January 13 – February 12, 2011

When After Comes Before: Phillip Chen & Tomas Vu

JANUARY 13 – FEBRUARY 12, 2011 / CURATED BY ANCHOR GRAPHICS

Phillip Chen

Five Hands

relief etching

31 X 23 inches

Phillip Chen Men of Action

relief etching

31 X 46 inches

Phillip Chen

Shooting the Devil (After Abu'l Hasan)

relief etching

46 X 31 inches

In an essay titled “Picturing States of Affairs: The Art of Phillip

Chen” written for an exhibition of the artist’s work at the Three

Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, art and cultural

historian Lenore Metrick-Chen references the concept of yi wu as

put forth by Wu Hung. Wu Hung describes yi wu:

“Any object that points to the past is an yi wu because

it is a surviving portion of a vanished whole; by arrangement

or accident, it has been severed from its original context

to become part of contemporary culture. An yi wu is thus

characterized both by pastness and contemporaneity: it

originated in the past, but it belongs to the here and now.”

According to Wu Hung any artifact of the past has to exist

in the present. This is easily seen in the example of a visitor to

a natural history museum who when looking at the stone tools

of ancient man can not help but view them with the knowledge

of their modern day equivalents lining the shelves at the Home

Depot. But the art of Phillip Chen and Tomas Vu shows that this

idea is not confined to ancient relics. It is not a one-way street

from past to present but a two-way highway that extends from

the present to both the past and the future. Their prints collapse

time creating an incongruous space where linear knowledge

is replaced by a state of simultaneity. Drawing from personal

experience, written history, and the imagination their work

incorporates long departed traditions, objects and landscapes,

along with futuristic totems, positioning all firmly within a

contemporary context. The push and pull of yesterday, today, and

tomorrow is encompassed in the very materiality of the work,

constructed using computer-controlled laser cutters combined

with old-school hand printmaking. Their work is a documentation

and schematic diagram of the past, present and future. As such

their work often takes on a cosmological appearance.

This cosmic connection is intrinsic to the work. Its look

and feel reminds the viewer of images taken by the Hubble

Space Telescope of the far reaches of space, images made from

light emitted by its sources thousands of years ago. In most

cases of human experience, light can be thought of as moving

instantaneously, but over long distances the finite speed of light

becomes very apparent. Ole Rømer demonstrated that light

travelled at a finite speed by observing the periods of Jupiter's

moon Io to be shorter when the Earth was approaching the planet

than when moving away from it. Meaning the light reflected off

this distant moon was arriving sooner with the less distance

it had to traverse. The light we see from Io at its closest point

takes about 21 seconds to reach us, but for the great distances

from interstellar objects light’s journey can last for hundreds of

thousands of years. The light from these objects brings them

into our present as they once were. What we see is not how the

objects exist in the conventional sense of “now,” but how they

existed at the time the light was emitted. After thousands of years

of travelling, light reaches the camera in our orbiting telescope

which then transmits images to be viewed by our eyes, bringing a

celestial object’s “then” into existence in our “now”.

Approaching C BY JAMES IANNACCONE

Phillip Chen

Sargasso Sea-

Superfluous Things

relief etching

62 X 23 inches

Yet our standard conception of then and now can be

pulled apart even further by Albert Einstein’s paper “On the

Electro Dynamics of Moving Bodies”. In it he lays out his

special theory of relativity, which has acutely altered our

understanding of time. Just as we perceive the speed of light

as instantaneous for practical purposes, classical mechanics

works well in the common realm of everyday experience.

Special relativity explains how these laws do not hold up when

the velocities involved approach the speed of light. In such

a circumstance special relativity has shown that two events,

simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for

another, and that the duration of the time between two events

is not equal for all observers. Time is no longer uniform and

absolute, but dependent on velocity.

Special relativity is formulated from the principle that

all motion is relative, and that there is no absolute state of

rest. Everything is always moving with respect to something

else. The theory centers on separate frames of reference

moving in relation to one another. In these frames space

and time are combined into a single continuum of space-

time where an event can be assigned a single unique time

and location. Space-time is usually interpreted using our

conventional understanding of three-dimensional space

but with the addition of time as a fourth dimension. We can

specify an event by its four space-time coordinates using

the time of occurrence and its three-dimensional spatial

location to place it at a point in space-time. According to

special relativity this point will be in different locations

for observers in different frames of reference moving with

respect to each other.

Suppose we have three reference frames, whose spatial

alignment and clocks coincide, but are moving at a constant

velocity close to the speed of light in separate directions. For

a viewer positioned in the first frame, events A and B occur

simultaneously, but for a viewer in the second frame it is

possible to observe A preceding B and in the third frame to

see B preceding A, depending on the motion of these frames

with regard to the first.

The observed timing of these events also relates to the

measured distance between them. As the time separation

between the occurrence of events changes, the distance in

space between them also changes. The relation between

the change in time and the change in space, known as the

space-time interval, however will be the same for all three

observers. This is not due to imperfections in semantics or

measurement. The underlying reality of the events remains

the same for all three observers, only their perspective of

them changes. Similarly left and right are different for

two individuals who are facing each other. If an object is

positioned next to them, for one individual it will be on the

right hand side. For the other it is on the left hand side. But

in both cases the object is still in the same place.

Thus it becomes possible for passengers in a fast-moving

vehicle to travel for great distances and over great lengths of

time while aging very little. As a rocket ship approaches the

speed of light the rate of passage of time on-board slows down.

The ship's clock and any human travelling with it will show less

elapsed time than a clock left behind on Earth. With sufficiently

high speeds, space travelers could return thousands of years in

the future. However, any such application for interstellar travel

would require advanced and as of yet undeveloped methods of

propulsion. Nonetheless, scenarios such as this have been fuel

for science fiction stories the world over including the classic

film Planet of the Apes.

Upon reentry into the gallery, one can make a comparison

between special relativity and the work of Phillip Chen and

Tomas Vu. It’s as if the artists have condensed all of the

possible frames of reference described by relativity into a single

frame. Events do not appear to happen in any discernable

order. A before B, B before A, A and B at the same time, all occur

within a single picture. The past and future come together in

the present. Furthering the analogy to special relativity, their

images similarly collapse space. Multiple scenes and objects

get layered upon each other, as if a TV were receiving signals for

multiple channels at once. Wide expanses of landscape, maps

and charts, pieces of rocket engines and satellites, hand held

objects, along with microbes and molecules are all represented

at the same scale.

Their works are visual interpretations of the complex

mathematical equations that constitute Einstein’s theory,

including its greatest claim to fame, the equation E = mc2.

Showing the equivalence of energy and mass, E = mc2 has

helped usher in the nuclear age. By looking at the masses of

atoms, one can determine which nuclei have stored energy

that can be released through nuclear reactions. This has

led to the development of nuclear power and the atomic

bomb. The implications of this formula have made it one of

the most legendary equations ever conceived while giving

rise to the specter of a nuclear apocalypse that may one day

have Charlton Heston pounding the sandy surf shouting to

the heavens “You maniacs! You blew it up!” With E = mc2,

destruction and creation run hand in hand. Likewise, Tomas

Vu and Phillip Chen pull apart and reconstruct through

images that at once resemble a world ravaged by war and

the instruction manual for its reassembly. They are following

in the footsteps of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, not

only displaying the mutability of time and space, but the

collapse and rebirth of the physical world we inhabit along

with the status quo of our daily experience.

James Iannaccone graduated from Northwestern University with a BA in Art History followed

by positions with the Terra Museum of American Art and the Judy A Saslow Gallery. He is currently

Assistant to the Director of Anchor Graphics at Columbia College Chicago.

COVER:

Phillip Chen

Sargasso Sea-Superfluous Things (detail) 

relief etching

62 X 23 inches

Tomas Vu

Flatland series (detail)

silkscreen, laser engraved paper

and wood veneer with

hand coloring on paper

35 x 46.5 inches

Tomas Vu Flatland Series (detail)

silkscreen, laser engraved paper

and wood veneer with

hand coloring on paper

four panels each

35 x 47 inches

Tomas Vu Flatland Series (detail)

silkscreen, laser engraved

paper and wood veneer with

hand coloring on paper

four panels each

35 x 47 inches

Tomas VuFlatland series (detail)

silkscreen, laser engraved

paper and wood veneer with

hand coloring on paper

four panels each

35 x 47 inches

ar t + design

A + D AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON

A+D GALLERY

619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605

312 369 8687

COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY

GALLERY HOURS

TUESDAY – SATURDAY

11AM – 5PM

THURSDAY

11AM – 8PM

This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design Department

and The School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago.ANCHOR GRAPHICSA PROGRAM OF THE ART + DESIGN DEPARTMENT AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO