Tseng Kwong Chi
Template:Short description Template:Use American English Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters".Template:Wikidata image Tseng Kwong Chi, known as Joseph Tseng prior to his professional career[1] (Chinese: Script error: No such module "Lang".; September 6, 1950 – March 10, 1990), was a Hong Kong-born American photographer who was active in the East Village[1] art scene in the 1980s. He is the brother of dancer/choreographer Muna Tseng.
Work
Tseng was part of a circle of artists in the 1980s New York art scene including Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Cindy Sherman.[2]
Tseng's most famous body of work is his more than 100 self-portrait series, East Meets West, also called the "Expeditionary Series". In the series, Tseng dressed in what he called his "Mao suit" (also called a Zhongshan suit) and sunglasses (dubbed a "wickedly surrealistic persona"[1] by The New York Times) and photographed himself situated, often emotionlessly, in front of iconic tourist sites. Tseng was inspired when he was treated as a VIP while dining with his family at Windows on the World, a restaurant atop World Trade Center.[3]
The first photograph was taken in Provincetown, Massachusetts; other sites included the Statue of Liberty, the United States Capitol; Cape Canaveral, Disneyland,[1] and Notre-Dame de Paris.
Tseng also took over 40,000 photographs of New York graffiti artist Keith Haring[4] throughout the 1980s working on murals, installations and the subway.[5] In 1984, his photographs were shown with Haring's work at the opening of the Semaphore Gallery East location in a show titled "Art in Transit". Tseng photographed the first Concorde landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport, on October 19, 1977,[6] from the tarmac.[1] According to his sister, Tseng drew artistic influence from Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson.[1]
Life
Tseng's father was a Kuomintang officer who fled Shanghai in 1949 when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War.[7] Tseng was born in British Hong Kong the following year[7] and was a child prodigy in Chinese painting and calligraphy.[1] He was educated at St Joseph's College[7] before his parents moved the family to Canada when he was 16.[7] He originally studied painting at Script error: No such module "Lang". in Paris,[8] but switched to photography after one year,[1] having gained an interest photography after his father gave him a Rolleiflex camera.[7] He moved to Manhattan's East Village in 1979,[4][7] where he soon met fellow avant-garde artists Haring,[4][7] Scharf,[4][7] Jean-Michel Basquiat,[7] and Ann Magnuson.[4]
Tseng started documenting Haring's work through photograph in 1979, travelling with him from 1982-1989, expanding his own East Meets West series.[9]
Tseng died of AIDS-related illness in 1990,[5][10] and was survived by his companion of seven years, Robert-Kristoffer Haynes, who remains a resident of New York CityTemplate:As of? and serves as Registrar at Paula Cooper Gallery.Template:As of? Tseng's work is in the public collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[11] Tseng has been included in the Asian American Arts Centre's digital archive.[12]
Books
- Chi, Tseng Kwong & Richard Martin, Tseng Kwong Chi (Kyoto Shoin International Co., Ltd / Art Random, Kyoto, Japan, 1990)
- Tseng Kwong Chi, Ambiguous Ambassador (Nazraeli Press, 2005)
- Cameron, Dan & Wei, Lily, Tseng Kwong Chi: Self Portraits 1979-1989 (Ben Brown Fine Arts & Paul Kasmin Gallery, 2008)
- Kwong Chi Tseng, Tseng Kwong Chi, Citizen of the World (Ben Brown Fine Arts Hong Kong, 2014)
- Chi, Tseng Kwong, Amy Brandt, Alexandra Chang, Lynn Gumpert, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, Muna Tseng, Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing For the Camera (Chrysler Museum of Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York University in association with Lyons Artbooks, 2015)
References
<templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" />
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b c d e Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
External links
- Pages with script errors
- 1950 births
- 1990 deaths
- 20th-century American photographers
- American LGBTQ photographers
- American gay artists
- American artists of Chinese descent
- Gay photographers
- Hong Kong emigrants to the United States
- AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
- Chinese contemporary artists
- American LGBTQ people of Asian descent
- 20th-century Hong Kong LGBTQ people