Christine Wong Yap : Notes and Itineraries, 2006

Christine Wong Yap is proud to announce the exhibit, Notes and Itineraries by Christine Wong Yap, An Emerging Artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. A visual artist who has exhibited in regional community and alternative art spaces, Yap has little to no connection to professional trade journals or commercial galleries. Thus, Yap is at an exciting stage of her career--refining her practice and building social capital.

Notes and Itineraries consists of 15 daily planner pages. As Yap's name-recognition is limited, these works are printed by the artist in the traditional manner of printmakers (visual artists who use intaglio, lithography, serigraphy, monoprinting and relief methods as their main, or even sole , discipline). The pages were printed on a Vandercook press and printed in an edition of two; each edition of 15 double-sided prints may be purchased for $24.99, a value at $1.666 per page, or 83.3¢ per side.

Notes and Itineraries is an attempt to document one month in an emerging artist's commercial advancement. As such, it rubs up against the significance of social capital in the art world. Chris Gilbert, curator at the Matrix program   (which has shown William de Kooning) at the Berkeley (birthplace of Ben Affleck) Art Museum, prefers to identify an art sub-culture , not an art world . Yap proposes that the increasingly temporal sites of the professional art world--New York openings and global art fairs, the virtual site of informed discourse--make the art world more like a meta-scene , of which the cost of admission is social capital. But as Chris Rock said, "It ain't about bein' rich." That is, money is earned and spent, but wealth is passed on from generation to generation, upholding class distinctions in broader economic views. In terms of social capital, participants in the art meta-scene earn social capital (through attending high name-value MFA programs, living in New York and networking, getting published or exhibited in high value venues) and spend it (through favorable reviews and recommendations). Yap furthers that wealth works similarly in terms of social capital: social wealth can be passed on, but distinctions remain between the wealthy (i.e., Leo Koënig) and the simply rich (Tommy Guerrero). So perhaps, Rirkrit Tiravanija is always smiling because he's won the lotto. And in Yap's view, Kim Levin's recent show at Ronald Feldman Gallery, where almost 20 years of an art critic's notes comprised the exhibit, is like an estate sale where all of her social capital is on display, but nothing is for sale.

Yap uses text-based abstraction to make paper cuts, prints and installations. She transforms quotidian notes--to-do lists and grocery lists--into accumulated, illegible masses of words, which often float in a space like looming psychic garbage or fragmented thoughts. Her investigation centers around a correlation between daily life's meaningless activity and the relativity of language. In using blank daily planner pages in Notes and Itineraries , she continues her examination of quotidian notes and implied language.

There will be no reception.

Image

1. Notes and Itineraries, 2006, 15 letterpress-printed daily calendar cards, statement, 60 x 6 x 4 inches / 152 x 15 x 4 cm