Tseng Kwong Chi

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kun yang

My mirrored glasses give
the picture a neutral
impact and a surrealistic
quality I am looking for.
I am an inquisitive traveler,
a witness of my time, and an ambiguous ambassador.

-Tseng Kwong Chi

       Tseng kwong chi's most famous body of work is his self-portrait series, East Meets West, also called the "Expeditionary Series."

       In the series, Tseng dressed in what he called his "Mao suit" and sunglasses, and photographed himself situated with famous landscape or people. He immediately discovered that the outfit garnered a wide variety of responses from people, from curiosity to deference to contempt. Wearing the costume in the art world context, he found that he would be mistaken for a Chinese diplomat by an undiscerning public and given access to the upper echelons of art society. He even used this uniform trick to meet Yves St. Laurent.          

             

       He had a photo taken with Mickey Mouse, both are trickster figures in uniform, Tseng represents a variety of  irony between eastern and western situation. 

        

       During the cold war, his works focused on the concept of mutual misunderstanding of eastern and western culture but with a sense of humor. His East Meets West  got overwhelming response but  receiving totally different valuations from west and east. In western critic's eyes, his works always with the intuitive meaning. Also his work was interpreted with the perspective of "cultural conflict" by critics, these but these critics rarely mentioned that he successful ridiculed the subversion of the grand narrative intention. However he got highly recommended, even he was not super famous in China, but there still are many bloggers praising his accomplishment, they believe that he ingeniously used his art to become the symbols embedded western geographical indication, then brought the visual and psychological impact to westerners in order to challenge the western view of China's sluggish.

       Tseng died of AIDS-related illness in 1990, and was survived by his companion of seven years Robert-Kristoffer Haynes, who remains a resident of New York City and serves as Registrar at Paula Cooper Gallery.

The Career and Sponsor
Tseng Kwong Chi was Keith Haring's official photographer and created an archive of over 50,000 images recording Keith Haring at work, including the early subway drawings and later the large-scale commissions.


Award
Yale BrachmanAward for Distinguished Cultural Contributio in1999
Tony Award for "Best Choreography" in 2007

East Meets West
http://www.tsengkwongchi.com/port.html

Time line of Tseng Kwong Chi
https://www.facebook.com/TsengKwongChi
http://www.tsengkwongchi.com/bio.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tseng_Kwong_Chi
https://www.visualaids.org/artists/detail/tseng-kwong-chi

 Recommended in China
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6ad69bfd0100uc71.html
http://cul.sohu.com/20090923/n266942111_1.shtml