Not There But Everywhere is a two-person show featuring artists Zhiwan Cheung and Thomas Friel, curated by Cecilia L. Vargas. The works investigate the notions of identity and space. Today, our selves are here, there and everywhere – as we function in physical and digital spheres simultaneously. Cheung and Friel play with the multiplicity of selves including its location in physical and digital space. They each use performance (live and for the camera), and digital video (installed in the gallery and accessible via mobile digital devices). These artists also toy with the location of the self, what we identify with, and how we relate to those identities. The use of roles (e.g. the role play of various characters) and the names of different colors are used as metaphor for how we define and categorize ourselves, and others (and/or how we distance ourselves from such identities).

Zhiwan Cheung’s work Reading the Rainbow pulls from creation myths and the names of Glidden Paints for an audio element that is paired with repeated figures, fully saturated in Chinatown Orange, handling abstract shapes. The specific colors mentioned were chosen due to the way their names contained words with specific cultural elements or references to particular places. Separating, or rather, segregating the list of colors, the myth pulls from the ideas in historical creation myths and iconic texts. By using the language of body, place, and structure, the film becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of classification, categorization, and the act of naming.

Thomas Friel’s work plays with identities and form through his work Flebbe: Sweat in 3D. Commercial for Flebbe Carbonated Milk Product. Friel continues his investigation of how an object at rest containing moving images, activated through performance, becomes vessel, stage and prop. A companion video will be accessible to the audience through their mobile device, allowing the performance to be on their time, or allowing them to at least “glitch out”. Borders are questioned, or, is this all just an ad?

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ZHIWAN CHEUNG states, “They say that geography defines a person”. Born in America, yet raised by Chinese immigrants, he lives in a sort of permanent in-between-state of being neither American nor Chinese. In a journey towards a home that doesn’t exist, a rite of passage with no destination, his work is forever searching for a critical understanding of an endless homecoming. His practice focuses on the naming of spaces between identities, examining the feeling of a liminal displacement through sculpture, film, and performance. This journey towards nowhere inherently enters a conceptual spiral of a permanent liminal within social and cultural identity. This mix of pop cultural, art historical, and aesthetical languages creates an allusive visual maze in hopes of guiding the viewer into finding their own rite of passage.

More information about Zhiwan Cheung can be found at intelligentcloud.org and zhiwan.is

THOMAS FRIEL is based in Detroit, MI and has exhibited his work in the US and abroad, including: DFBRL8R, Chicago, IL, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI and Art Basel 2011, Basel, Switzerland. He has written art and social criticism for print publications and artist books, caretandsticks.com and wowhuh.com. He is a contributor for badatsports.com.

More information about Thomas Friel can be found at thomasfriel.com

CECILIA LEONORA VARGAS is a contemporary art curator and writer. She’s a Curatorial Fellow with ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions), and the Art Coordinator at Waubonsee Community College. Vargas has curated exhibitions at various venues in Chicago and at Dominican University (River Forest, IL), and Los Caminos (St. Louis, MO). She received a dual MA in Art History, Theory and Criticism, as well as in Arts Administration and Policy from SAIC. She also holds a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University.

More information about Cecelia Leonora Vargas can be found at cecilialvargas.com

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Tags: ACRE Projects, Cecilia Leonora Vargas, Thomas Friel, Zhiwan Cheung