Pratt Manhattan Gallery Presents Inaugural Fall Exhibition,
Artist Hsin-Chien Huang's First Solo Show in the United States 

Hsin-Chien Huang: The Data We Called Home Opens September 23

Handcuffs I, (23.2 x 35.7 x 19.5 cm), Sculptures of Touch (2020)

(NEW YORK, NY — September 2, 2022) Pratt Manhattan Gallery is pleased to announce its inaugural fall exhibition showcasing the work of multi-disciplinary artist Hsin-Chien Huang. The show will open on September 23, 2022 in Pratt Institute’s newly renovated gallery space at 144 W 14th Street in Chelsea.

Curated by Linda Lauro-Lazin (Pratt Institute’s Assistant Chairperson of Digital Arts, Adjunct Professor)  , Hsin-Chien Huang: The Data We Called Home is the artist’s first US solo show. The exhibition will remap Taiwanese folklore, the ethics of digital surveillance, space exploration and the body-mind dichotomy across different media, and will feature a seminal collaboration with artist Laurie Anderson.

The exhibition will highlight the broad scope of Huang’s complex body of work, featuring virtual reality films, sculptures, and videos that present new perspectives on the immersive possibilities of mixed media art practices.

The show centers four large-scale virtual reality journeys, (Samsara, 2021, Bodyless, 2019, To the Moon, 2018 and Chalkroom, 2017), alongside stainless steel sculptures and 3-D prints. The multimedia installations invite viewers to immerse themselves in the otherworldly spaces, stories and forms reimagined by Hsin-Chien Huang. In these virtual realities, bodies are porous, chronologies are nonlinear, and environments become dystopian dreamscapes.

One of the exhibition highlights is Huang’s award-winning VR installation, Samsara. This project takes the viewer on a dream-like journey to the not-too-distant future, when resources on Earth have been depleted, and humans are forced to find a new home. The installation is an experiment based on the concept of “Embodied Cognition.” Only when we experience the world in different bodies may we truly appreciate the thoughts of others, empathize with them, and harmoniously comprehend our existence. Having already drawn critical attention, Samsara was selected for the 78th Venice VR Film Festival and won the Jury Award of the SXSW and Best VR Story of the Cannes XR competition.

Still from Samsara, virtual reality installation, 28 minutes (2019)

Still from Bodyless, virtual reality installation, 28 minutes (2019)

Another surreal interactive VR experience on view—Bodyless—addresses Hsin-Chien Huang’s childhood during Taiwan’s period of martial law during the 1970s, while navigating the ethics of governmental digital surveillance. Bodyless explores means of oppression through the eyes of an old man—a political prisoner who is a ghost from the underworld. Drawing from Taiwanese folklore’s “Ghost Month”—a period when the gates of hell open for spirits to visit their families— the protagonist ascends to Earth and witnesses the deterioration of human memory and spirituality.

Still from To the Moon  

The other two VR projects in the show are collaborative works by Hsin-Chien Huang and Laurie Anderson. To the Moon (2018), originally commissioned by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, made its US premiere at the Museum of Natural History timed to the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The artist duo reconceptualizes the moon in six segments, using images and tropes from Greek mythology, literature, science, and sci-fi space movies. The viewer is able to explore the surface of the new moon, glide through space debris, and fly through DNA skeletons of dinosaurs.

Three stainless steel sculptures  accompany the VR journey. Through these, Huang references historical Buddha statues and reframes them by stripping them of their humanity and turning them into robot-like creatures in high-tech armor, floating motionless in space.

Another large-scale VR installation, Chalkroom, 2017, features eight unique rooms with chalkboards emerging as a vast labyrinth. In this alternate reality, viewers are guided by co-creator Laurie Anderson’s voice through a sensorial landscape. Abstract symbols are converted into concrete, interactive, physical presences, allowing the audience to explore the connections between written words and memories. Chalkroom was awarded Best VR Experience at the 74th Venice Film Festival and was the first of several VR works that Huang and Anderson created together.

The exhibit includes Huang’s standalone series of 3-D prints, Sculptures of Touch (2020). For these, the artist devised a digital system that would record his touch upon once untouchable martial law public objects such as barricades, bunkers, and monuments that remain in Taipei. The hand-traced objects were then re-visualized as images and 3D printed objects. Through these new sculptures the artist explores "body memory" and the body’s physical performances and connections with history, art, and technology.

Chalkroom (2017) 

A video installation, Omni Channels, (2018) will also be on view, furthering the conversation around humanity’s dystopian impulses and the ethics of surveillance. In 2012, Huang began scanning and recording signals on the main streets of Taipei, later selecting footage at random. The result is a ghostly urban topography that questions the rapid spread of surveillance technologies in city centers across the globe. 

Following an opening reception on Thursday, September 22nd (RSVP available here), the exhibition will be on view through March 4, 2023. For more information on The Data We Called Home, please visit www.pratt.edu/about/exhibitions/pratt-manhattan-gallery/. 

Hsin-Chien Huang: The Data We Called Home
September 23, 2022 - March 4, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday September 22, 6-8 PM

Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Monday - Saturday, 11am-6pm
212.647.7778

www.pratt.edu/exhibitions
Opening Reception: https://www.eventbrite.ch/e/opening-reception-hsin-chien-huang-the-data-we-called-home-tickets-400781758027?internal_ref=social
@prattexhibits #DataWeCalledHome

About Hsin-Chien Huang:
Hsin-Chien Huang is a new media creator with backgrounds in art, design, engineering, and electronic gaming. His career endeavors explore the possibilities of cutting-edge technologies in art, literature, design, and stage performance. His projects involve large-scale interdisciplinary interaction, performing, mechanical apparatus, algorithmic computations, and video installations. While being a professor at the Design Department of National Taiwan Normal University, Huang is committed to interdisciplinary collaborative STEAM education and publication.

Huang’s artworks have been exhibited throughout the world, including Taipei Fine Art Museum, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, MoMA of New York, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Ars Electronica Festival, Beijing 798, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York, and Transmediale in Germany, among others. He has also commissioned projects for the Digital Dunhuang VR Experience of the Dunhuang Academy China, Future Museum of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taipei Pavilion in the Shanghai Expo, Pavilion of Dreams in the Taipei Flora Expo, and a public installation art for Taipei 101.

In recent years, Huang’s revolutionary VR works have attracted international attention and won a variety of awards. His VR film Chalkroom, made in collaboration with Laurie Anderson, won the Best VR Experience Award at the 74th Venice Film Festival in 2017. Bodyless won an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival and the Golden Mask at the Newimages Festival in Paris. His new work Samsara won the Jury Award at the Texas SXSW Festival in the United States, Grand Prize for the Best VR Narrative at the Cannes Film Festival XR category and Honorary Mention in the Computer Animation category at Prix Ars Electronica.

 About Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute gives the creative leaders of tomorrow the knowledge and experience to make a better world. A top-ranked college with opportunities in art, design, architecture, liberal arts and sciences, and information studies, Pratt offers nearly 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The Institute’s impact expands beyond its 25-acre residential campus in Brooklyn to cutting-edge facilities throughout the borough, a landmark building and public gallery in Manhattan, as well as an extension campus, PrattMWP College of Art and Design in Utica, New York. Since its founding in 1887, Pratt has prioritized diversity and inclusion, welcoming students from all walks of life while developing and sustaining pathways to more equitable workplaces and careers. Today, Pratt and its exceptional faculty pride themselves on being academically excellent as well as adaptable to both in-person and online learning. Pratt students are part of a collaborative, interdisciplinary, research- and inquiry-based education that prepares them for professional and personal success in creative fields and with the goal of contributing to a more just and sustainable world.