Patty Chang

“Hand to Mouth”

January 27 – March 10, 2007

Reception: Saturday, January 27, 6 - 8 pm 

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is pleased to present Patty Chang in the project space.  On view will be her film entitled “Hand to Mouth”. 

Patty Chang is known for her mesmerizing and sometimes disturbing videos and performances which have for many years focused intensely on her own body.  Her charged scenarios attack cultural codes colliding issues of submission and rebellion, and they often explore subconscious layers of sexuality in thrilling and discomforting ways.

“Hand to Mouth”, a video from 2000, was made before Chang extended her vocabulary beyond the performance oriented explorations of her own body.   In the video, she appears clad in a simple business suit, cheering encouragingly while simultaneously swallowing water and helium squished into her mouth by an invisible performer outside the picture frame.  Chang’s increasingly ecstatic performance, her fueling of the invisible person’s actions, turns the simple act into a hysterically funny and deeply disturbing experience at once.  
 
Patty Chang received her BA degree from the University of California San Diego in 1994 and lives and works in New York. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York ; the Fri-Art Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland;  the  Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; and at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Her wok has been included in It's Time for Action (There's No Option), The Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, Switzerland; Still Points of the Turning World, Site Santa Fe, Sixth International Biennial, New Mexico; in Into Me/Out of Me, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY; in Springtide, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; in Camera/Action, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago; in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, International Center of Photography, NY; in Im Balance: Video Works by Janine Antoni and Patty Chang, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; in Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collections, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; in Black Belt, Studio Museum in Harlem and Santa Monica Museum of Art; in Banquet. Metabolism and Communication, Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; in Patty Chang, Tracy Emin, Naomi Fisher, Paul McCarthy, The Moore Space, Miami; in Awakenings, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; in Feminine Moving Pictures, Guggenheim Museum, New York;  and in Fusion Cuisine, Deste Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, among others. Patty Chang is represented in New York by Anna Kustera Gallery. She is currently preparing a solo exhibition at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase. This is her first exhibition at the gallery.