Phantoms of Asia

View the conservation and installation of the large Cosmological Painting for the "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" exhibition (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18-September 2, 2012).

Japanese artist and pop icon Fuyuko Matsui explores the haunted, interconnected realms of traditional and modern aesthetics. As one of the few women to have attained top training and mastery of traditional Japanese painting (nihonga) techniques in Japan, Matsui also cites centuries-old artistic influences, such as the iconoclastic eighteenth-century painter Soga Shohhaku and the fifteenth-century painter Soga Jasoku. Having grown up in a house that has been in her family for fourteen generations, Matsui produces work that is steeped in tradition; at the same time, she breathes new life into unsettling images filled with grotesque figures of ghosts, entrails, and rotting corpses. "I don't like sweet, cute art," she says. "If we think in centuries, in the Kamakura period, for example, it was scarier, more ghostly. I want to return to that taste in my art." In doing so, Matsui conjures the universally feared specters of the inner self, the unknown, and the inexpressible shadows that roam between the personal and collective past. View her work in "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" at the Asian Art Museum from May 18-September 2, 2012. For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

Described as "an archaeologist of visual apocrypha," US and Hong Kong-based artist Adrian Wong plays with signifiers of culture and identity, lending objects new life through adjusted interpretations. With his unique background—including an MA in developmental psychology and an MFA in sculpture—Wong makes esotericism accessible and tangible. From performance art to sculptures, video, and other installations, Wong experiments with perception while bringing a rigorously researched approach to art. For "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18-September 2, 2012) he plays with the precepts of feng shui, using ceremonial objects from the museum's collection. For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Nigeria and Ontario, Howie Tsui's influences include ghost stories, Buddhist hell scrolls, Japanese monster culture, and Hong Kong vampire films. As part of his Horror Fables series, Tsui contributes to "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18-September 2, 2012) intricately drawn human-monster hybrids that combine imagery from traditional Asian folklore with contemporary pop culture. Tsui's work emphasizes the disjunction between traditional fables and modern society—whereas fear is administered in fables to encourage morality, while today's "climate of terror" is pervasively used to further partisan and economic interests.

In his most recent work, Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto explores political and cultural identity, particularly around the people and history of Java. Informed by theories drawn from the field of cultural studies, he connects local history to global movements with a focus on the fragility of changing identities. His installation "Anno Domini," on view at the Asian Art Museum during the the exhibition, "Phantoms: Contemporary Awakens the Past" (on view from May 18-September 2, 2012) arranges colonial military uniforms that hang bodiless, reenacting traditional mythologies and symbolizing protection from the exigencies of modernization and colonization. For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

Hailed as one of the most important photographers of our time, New York-based Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is also an accomplished architect. He approaches his work from many different perspectives, with architecture as one component in designing the settings for his installations. As a photographer of the highest technical ability, with equal acclaim for the conceptual and philosophical aspects of his work, Sugimoto has created works in his "Five Elements" series that are constructed as shrines to a primordial birthplace. Using geometric symbols from thirteenth-century Buddhism, Sugimoto encases a single image from his iconic Seascape series in each glass structure. The sea and air, origins of all life, are seen through a prism of ancient Buddhist views of the universe. "Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home," he says. "I embark on a voyage of seeing." View this series at the Asian Art Museum during the exhibition, "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" (May 18-September 2, 2012). For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

Born in New York, Palden Weinreb's Tibetan heritage speaks through his strikingly spare works. Weinreb is inspired by sublimity: motion, space, and mystery. For Phantoms of Asia (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18-September 2, 2012), Weinreb's minimalist works (including paintings and light boxes) are meditations on existence and the universe. By reducing visual components to their simplest forms, Weinreb's work explores how all things may be interconnected. For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

ew Delhi-based artist Jagannath Panda lives in the burgeoning city of Gurgaon, which is one of India's major outsourcing hubs and bases of operation for global corporations. His works illustrate the city's tensions, as overdevelopment threatens natural habitats and infrastructures collapse before they are completed. Panda's mix of mythology and realism points to the evolving nature of Indian identity and experience today. His snake sculpture, "The Cult of Survival," is an expression of the danger in becoming addicted to the cycle of production and consumption in a rapidly changing world. "The inter-entangled form of sewage pipes awakens the human condition," he says, "the instinct of survival and the ecology of death and renewal of life." View this work in the "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" exhibition at the Asian Art Museum (May 18 - September 2, 2012). For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms/

Korean-born New York based artist Sun K. Kwak makes the invisible visible using a surprisingly simple medium: black masking tape. Through a process infused with an element of performance, Kwak channels surrounding energy to manifest a movement of lines, liberating the space and transforming it into a new pictorial reality. For the "Phantoms of Asia" exhibition at the Asian Art Museum (on view from May 18-September 2, 2012), Kwak creates a site-specific installation for the museum's North Court, which will not be seen again after the exhibition closes. "At the close of an exhibition," Kwak explains, "the space once again becomes blank, as the black tape of the drawings is pulled off the wall and thrown out. This process of emptying the space is a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life and my acceptance of the emptiness of that nature. Yet the drawing lives on in viewers' memories as an imprint that leaves the space forever altered." Find out more: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms

Japanese artist Takayuki Yamamoto doesn't just make hell fun and educational. His co-created art installations with elementary school children apply youthful imagination to explorations of "the particularities of social systems and customs by which people are raised." For "Phantoms of Asia" (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 8 to September 2, 2012) he has worked with San Francisco's Bayview area elementary school students to build cardboard dioramas of their personal hells along with a companion video commenting on their structures. His work is entitled, "What Kind of Hell Will We Go."

Heman Chong imagines a future of dystopian stillness with "Calendars (2020--2096)," an installation of 1001 photos, each a calendar page capturing a moment of complete emptiness in today's bustling areas of Singapore. View this work for yourself at the Asian Art Museum during the exhibition, "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past" (on view from May 18-September 2, 2012). For more information: http://www.asianart.org/phantoms