 |
 |
 |
 (by artist name, ethnicity, media,theme, or keyword) |
 |
|||||||||
 |
ARTIST ARCHIVE
Ming Fay
| ||||||||
Themes: fruits, conceptual, outdoor sculpture nature, large-scale, pop Review: Ming Fay Ming Fay has created larger-than-life sculptures which not only represent specific things found in nature such as pears, seeds, fruits and other organic forms but also embody some ancient Chinese belief based on Taoism. By making fruits and vegetables as big as and sometimes, larger than human proportions, the artist intends to criticize the Western sense of human importance and extends some certain perspectives inherent in both Taoism and traditional Asian art, which see humans as only one element in the wide spectrum of nature world. On the artist's understanding of the connection between art and life, John Yau, art critic, compares him to other well known western artist by saying that "instead of collapsing the barrier between art and culture, as Flavin , Warhol, and others have done, Fay, through his construction of large-scale of sculptures ---, reminds us that nature, rather than culture, is what we all finally inhabit." On another level, Fay's sculptures express certain animating tension which exists between process and presence. This tension is created by the artist's unique working process of making his sculptures in which some decaying process of natural models must be used, "each step somewhat different, and each observed for long enough to allow to change to have become part of Fay's observations." (Barry Schwabsky, Catalog essay) Fay's sculptures focusing on natural elements have received a great deal of acclaims. Critics have described his work as "--- between the unique empirical pepper; constantly subject to change, and the species pepper; a constant idea, lies something else, idiosyncratic yet generalized: the territory of Ming Fay's art" (Barry Schwabsky, Catalog essay of the exhibition held in the AAAC in 1985) "He has the Chinese sense that everything in nature has symbolic meaning and every activity and responds in huma life has some origin or parallel in the nature world." (Michael Brendson, New York Times) Available research materials on this artist in the AAAC Archives are fifty two slides, seven catalogs, invitation cards, photographs of the artist's sculptures, press releases and reviews written by numerous critics and curators. -- Reviewed by Young Park | |||||||||
