguous, unthreatening forms and iconography to build an unsubstantiated world. Refusing to follow a linear narrative, the works create a seemingly nonaggressive environment for self-reflectivity and sentimentality.

     

    — Ziping Wang

      

  • LIU Xin

     

  • Liu Xin’s films explore personal, social and technological spaces in a post-metaphysical world. Her recent research centers around the verticality of space, extraterrestrial investigations and cosmic metabolisms, examining the relationships between gravity and homeland, humanity and technology, and between past, present and future. 

  • LIU XIN The White Stone, 2021 Digital Video, 21'57'' Collectible includes three archival photographic works, flash drive, and a customized...
    The White Stone, 2021
    Digital Video, 21'57''
    Collectible includes three archival photographic works, flash drive, and a customized artist box
    Edition 3 of 5+2AP
     

    When the rocket lifts off, her body falls.

     

    In this film, we postulate a future history of rocket debris abandonment and recovery, through a “hunt” for abandoned rocket debris in remote areas. The protagonist sets off across valleys and villages, and into the desert in the southwest of China, in a search for the debris of rockets fallen since the 1990s. She may find one, or she may never. 

     

    In this story, the white stone is the fallen body of a rocket. Shifting our gaze from the sky back to the ground, we reexamine the life span of technologies, marking the terrestrial death of an extraterrestrial object.

     

    — Liu Xin

     

     

  • Stella Zhong

     

  • Systems of knowledge and hypotheses for the future is also a central concern in the work of Stella Zhong. Her architectural sculpture can be viewed as a proposition of technology’s possibilities, which has the potential to shape future structures and environments beyond our imagination. 

  • Stella zhong Parallel Waters, 2022 Various clays, string, stainless steel, sand, epoxy, paint, wood 152.4 x 176.5 x 66 cm...

    Parallel Waters, 2022
    Various clays, string, stainless steel, sand, epoxy, paint, wood
    152.4 x 176.5 x 66 cm
    60 x 69 1/2 x 26 in

     

    I am interested in highly specialized fields of knowledge such as physics, where things can make sense only within a certain environment.

     

    — Stella Zhong

     

  • Damien H. Ding

     

  • Damien H. Ding’s psychologically charged painting navigates between emotions and half-remembered experiences to create a paradoxical moment of simultaneous devotion and alienation, which interact to give way to an alternative path towards the sublime. 

  • Damien h. ding Diptych (Golf), 2022 Egg tempera on panel Diptych, each 35.6 x 27.9 cm / 14 x 11...
    Diptych (Golf), 2022
    Egg tempera on panel
    Diptych, each 35.6 x 27.9 cm / 14 x 11 in

     

    My paintings are about the struggle often experienced in attempts to articulate emotions and to provide a source through which these emotions can be felt. My attempts trapeze around the gaps in half-remembered experiences and the nearness of ideas typically seen as diametrically opposed and separate. These gaps and anti-dualistic ideas manifest in experiences of devotion, fetish, and intimacy. To facilitate intimate engagement with painting, I utilize the material and language of furniture and cabinetry as containers and spaces for my images, reminiscent of domestic altars and small chapels.

     

    — Damien H. Ding

     

  • Damien H. Ding, Diptych (Golf), 2022 (detail)
  • Dianna Settles

     

  • In comparison, Dianna Settles’ painting gets even more personal, attempting to arrest and transform fleeting moments of joy, isolation, power, and friendship to materialize ephemeral experiences.

  • My work is deeply influenced by my 2014 trip to my father's home country of Vietnam, where I witnessed room...
    On the stroll of the stolen life (ripe for the taking), 2022
    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
    30.5 x 20.3 x 5.7 cm
    12 x 8 x 2 1/4 in

    My work is deeply influenced by my 2014 trip to my father's home country of Vietnam, where I witnessed room after room of artwork featuring figures that I could, for the first time, relate to and see myself in. This began my skillful but indeterminate synthesis of traditional Vietnamese painting and the classical influences of European colonization. Like many non-white artists in the United States, and especially the south, this in-between-ness resonates with me and drives my urge to reach those others who might also feel unseen. The presence of marginalized bodies in works of art is historically important, and suffuses my attempt to translate conflicting feelings of alienation through the bodies, colors, and objects that I render into sources of power and reclamation. My hope is that, through sharing my work, others will be able to follow my journey. In doing so I hope they too will feel encouraged enough to follow themselves, in the deepest sense possible.

     

    — Dianna Settles

  • Heidi Lau

     

  • HEIDI LAU Perfume Vessel, 2022 Glazed ceramic 12 x 12 x 28 in 30.5 x 30.5 x 71.1 cm I...

     

    Perfume Vessel, 2022
    Glazed ceramic
    12 x 12 x 28 in
    30.5 x 30.5 x 71.1 cm

     

    I feel like people think that with ceramics, there’s a sense of finality. As if, once you fire it, you’ll never turn back to clay. But I feel like it’s still possible to mess with the timeline a little bit.

     

    — Heidi Lau 

  • Heidi Lau’s ceramics reimagine symbolic artifacts and zoomorphic ruins as materializations of the archaic and the invisible. In the process, she reenacts the non-linearity and materiality of the past, molding a tactile connection to the disappearing and impossible identity of home. 

    • Heidi Lau Mother, 2020 Glazed and wood-fired ceramic 33 x 142.2 x 83.8 cm 13 x 56 x 33 in
      Heidi Lau
      Mother, 2020
      Glazed and wood-fired ceramic
      33 x 142.2 x 83.8 cm
      13 x 56 x 33 in
    • Heidi Lau Daughter, 2020 Glazed and wood-fired ceramic 26.7 x 109.2 x 61 cm 10 1/2 x 43 x 24 in
      Heidi Lau
      Daughter, 2020
      Glazed and wood-fired ceramic
      26.7 x 109.2 x 61 cm
      10 1/2 x 43 x 24 in
  • Runo B

     

  • Home is also on Runo B’s mind. During the pandemic, he explores the clash and fusion of different cultures, customs and political realities in his paintings of daily objects and stereotypes, which are accentuated with dark humor. 

    • Runo B Tittytainment II, 2021 Pigment and rabbit glue oil and collage on canvas 120 x 150 cm
      Runo B
      Tittytainment II, 2021
      Pigment and rabbit glue oil and collage on canvas
      120 x 150 cm
    • Runo B Common People I, 2020-2021 Acrylic and oil on linen 100 x 80 cm
      Runo B
      Common People I, 2020-2021
      Acrylic and oil on linen
      100 x 80 cm
  • My work explores the clash and fusion of different cultures, customs, and ethnicity in specific regions, and the backside of urban landscapes, like my own play with interaction of multicultural, which are often ironic and provocative in a dark comedy way expressing social engagement and political perceptions. I also try to let the daily objects and scenes from certain “cultural stereotypes” to get rid of the general meanings and reorganize them. There are quite a few symbols and signs in my works, like an open text for everyone to read. Through the selected themes, I try to find the sordid memories that both collectively and individually remain silent, insisting on focusing on the daily details and showing the precious moments that have been overlooked and forgotten. What attracts my attention is the back side of the city and the intricate culture, these are the things that separate romance and chaos. In my images, there is no clear and specific depiction, but rather a complex fusion of multiple and harmonious coexistence. Or I am talking about the cruelty and beauty of the world, a kind of spicy breakfast that not everybody likes to eat.

     

    — Runo B

  • Miranda Fengyuan Zhang

     

  • Miranda Fengyuan Zhang’s hand woven paintings explore the idea of abstract landscapes in relation to memories. The blurry contours and the subtle palette evoke the artist’s sensibility towards the state of transience. 

    • Miranda Fengyuan Zhang Three lines and a curve, 2022 Hand woven cotton 108 × 64.7 cm 42.5 x 25.5 in
      Miranda Fengyuan Zhang
      Three lines and a curve, 2022
      Hand woven cotton
      108 × 64.7 cm
      42.5 x 25.5 in
    • Miranda Fengyuan Zhang Six lines and squares, 2022 Hand woven cotton 54.5 x 65.1 cm 21 1/2 x 25 1/2 in
      Miranda Fengyuan Zhang
      Six lines and squares, 2022
      Hand woven cotton
      54.5 x 65.1 cm
      21 1/2 x 25 1/2 in
  • Miranda Fengyuan Zhang, Three lines and a curve, 2022 (detail)
  • Odonchimeg Davaadorj

     

  • Likewise, Odonchimeg Davaadorj’s mythical and poetic paintings and drawings are derived from her shamanic belief in the relationships between human and nature, between communities, and between the past and the future. The body—especially the female body—nature, nomadism and the collective in her work present us a sensitive, dreamlike universe of spirituality.

    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Passeport, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 20 cm 22 x 22 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Passeport, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      20 x 20 cm
      22 x 22 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Germinal IV, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 24.5 x 30 cm 26.5 x 32 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Germinal IV, 2020
      Acrylic on canvas
      24.5 x 30 cm
      26.5 x 32 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Saruul, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 18.5 x 13 cm 20.5 x 15 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Saruul, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      18.5 x 13 cm
      20.5 x 15 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Sans soleil, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 18 cm 26 x 20 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Sans soleil, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      24 x 18 cm
      26 x 20 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Fulgurance, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 20 x 20 cm 22 x 22 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Fulgurance, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      20 x 20 cm
      22 x 22 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Nousfrage II, 2020 Ink on paper 50 × 70 cm 56 x 76 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Nousfrage II, 2020
      Ink on paper
      50 × 70 cm
      56 x 76 x 3 cm (framed)
    • Odonchimeg Davaadorj Coexsistere 8, 2020 Ink and perforations on paper 50 × 70 cm 56 x 76 x 3 cm (framed)
      Odonchimeg Davaadorj
      Coexsistere 8, 2020
      Ink and perforations on paper
      50 × 70 cm
      56 x 76 x 3 cm (framed)
  • Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Coexsistere 8, 2020 (detail)
  • About Danielle Shang

    Portrait of Danielle Shang

    About Danielle Shang

     

    The Hearing Trumpet is a collaborative effort facilitated by Danielle Shang, a Los Angeles based art historian and exhibition organizer. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization, urban renewal, social change, and class restructuring on art-making and the narrative of art history. 

      

    She has organized exhibitions by artists such as Amalia Pica, Katie Ryan, Simphiwe Ndzube, LIU Wa, CHEN Zhou, ZHOU Yilun, among many others. She was also responsible for organizing campaigns and large group exhibitions of Porsche Young Chinese Artists of the Year and Net-A-Porter Incredible Female Artist Award. Shang was a guest lecturer/speaker at USC, UCLA and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Los Angeles, and has contributed texts to exhibition catalogs for artists, such as Huma Bhabha, Zhou Yilun and QIU Xiaofei, etc.  She is a contributing writer for many publications, including Art Asia Pacific, LEAP, ArtForum, Mousse…

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    Catalina Ouyang, crisis management (filling the space with syllables waiting for something to pass), 2019 (detail)