SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 22, 2013—The Asian Art Museum presents Proximities 2: Knowing Me, Knowing You, the second show in an intimate trilogy of exhibitions exploring the culturally and geographically vast idea of Asia through the diverse perspectives of Bay Area artists. What is Asia, and how is it experienced and expressed through contemporary art? Guest curated by Glen Helfand, each Proximities exhibition features 8-16 artworks that explore this question and more specifically: how well do objects and ideas convey an accurate sense of Asia? The series examines themes such as real and imagined landscapes; family and community; and trade and commerce. The series’ artworks reflect the artists’ personal proximities to Asia and Asian history.

On view Oct. 11 through Dec. 8, 2013, Proximities 2: Knowing Me, Knowing You features painting, sculpture, video and photography as reflections of family, community and ethnicity within and beyond Asia’s geographic boundaries. The exhibition includes 16 new and recent works by Kota Ezawa, Mik Gaspay, Michael Jang, Pawel Kruk, Barry McGee, Anne McGuire and Charlene Tan, who express connections, conceptions and interpretations of Asia through themes of interpersonal relationships, relocation and dislocation.

Highlights include McGee’s installation of paintings that explores the symbolic meaning of a family name and fictional identities, and Jang’s photos of his extended Bay Area family around 1973 in a shifting social context. One of Ezawa’s animated videos recreates footage of a Japanese financial reporter, who bears the artist’s name. The process of finding connections with others is also explored by Kruk, a Polish-born artist who lip-synchs a notorious interview with martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee; and Tan, whose works involve imagined dialogues with her mother and with the artist Yayoi Kusama, women who influence Tan’s identity as a Filipino American artist.

Representing the setup of a tea ceremony, Gaspay’s installation, Eve, explores the use of human faces as a powerful marketing tool. Eve focuses on a 1993 Time magazine cover showing a woman considered by the magazine to represent the “new face of America,” a computer-generated composite of multiple ethnicities. Set to a soundtrack of Chinese opera, McGuire’s video depicts a group of women and girls sharing a meal at a restaurant in Taiwan, illustrating how quickly cultural connections and social dynamics are revealed, sometimes comically, through family-style dining.

Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin Street | San Francisco, CA | 94102

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