RAG spring calendar features artists Paul Wong and Theodore Wan

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The work of two prominent Chinese-Canadian conceptual artists is featured in the new Richmond Art Gallery (RAG) show Unit Bruises: Theodore Wan & Paul Wong, 1975-1979.

On April 20 through June 30, the show marks the first time work from the two Vancouverites and contemporaries has been shown together.

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“I was really interested in bringing together these two artists,” said Michael Dang, guest curator at RAG. “I think it is kind of interesting how they sort of landed on … similar or parallel or complementary practices (but came) from different backgrounds.”

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Working only blocks apart in the Main Street area of downtown Vancouver in the 1970s, Wan, who died in 1987, and Wong turned lenses on themselves in a bid to highlight and discuss their positions as ‘othered’ people. As well as look at illness, death and the human condition.

“I’m excited to show these three works in relationship to Theodore Wan’s work,” said Wong from his Chinatown studio. “It’s this interesting pas de deux in that both our works are centred on our body.”

At the time, Wan’s and Wong’s self-focusing was considered ground-breaking. Now, almost 50 years later, we live in a world dominated by selfies and online creators who put themselves at the centre of their content.

“We both turned the lenses on ourselves — way before selfies,” said Wong. “Prior to that, one didn’t turn the camera on oneself … In many ways, using our own bodies versus commercial bodies, styled bodies, hired bodies, filtered bodies, that inception was a rupture to the mainstream.”

The exhibition is named after Wong and collaborator Kenneth Fletcher’s 1976 video 60 Unit; Bruise, which documented the “ritualized” withdrawal of Fletcher’s blood that was then, via syringe, injected into Wong’s back.

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Combined with a companion piece titled 50/50 (1976/2024), the video will be shown as a newly re-edited work entitled Blood Brother (1976/2024). Wong’s photographic series 7 Day Activity (1977) will also be featured at the gallery, marking the first time it has been exhibited since 1978.

Wan’s well-known Bound By Everyday Necessities II, in which he performed as a “patient” in a series of medically accurate photographs, will appear alongside rarely seen objects from his archive including original drawings, handwritten notes and photocopies from medical manuals.

All of Wong’s work in this exhibition was produced between 1976 and 1978, during which time the artist was a member of the self-proclaimed “art gang” The Mainstreeters, which included Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Marlene MacGregor, Annastacia McDonald, Charles Rea and Jeanette Reinhardt.

“Those years were exciting,” said Wong. “Those were a really pure period of being an outsider that said, you know, what the f–k? No one is paying attention. Mainstream is not interested, corporate is not interested, commercial is not interested, television and film are not interested in what we’re doing, which kind of allowed us to do what we want to do. In my case, turn the camera on myself and my friends. That became the content and community and the audience.

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“So now, to have this work put in Richmond Art Gallery to a whole new public far removed from my original intended audience … is very cool.”

Dang hopes show attendees walk away from the exhibit with an understanding of the rich history and the presence of Chinese-Canadian artists in the Canadian conceptual art world.

“I want younger kids to maybe see themselves in these artists and see that they are not alone,” said Dang. “To see we’re part of a lineage, a generation of artists who are dealing with similar things in the ’70s to what we are now.”

Also showing at the RAG alongside Unit Bruises is Hazel Meyer: The Marble in the Basement.

“Centred on a pile of marble scraps that possibly once belonged to iconic Canadian artist Joyce Wieland, Meyer’s installation and performance The Marble in the Basement untangles issues of power, memory and inheritance by anthropomorphizing a forgotten object from this influential Canadian artist’s domestic archive,” said a statement from the RAG.

This work from Meyer is part of The Weight of Inheritance, Meyer’s multi-year research project that looks to the legacy of Wieland.

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dgee@postmedia.com

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