EX-I-09

BRIEF OVERVIEW

Artist Shih Chieh Huang creates interactive installations, merging common materials and electronics with air and water into eerily beautiful organic environments and sculptures that, in turn, evoke a life and “breath” appearance.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Project EX-I-09 focuses on exploring the unusual evolutionary adaptations undertaken by creatures that reside in inhospitable conditions. I create analogous ecosystems in my installations and populate them with organic living things made from common, everyday objects. I source my wholly synthetic materials from the mundane objects that comprise our modern existence: household appliances, zip ties, water tubes, lights, computer parts, motorized toys and the like. The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for loco-motion; Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input.

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY

Shih Chieh Huang, born in Taipei, Taiwan, received his BFA from the University of California, San Diego and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, Manhattan, New York.   He has shown extensively both in the U.S. and abroad, including a solo exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, and group exhibits at the 2007 Venice 

Biennale, 2008 Biennale Cuvee, Austria, and the U.S. electronic arts festival "01."  He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Creative Capital grant; The Oscar Signorini Prize from the D'ars Foundation, Milan; a Rockeller Foundation New Media Arts Fellowship; Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculpture Award; and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.  He currently lives in New York.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, IMAGES, AND RESOURCES

http://beallcenter.uci.edu
http://www.messymix.com