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Patty Chang

Patty Chang (born 1972, United States)

Melons (At a Loss), 1998

Single channel video, sound, 3 minutes, 44 seconds

Asia Society, New York: Promised Gift of Harold and Ruth Newman.

Since her sensational appearance on the New York art scene in the late 1990s with performance art and performance-based video works, Patty Chang has continually explored the limits of our physical and psychological comfort zone. In this video, Melon (At a Loss), facing the camera head on, Chang narrates a story of a special porcelain plate made in honor of her aunt who had died. But the storytelling becomes less an act of remembering her dead relative and increasingly irrelevant in the course of the video. Using a cantaloupe as a prop that is shaped like one of her own breasts, Chang performs a bizarre mutilation as she slices and eats the fruit in a self-cannibalistic act. Standing with a ceramic plate placed on top of her head, the artist personifies the precarious balance between mind and body.

Patty Chang was born in San Leandro, California, in 1972. Originally trained in painting,
she is now primarily known for videos and photography documenting her own performances. Using her body as a medium of expression, she employs satire to question contemporary gender issues and to lead viewers to reconsider the popular image of China in the West and in Asia. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her latest solo exhibitions include “The Product of Love,” Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2009); and “Die Ware Liebe,” Arratia, Beer, Berlin, Germany (2009); recent group exhibitions include “Chewing Color: Patty Chang, Kate Gilmore, Marilyn Minter,” MTV HD Screen, Times Square, New York (2009); “The F Word,” The Western Front, Vancouver, Canada (2008); “You Are My Mirror 1 (Je T’aime Moi Non Plus),” FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France (2008).

Selected Bibliography

Knight, Christopher. “United by Their Differences.” Los Angeles Times, 11 March 2008.

Colpitt, Frances. “A Slow-Motion Biennial.” Art in America, October 2006, 68-75.

Berwick, Carly. “Penguins, Lies, and Videotape.” Art News, February 2006, 104-105.

Martinez, Chus. “Looking Back: Solo Shows.” Frieze, January-February 2006, 78-81.

Arratia, Euridice. “In Conversation: Patty Chang.” Art Asia Pacific, Spring 2005, 68-74

Rosenberg, Barry A. When a Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss. Storrs: Contemporary Art Galleries / University of Connecticut, 2005

Temin, Christine. “Getting Under the Skin: 24 Artists Explore Identity in New Show.” Boston Globe, 13 February 2004.

Collins, Thom and Michael Foucault. Somewhere Better Than This Place: Alternative Social Experience in the Spaces of Contemporary Art. Cincinnati: Contemporary Arts Center Texts, 2003.

Hanhardt, John G. and Nancy Spector. Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collection. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003.

Ottamann, Klaus. Extreme Existence. Brooklyn: Pratt Institute, 2002.

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