Mel Chin - Best Laid Plans And Unauthorized Collaborations
07 Sep - 19 Oct 2013
Since the 1970s Mel Chin (*1951, Housten) has created a broad range of works dealing with cross-cultural political, social and ecological issues. Chin’s work encompasses sculptural projects, artworks in public space, drawings and watercolours, performances, film and multimedia installations.
His works, often at the interface of science, are both analytic and poetic. Mel Chin creates sculptures and drawings steeped in the legacy of Dada and Surrealism. In his works he conjoins cross-cultural aesthetics with political, ecological and social topics.
Mel Chin is most well known for his multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects, in which he works together with different institutions, artists or students. Significant international attention was given to his ecological project Revival Field (1990-93), elevating the science of soil remediation to a land art project in New Orleans. And the project GALA Committee / In the Name of the Place (1997), consisting of a two year collaboration between artists and a primetime television originally exhibited on „Melrose Place“ concentrating on the placement of specific related artifacts in the camera’s view. An attempt to transform or even reinvent the medium television through infiltration and subversion.
Mel Chin understands his heterogeneous art serving as a catalyst for collaborative research projects and more social awareness and responsibility. Chin’s practice is his rigorous research into complex ideas. All of his projects are based on intensive research and conceptual drawings. Mel Chin’s second solo show at Thomas Rehbein Galerie will present a range of rarely seen studies and sketches of so far or forever unrealised projects.
(Miriam Walgate, 2013)
Drawings and Paintings by Mel Chin
This exhibition will present an array of drawings and "surgically modified" paintings by conceptual artist Mel Chin, several of which are on public view for the first time. The drawings will include projections of projects for the public and private realm, installation plans, selected studies, and intimate sketches, which as an amalgam, represent the complex creative gestures of Mel Chin. Also included in this exhibition are examples from his "Unauthorized Collaborations" series, an innovative body of work presented in Europe for the first time. For this series Chin modifies pre-existing antique paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth century, cutting and folding these canvases to create new meanings. Chin regards this work as an "unauthorized" collaboration with the original painters of these canvases.
(Miranda Lash, 2013)
His works, often at the interface of science, are both analytic and poetic. Mel Chin creates sculptures and drawings steeped in the legacy of Dada and Surrealism. In his works he conjoins cross-cultural aesthetics with political, ecological and social topics.
Mel Chin is most well known for his multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects, in which he works together with different institutions, artists or students. Significant international attention was given to his ecological project Revival Field (1990-93), elevating the science of soil remediation to a land art project in New Orleans. And the project GALA Committee / In the Name of the Place (1997), consisting of a two year collaboration between artists and a primetime television originally exhibited on „Melrose Place“ concentrating on the placement of specific related artifacts in the camera’s view. An attempt to transform or even reinvent the medium television through infiltration and subversion.
Mel Chin understands his heterogeneous art serving as a catalyst for collaborative research projects and more social awareness and responsibility. Chin’s practice is his rigorous research into complex ideas. All of his projects are based on intensive research and conceptual drawings. Mel Chin’s second solo show at Thomas Rehbein Galerie will present a range of rarely seen studies and sketches of so far or forever unrealised projects.
(Miriam Walgate, 2013)
Drawings and Paintings by Mel Chin
This exhibition will present an array of drawings and "surgically modified" paintings by conceptual artist Mel Chin, several of which are on public view for the first time. The drawings will include projections of projects for the public and private realm, installation plans, selected studies, and intimate sketches, which as an amalgam, represent the complex creative gestures of Mel Chin. Also included in this exhibition are examples from his "Unauthorized Collaborations" series, an innovative body of work presented in Europe for the first time. For this series Chin modifies pre-existing antique paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth century, cutting and folding these canvases to create new meanings. Chin regards this work as an "unauthorized" collaboration with the original painters of these canvases.
(Miranda Lash, 2013)