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Will Kwan Artist Talk

Will Kwan
November 19, 2009 7PM

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver. www.casv.ca

Artist Will Kwan will speak about his practice and work.
Location: Western Front Luxe Hall, 303 East 8th Avenue, Vancouver.

Will Kwan makes art that takes a critical view on the visual and material culture of globalization and examines the sociopolitical and cultural consequences of how the ‘global’ is represented. Kwan is interested in the iconography and vocabulary that shapes our impressions of a synchronized, impartial, and frictionless world economy, but even more so in the omissions and contradictions that haunt our ‘global pictures.’ His research is also an idiosyncratic study of globalization as an historical experience of intercultural encounter and exchange at the level of politics, identity, and daily life.

Born in 1978 in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, Will Kwan received his MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and from 2005-2006 was a research fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands. His work has been presented at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, the 2003 Venice Biennale, the 2007 Montreal Biennale, the Duolun Museum of Modern Art and Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, Art in General in New York, The Power Plant in Toronto, the CAC Vilnius, the Polish National Museum in Poznan, and Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy. He is currently a lecturer in the department of Studio Art at the University of Toronto Scarborough and graduate faculty in the Masters of Visual Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Further information can be found at www.studiowillkwan.com www.studiowillkwan.com.

artist biographies

Will Kwan Will Kwan, a Toronto-based media artist, was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Toronto. He received his MFA from the School of Arts at Columbia University (2004) and was a researcher in visual art at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands (2005-2007). He has shown extensively both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Doulun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, The Power Plant in Toronto, as well as group exhibitions at PS1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York, and Crack the Sky, 5th Biennale de Montréal. His upcoming projects include a solo presentation at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery in Toronto and a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. He currently teaches at University of Toronto, Scarborough. MORE >