Orianna Cacchione

From the 1980s, many Chinese artists have experimented with a range of unconventional materials. Their works-in plastic, paper, silk, ash, and tobacco-form a major trend in Chinese art. The Allure of Matter offers the first serious consideration of these ground-breaking material explorations, coining the term Material Art to describe works that place "matter" itself as the primary vehicle of investigation and expression. The book contains four ground-breaking essays, profiles of twenty-five artists, and corresponding color images.

Considered the first Chinese artist to work in video, Zhang Peili (b. 1957) manipulates perspective, close-ups, and framing to create astonishing recordings of banal repeated actions, such as breaking glass, reading, washing, shaving, and blowing bubble gum. He is a pioneering figure, experimenting with a video camera in the late 1980s, exploring digital formats in the early 2000s, and developing large-scale, immersive scenes today. Despite Zhang’s pivotal role in the global history of video art, his oeuvre has received relatively little attention. This book, which includes insightful essays, color plates, and an illustrated chronology, is one of the few in-depth explorations in English of this important artist’s work. Distributed for the Art Institute of ChicagoExhibition Schedule:The Art Institute of Chicago (03/31/17–07/09/17)

For his first US museum exhibition, Hong Kong-based sound artist Samson Young looks to the idealism presented at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago to explore varying concepts of social progress and utopia through a trilogy of animated music videos. The catalog addresses questions of how people adapt to societal changes that they have little control over. For Young, “progress” as it was defined in the 1933 fair’s subtitle “A Century of Progress” represents a specific variant of aspirational thinking. From cars to shopping malls and houses designed for the future to political change, progressive thinking has had contrasting consequences as it made its impact felt across the globe in the decades that followed. The accompanying catalog acts both as an introduction to Young’s work and a lavishly illustrated document of the exhibition. It features an essay by curator Orianna Cacchione contextualizing Young’s work, an essay by G. Douglas Barrett exploring the tension between modern visions of utopia and the musical version of the contemporary, and an interview between Seth Kim Cohen and Young about the form of the music video and its variations in the exhibitions. Additionally, the catalog also contains full-color video stills of the works, original drawings, and archival materials included in the exhibition.