21st Century Wanderer | 2024
Exhibition co-curated with Gordon Fung
Date
Nov 08, 2024–Dec 27, 2024
Location
Chicago Art Department
1926 South Halsted Street,
Chicago, IL, 60608
Artists (A-Z)
Nimrod Astarhan, Xin Chen (陈欣), Juan Eduardo Flores, Gordon Fung, Yuwen Huang, Jungsoo Kim, Yukyeom (Yuki) Kim, Yiyi Liu (Yiyisogreen) & Mengjun Duan, Che Pai & Ian Kang, Mac Pierce, Vincent Tanguy, Rhett Tsai (蔡宇潇), Yalin Zhao, Yimei (Emair) Zhu
Collaboration
Poster & pamphlet design by Junfeng Zhang
Catalog design by Yuwen Huang
Edited by Gordon Fung
Link
https://chicagoartdepartment.org/21st-century-wanderer-nov-8-dec-27/
Posters
Pamphlets
Preface
Welcome to the “21st Century Wanderer”! This exhibition showcases a balanced mix of alums and current MFA students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alums, and guest artists from France and China, collectively exploring how art and technology inspire, inform, and influence each other.
New media, despite its prevalence, remains marginalized in the face of an art-market-driven environment that is biased toward traditional media. With the blossoming of newer electronic equipment and digital techniques, the availability of new media tools for artistic uses quickly expanded. The number of new media exhibitions is still underwhelmed and yet to catch up with technological advancement.
Arts and technology become inseparable. To address how art and technology walk hand-in-hand, our artists critically respond to our contemporary world through media tools. Thanks to Carlos Flores, the Programs Manager of the Chicago Art Department, for offering us an exhibition space, materials, and support to organize this positive dialogue with our Chicago communities.
It is my honor and delight to co-curate with Yuwen Huang for the second time this year—the first being Prismatic (re)ality in June 2024. Her ceaseless devotion to bettering herself has made the planning and preparation wondrously smooth. It is also my pleasure to work with this group of artists, who lead visitors to rediscover the intricate relationship between art, technology, strolling, and life.
I am grateful to the faculty and staff in the Department of Art & Technology/Sound Practice Department (AT/SP) at SAIC. The following faculty and staff whom I have encountered with and have been constantly nurturing technologists of generations to come: Lee Blalock, Shawn Decker, Garrett Johnson, Whitney D. Johnson, Joseph Michael Kramer, Spencer Krywy, Eric Leonardson, Lou Mallozzi, Kristin McWharter, Judd Morrissey, Allie n Steve Mullen, Alan Perry, Douglas Rosman, and Anna Yu.
With warmest regards, we cordially invite you to explore our innovative technologists’ artistic dérive.
—Gordon Fung
Curatorial Statement
"21st Century Wanderer" delves into the relationship between walking, technology, and society. Featuring 14 media-based artworks, it reinterprets "walking" across physical and virtual realms through a technological lens. The exhibition showcases walking as both a tool for shaping the digital age and a reflective practice mirroring contemporary life. The unifying themes of walking and technology connect the diverse artistic focal points, forming the exhibition’s core narrative.
The exhibition displays a variety of mediums, including custom-made games and detect devices, interactive websites, video installations, experimental video games, game installation, kinetic work, and performance. These artistic approaches provide insights into the contemporary walker's experience, prompting a reimagining of our urban spaces and social interactions and encouraging reflection on technology's impact on daily life.
Beginning this walking journey, Chen Xin’s video exposes the often overlooked gap between digital maps and the physical world, emphasizing the value of tangible experiences over digital data. Vincent Tanguy’s video of a romantic stroll through the city explores how video game symbols and technology subtly reshape our perception of reality. Che Pai & Ian Kang’s game work merges the audience’s memories, real-life encounters, and virtual tours to forge a novel reality. Gordon Fung’s video installation captures and projects the movements of viewers, highlighting the fluid interplay of space, time, and the virtual realm in our digital era.
Investigating societal issues, Yimei Zhu's interactive website invites participants to reconsider societal norms by prompting opposite instructions found on street signs. By challenging the rigid city rules, the work encourages visitors to rethink how rules shape people's thinking. Mac Pierce's custom hoodie critiques surveillance, positioning walking as an act of political defiance against the pervasive control exerted by government surveillance and big data. Yukyeom Kim uncovers the unrealistic societal expectations placed on women to secure the birth rate by recreate the scene of infants chasing bubbles. Jungsoo Kim highlights overlooked stories of unhoused communities who are integral to the cityscape, yet remain unheard by passersby.
Expanding to the virtual space and symbolic meaning, Nimrod Astarhan’s avatar acts as a virtual oracle, navigating a digital reconstruction of an archaeological site to trace personal histories and memories. Rhett Tsai, through an experimental video game, explores the hidden messages and personal emotions embedded in the context of war through the lens of tracing. Yalin Zhao’s kinetic installation, featuring a roaming bed, symbolizes her restless and nomadic life over the last decade.
Further exploring the playful and poetic possibilities at the intersection of technology and walking, Yiyi & Mengjun repurpose a shopping cart with a custom-built game, transforming it into a representation of a digital wanderer burdened with digital refuse. Yuwen Huang’s web-based work shows city palettes from collected data by traversing the city landscape with an interpreted guide from a generative program. Juan Flores indexically records his meandering urban journeys by converting them into poetic expressions.
The contributions of 16 artists broaden our understanding of walking across multiple dimensions, illustrating its remarkable capacity to transcend time and space. Engaging with these artworks helps us reevaluate the role of walking in shaping society and influencing personal emotions. As curators, we seek to inspire a fresh appreciation for the simple yet profound act of walking, revealing its ongoing relevance and potential for discovery in our technology-driven era.
—Yuwen Huang