{"data":{"id":"10156","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":10156,"topgoose_id":2548,"tms_id":10156,"display_name":"Paul Chan","sort_name":"Chan Paul","display_date":"1973–","begin_date":"1973","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003ePaul Chan engages philosophy, religion, politics, art, and cultural history in a multivalent practice that has included single-channel videos, charcoal drawings, computer animations, conceptual fonts, and publications of artists’ writings. And although he has filmed in Iraq on the eve of war, created an agitprop map for protestors of the 2004 Republican convention in New York, and staged a collaborative post–Hurricane Katrina production of \u003cem\u003eWaiting for Godot\u003c/em\u003e in New Orleans, Chan distinguishes between the political and the aesthetic in his work. Politics, as he has maintained, requires “collective social power,” whereas his art is engaged with “nothing if not the dispersion of power.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe series \u003cem\u003eThe 7 Lights\u003c/em\u003e (2005–7), comprised of seven digitally animated video projections, is among Chan’s most acclaimed works. The cycle’s initial work, \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/27368\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e1st Light\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, spills light across the gallery\nfloor like sunlight through an unseen\nwindow. As the color of the illumination\nshifts in a cycle from dawn to dusk, the\nshadow of a cruciform utility pole tangled\nwith wires appears. The silhouettes\nof unmoored objects—cell phone, moped,\nbicycle wheel, sunglasses—and debris\nbegin to ascend slowly and silently through\nthe frame, finally breaking apart in the\nair. Flocks of birds cross the scene before,\nsuddenly and quickly, bodies begin falling\ndownward, one at a time and then in\nclusters, recalling the tragic imagery of\nmen and women jumping from the burning\nWorld Trade Center towers after the\nSeptember 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.\nThis narrative makes specific allusions to\nthe story of the Christian Rapture but\nmore broadly envelops us in a meditative\nenvironment of reverie shadowed\nby calamity.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500125156","wikidata_id":"Q18631656","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:27:04.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-30T07:03:57.881-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/10156/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/10156/exhibitions"}}}}