IAN CHENG

IAN CHENG
THIS PAPAYA TASTES PERFECT
August 25 - October 6, 2011
Opening Reception Thursday, August 25, 7-9 PM

Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club is proud to present THIS PAPAYA TASTES PERFECT, a solo exhibition by Ian Cheng.

IT'S 2011. THE TWIN TOWERS OF REASON AND TASTE STILL SHINE DOWN UPON ALL POSITIONS. BUT SOMETHING ANCIENT LURKS.

I remember now.
Somewhere in the dark between Wall Street and Chinatown.
A crowd of futures traders gathers outside a bar to watch something. Something alive.

The exhibition premieres a new digitized performance that sets a sequence of encounters between physical human behavior and the virtual environment.

WHEN INFINITY ABANDONS NATURE FOR CULTURE, POSSESSION EVOLVES INTO ACCESS, INNOVATION SCALES INTO YOUR PALM, DATA CAN BE TOUCHED. TOUCHED! YOU START TO THINK ABOUT YOU. ABOUT YOUR IMMEDIATE NEEDS, DESIRES, FANTASIES. THE PROGRESS OF PROGRESS AWAKENS A BARBAROUS SOMETHING. IN OUR ERA, THE HOMO SAPIEN RETURNS.

There's a man and a woman, lovers.
Both tall, muscular, dyed blonde. Drunken warriors from the same tribe.
They've forced an alien driver to stop his car in the middle of the street.

Motion Capture is a recording process that registers the physical movements of the performer absent the image of the performer. The recorded movements are then translated onto a digital body. In Hollywood, motion capture is used to give impossible non-human characters an anthropomorphic spirit.

AMONG OUR BRIGHTEST DIGITAL CELEBRITIES--GOLLUM, KING KONG, THE NA'VI--YOU SEE PERFORMANCES AT THE THRESHOLD BETWEEN POLITE REASONABLE HUMANITY AND EXPLOSIVE BEHAVIORAL DRIVE. UNLIKE OUR HUMAN STARS, WHO HAVE FULL RECOURSE TO A PRIVATE LIFE OF SEXUAL AFFAIRS, SHOPLIFTING, DRUNKEN TIRADES, PHARMACEUTICALS, GAFFES, RETIRING AND REBIRTHING, THESE DIGITAL CELEBRITIES MUST PUT ALL THEIR LATENT MONSTER ON SCREEN. THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO HIGHLIGHT A FLICKERING INNER HUMANITY AMIDST MONSTROUS DIFFERENCE. BUT IF YOU BLUR YOUR EYES, THEIR TRUE FREEDOM IS TO BEHAVE AS DUMB AS YOU YOURSELF SOMETIMES DESIRE TO BEHAVE.

Working with a choreographer, a performer, and a small team of motion capture technicians, Cheng has configured the motion capture process into a format for recording a visceral, incomplete memory.

I don't remember what their story is, but they're screaming it.
The driver tries to reason but they can read the fear in his body.
They want the blood.

CERTAIN CONDITIONS CAN ANIMATE THE HUMAN BODY INTO A HOMO SAPIEN MONSTROSITY, 200 MILLISECONDS BEFORE THE CONSCIOUS MIND CAN REASON AND 600 MILLISECONDS BEFORE TASTE CAN ASSURE THAT IT IS PERMITTED. CERTAIN HUMAN BEHAVIORS CAN CONFUSE THE COMPUTER, CAUSING AN ENTROPIC CHAIN OF DIGITAL MISBEHAVIOR AND AN ACCUMULATION OF DIRTY DATA.

Placing the performer under a matrix of contradictory choreographies, a debased narrative, whiskey, and technical bondage, an ancient horrifying physicality is registered in the virtual environment as a sequence of legible movements punctuated by impossible gestures and gross deformations. In this space, motion becomes a new material.

It's cat and cat and mouse in and around the car.
The traders are too scared to intervene, but they also yearn for something raw.
The car is cast as an impromptu mediator, protracting the inevitable moment.
What happens next I have to play out for you. I don't remember the details, but my body does.

TO CALIBRATE YOUR BODY TO THE COMPUTER AND THE COMPUTER TO YOUR BODY, STAND CRUCIFIED AND SPEAK IN YOUR EVERYDAY VOICE: "THIS PAPAYA TASTES PERFECT."

Ian Cheng (born 1984, Los Angeles) is an artist based in New York. He studied Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley before working at Industrial Light & Magic. He received an MFA from Columbia University in 2009.

Gallery hours are Wednesday -- Sunday 11am -- 6pm. For additional information and images please contact the gallery by telephone or at the following email address: info@formalistsidewalkpoetryclub.com.

FORMALIST SIDEWALK POETRY CLUB
WWW.FORMALISTSIDEWALKPOETRYCLUB.COM
235 12TH STREET, MIAMI BEACH, FL 33139
T 305 538 5980

1/11/2012
broseph:
the axis ain't nice versus jerk,
it's strong versus weak.
In 30 days I'll teach you--
traffick in genres and expression.
mugging smugging
don't break the contract,
just play it nasty,
make the script yours.
plausible denability is trending.
curate some hot, then some cold.
subjectivity is the cloak
for smuggling a historical agenda.
resolution resolved:
the illusionist is the artist
and scorsese score some.

12/5/2011
hey girl give me your number.
hey boy give me your cv.
you wanna go somewhere?
I need to go to the bathroom.
I can come with you.
Can you survive in there?
I gave birth to a sculptural text called 0dradek.
I'll be wet for you when you're history.

11/25/2011
the aggregator vs. the terrorist
vs. ...

9/24/2011
to be free enough to elect her own problems
she had to dissolve the contradiction
between scarcity and desire.
she desired new problems:
centarianism,
two child policy,
an analogical replacement for the cigerette.

9/1/2011
an image falling on an image.
a city and a city.
that time and that time in this time.
to impose or to superimpose?
completeness reserved for expressions of excess:
trash the trash heap or watch the throne.

6/30/2011
the dark pools of privatized reason
cannot fully reason with behavior,
only choreograph it into impossible arrangements.
Behavior, after all, is its own dark pool.

6/10/2011
the terrorist as entrepreneur
lays light trails.
everything is illuminated except meaning.
a race
to arrange everything into something.
a needle lost in SQL.
financial oversight and anti-terror become problems
of an applied cubism * time.

6/1/2011
models of freedom are generationally specific.

5/21/2011
history rhymes dance with the work of this era:
Logistics - the choreographed movements of information and expertise,
the arrangement of privatized reason.

1/1/2011
Aosu/dh sees a vision
Xao$odfus wants one too