Guest Curator: Steven Lam

Time and Date:
Saturday 27 November 2010
6.00pm

Location:
2P Contemporary Art Gallery
Shop 5, G/F, 6-20 Po Tuck Street
Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong
Gallery hours Tuesday - Saturday: 14:00 - 19:00

Bruce Yonemoto, still from Sounds Like the Sound of Music, 2005
 

2P Contemporary Art Gallery and DIORAMA PROJECTS are pleased to announce details of our November screening featuring the video work of renowned American artists Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, curated by New York based artist, curator and educator Steven Lam, Associate Dean at the Cooper Union School of Art.

Bruce Yonemoto has developed a body of work which positions itself within the overlapping intersections of art and commerce, of the gallery world and the cinema screen.  Many of his past works have focused on the fictionalization of Asian Americans as portrayed in Hollywood cinema.  He has also created works which juxtapose cultural material from different international communities such as the Japanese American and Nipo-Brasiliero communities.His recent work deals with the discovery of the real and poetic convergence between two phenomena specific to Argentina. During his twenty-year collaboration with his brother, Norman, Bruce has been honored with numerous awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film and Video.

Steven Lam, recipient of 1a space’s first Curatorial Residency, is the curator of the exhibition Spectral Evidence and the upcoming show Against Easy Listening, which will be opening at 1a space in November 2010.  He has an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and currently teaches performance and sound theory in the Art History and Theory Department at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Steven was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program as well as a Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellow at Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, and was a research curator for the Third Guangzhou Triennial (2008)

Kappa, 1986, 26 min
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto

Kappa is a boldly provocative and original work.  Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire.  Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts.  In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.

Vault, 1984, 11.45 min
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto

In this tour-de-force of stylized deconstruction, the Yonemotos rewrite a traditional narrative of desire: boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Using the psychoanalytic language of advertising, cinematic and television texts to tell the love story of a pole vaulter/concert cellist and a cowboy/Abstract Expressionist painter, they rupture the narrative with psychosexual metaphors and references to pop media and art. Vault, which has been termed a "deadpan homage to Bunuel's amour fou melodramas," critiques and celebrates the artifice of mass media mythologies.

Sounds Like the Sound of Music, 2005, 4.15 min
Bruce Yonemoto

Sounds Like The Sound of Music (2005) draws from two distinct and seemingly unrelated Hollywood film classics, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy (specifically, the Reagan-era Return of the Jedi) and Robert Wise’s 1965 musical, The Sound of Music. Both films express Hollywood’s associations to political narratives of their times: The Sound of Music dramatized Post-War nostalgia for European ideals at the dawn of the Nazi regime; and Star Wars’ depiction of the “good vs. evil” ethos surrounding the final years of the Cold-War era. These relationships to war and cultural imperialism are of great interest to Yonemoto, especially when filtered through the Hollywood entertainment machine.  Filmed in Cuzco, Peru, Yonemoto’s video recreates the opening sequence from The Sound of Music, replacing the Austrian Alps with the Peruvian Andes, the village of Salzberg with Incan ruins and Julie Andrews with a young Andean boy. Sweeping aerial views and a solitary figure accompany the soundtrack, sung by the Andean boy, a translated version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s infective melody into the indigenous Incan language of Quechua, spoken by 13 million people throughout the Andes and South America. Yet the language is probably best known through its place in popular culture; George Lucas’ villain Jabba the Hut (an icon of “Orientalized” evil; a late-Twentieth-Century Godzilla), spoke this disappearing language.  Yonemoto’s work further complicates binary approaches to expressing post-Colonialism by incorporating many ingredients: escapist Hollywood cinema and aspirational Broadway musicals; youth culture and optimism; landscape and cultural artifact; indigenous voices and melodic universality; Europe, Asia, and the Americas; Pre-War, Post-War and Cold War. The resulting mixture is equally complex: beauty and romance, memento and memorial, personal and political.

 
Admission to all screenings is free.  Reservation is essential given limited seating.  For reservations, please email info@2p-gallery.com or info@dioramaprojects.org.  Seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

About DIORAMA PROJECTIONS

DIORAMA PROJECTIONS consists of a series of free monthly screenings curated by Davina Lee, showcasing the video and photographic work of new and established artists and filmmakers.  Presenting a varied and eclectic programme of videos, slide show presentations and documentaries DIORAMA PROJECTIONS will provide a unique and informal opportunity to see the work of new and established contemporary artists and filmmakers.  Whenever possible, artists and filmmakers will either be present or will be available to interact with the audience directly through an internet video connection.

About 2P Contemporary Art Gallery

2P is a newly established Hong Kong-based contemporary art gallery, founded by Pui Pui To. The missions of 2P, which opened in April 2010, are to promote an international, transcultural and intergenerational dialogue in the sphere of contemporary art by promoting national artists abroad and international artists in Hong Kong.

The curatorial focus is on developing an exciting and varied programme of Hong Kong and international artists who possess a strong conceptual approach to their art practice. 2P values mixed media, emerging and established artists, risk-taking or experimental work, meta-curatorial strategies, discussions, collaboration, and international exchanges.

2P is dedicated to the presentation, interpretation, documentation, promotion, and enrichment of the arts and culturally diverse artists from all nations.  www.2p-gallery.com

About DIORAMA PROJECTS

DIORAMA PROJECTS was established in Hong Kong in 2008 by Davina Lee as the exhibition and events division of Words For Pictures Limited.  The objective of DIORAMA PROJECTS is to identify, develop and realize unique projects that will stimulate artistic and cultural exchange and collaboration.  DIORAMA PROJECTS seeks to provide physical and virtual spaces for groundbreaking work from new and established artists.  Previous projects include the exhibitions Chroniques Hongkongaises, part of Festival Voies Off, Arles, July, 2010, Proxemics, Hong Kong, October 2009, The Mother of All Journeys, Hong Kong, September 2009 and Distance Decay, part of Festival Voies Off, Arles, 2009.  At the core of each project is the desire to engage audiences at all levels, from passive observation to active critical debate.  www.dioramaprojects.org
For all enquiries, including press and interview availability, please contact Davina Lee  at info@dioramaprojects.org or by telephone on +852 9196 5934, or Pui Pui To at info@2p-gallery.com or by telephone on +852 2803 2151 or +852 9139 9727.