Exhibition brochure PDF

The series “3 Solo Projects” began in 2004 with the intention to introduce the
Otis community and region to new work by Southern California based sculptors/
new genre artists. The gallery is divided into three equal parts to create a project
space for each artist to present a single body of work or experience that encourages
dialogue and experimentation with practices of display and interchange between
artist and viewer. To date there have been three projects and the artists include: Jane
Mulfinger, Ross Rudel, and Elizabeth Turk in 2004; Lynn Aldrich, Jessica Rath, Carrie
Ungerman in 2009; and Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and Chan & Mann in 2013.
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation view)
Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions
Jinger Heffner, Exhibitions Coordinator and Gallery Registrar
Kathy MacPherson, Gallery Manager and Outreach Coordinator
Jeseca Dawson, 2012-2014 Curatorial Fellow
Rhonda Purdom, 2013 Getty Multicultural Intern
Laura Lindlief, Student Assistant
Liliana Sanchez, Student Assistant
Alex Becerra, Preparator
AUDREY CHAN
ELANA MANN
CHAN & MANN
Audrey Chan is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator whose projects address political and cultural identities,
rhetoric, and the feminist construct of “the personal is political”
through performance, video, and image/text. She received
a BA with Honors from Swarthmore College and a MFA
from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.
She co-organized Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions:
2007 CalArts Feminist Art Project. She was previously an
artist-in-residence at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts
de Nantes, France. Her work has been reviewed in the Los
Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Chronicle of Higher Education,
New York Sun, Hyperallergic, and OC Weekly. Her writing has
appeared in Afterall Journal, East of Borneo, and the Art 21
blog. She published her first book, Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel (2011), which explores the
promiscuous relationship between art and politics in French
law. Her animated video, Chinatown Abecedario: A Folk
Taxonomy of L.A.’s Chinatown (2012), is in the collection of
the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles. In 2013, Chan
was recipient of the ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural
Innovation and California Community Foundation Fellowship
for Visual Artists.
Elana Mann is a multidisciplinary artist whose artwork
explores alternative economies, empathetic exchange, and
the politics of resistance. Recently she has been investigating
listening strategies in protest movements and armed conflict.
She has presented work at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Apex
Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles; the Ford Foundation, New York; Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.;
Galerie Califia, Horazdovice, Czech Republic; A Gentil
Carioca, Rio de Janeiro; Side Street Projects, Pasadena, CA;
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Mann is a recipient of
the California Community Foundation’s 2009 Fellowship
for Visual Artists and a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center
for Cultural Innovation. She has produced six publications,
in the form of books, newspapers and ‘zines, four of which
are in the collection of the Getty Research Institute. Her
projects have been written about in the Los Angeles Times,
LA Weekly, NPR, O Globo, El Pais, La Reuppublica and
X-Tra Magazine. She is the co-founder of the Artist Bailout
Collective and the People’s Microphony Camerata. Mann
received her BFA with honors from Washington University,
St. Louis in 2003 and her MFA from California Institute of
the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007. Currently, Mann is a Visiting
Lecturer at Scripps College, Claremont, CA.
Chan & Mann formed as a collaborative duo in 2005 with
the aim to liberate, motivate, and gyrate through feminist
and ethnic role-play within live, painted, and animated realities. During their studies at California Institute of the Arts they
created performances such as Soul Satisfaction (2005) and
Nature! This One’s For You! (2007). Recent projects in Los
Angeles include: Chann & Mhann: A Historical Retrospective
2005-2012 at Elephant Art Space; Myths of Rape at the
2012 LA Art Show; Shares & Stakeholders: The Feminist
Art Project Day of Panels at the 2012 College Art Association
Conference held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
John Weston, Preparator
© 2013 Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
310.665.6905; galleryinfo@otis.edu
Edition: 1000
Design: Anne Predock Swett
Printing: Sievers and Burnett
THANK YOU!
Pasadena Art Alliance
ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation
323 Projects
Laura Bouza, John Burtle, Chase Carter, the Chan Family, Carol Cheh, Aaron Drake,
Elephant Art Space, Erik Greenberg, Robbie Hansen, Emily Hopkins, Iris Yirei Hu,
Jason Kunke, Jean-Paul Leonard, Eileen Levinson, Cinthia Lozano, Carole Lung, the
Mann Family, Marc Mayer Susan Mogul, Avigail Moss, James Naish, Tucker Neel,
Pocket Niko, Jason Pierre, Sandy Rodriguez, Frank Sánchez, Side Street Projects,
Juliana Snapper, Niko Solrio, and Lucretia Stinnette
JUNE 22 – AUGUST 30, 2013
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video stills), High-definition,
single channel video, 16:30
Photography: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, Chris Warner
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation detail)
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video still), High-definition, single
channel video, 16:30
Elana Mann, LEFT: In a perfect world, the moon will be visible, the dish would be set up for Moon Bounce,
and she will bounce her voice off the moon, 2013, pigment on paper, 14 x 22 inches;
TOP: From Apollo 11 to Tiananmen Square, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches
BOTTOM: Reflexive Behavior, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches;
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (detail), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world
through their creativity, their skill and their vision.
The series “3 Solo Projects” began in 2004 with the intention to introduce the
Otis community and region to new work by Southern California based sculptors/
new genre artists. The gallery is divided into three equal parts to create a project
space for each artist to present a single body of work or experience that encourages
dialogue and experimentation with practices of display and interchange between
artist and viewer. To date there have been three projects and the artists include: Jane
Mulfinger, Ross Rudel, and Elizabeth Turk in 2004; Lynn Aldrich, Jessica Rath, Carrie
Ungerman in 2009; and Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and Chan & Mann in 2013.
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation view)
Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions
Jinger Heffner, Exhibitions Coordinator and Gallery Registrar
Kathy MacPherson, Gallery Manager and Outreach Coordinator
Jeseca Dawson, 2012-2014 Curatorial Fellow
Rhonda Purdom, 2013 Getty Multicultural Intern
Laura Lindlief, Student Assistant
Liliana Sanchez, Student Assistant
Alex Becerra, Preparator
AUDREY CHAN
ELANA MANN
CHAN & MANN
Audrey Chan is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator whose projects address political and cultural identities,
rhetoric, and the feminist construct of “the personal is political”
through performance, video, and image/text. She received
a BA with Honors from Swarthmore College and a MFA
from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.
She co-organized Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions:
2007 CalArts Feminist Art Project. She was previously an
artist-in-residence at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts
de Nantes, France. Her work has been reviewed in the Los
Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Chronicle of Higher Education,
New York Sun, Hyperallergic, and OC Weekly. Her writing has
appeared in Afterall Journal, East of Borneo, and the Art 21
blog. She published her first book, Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel (2011), which explores the
promiscuous relationship between art and politics in French
law. Her animated video, Chinatown Abecedario: A Folk
Taxonomy of L.A.’s Chinatown (2012), is in the collection of
the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles. In 2013, Chan
was recipient of the ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural
Innovation and California Community Foundation Fellowship
for Visual Artists.
Elana Mann is a multidisciplinary artist whose artwork
explores alternative economies, empathetic exchange, and
the politics of resistance. Recently she has been investigating
listening strategies in protest movements and armed conflict.
She has presented work at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Apex
Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles; the Ford Foundation, New York; Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.;
Galerie Califia, Horazdovice, Czech Republic; A Gentil
Carioca, Rio de Janeiro; Side Street Projects, Pasadena, CA;
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Mann is a recipient of
the California Community Foundation’s 2009 Fellowship
for Visual Artists and a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center
for Cultural Innovation. She has produced six publications,
in the form of books, newspapers and ‘zines, four of which
are in the collection of the Getty Research Institute. Her
projects have been written about in the Los Angeles Times,
LA Weekly, NPR, O Globo, El Pais, La Reuppublica and
X-Tra Magazine. She is the co-founder of the Artist Bailout
Collective and the People’s Microphony Camerata. Mann
received her BFA with honors from Washington University,
St. Louis in 2003 and her MFA from California Institute of
the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007. Currently, Mann is a Visiting
Lecturer at Scripps College, Claremont, CA.
Chan & Mann formed as a collaborative duo in 2005 with
the aim to liberate, motivate, and gyrate through feminist
and ethnic role-play within live, painted, and animated realities. During their studies at California Institute of the Arts they
created performances such as Soul Satisfaction (2005) and
Nature! This One’s For You! (2007). Recent projects in Los
Angeles include: Chann & Mhann: A Historical Retrospective
2005-2012 at Elephant Art Space; Myths of Rape at the
2012 LA Art Show; Shares & Stakeholders: The Feminist
Art Project Day of Panels at the 2012 College Art Association
Conference held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
John Weston, Preparator
© 2013 Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
310.665.6905; galleryinfo@otis.edu
Edition: 1000
Design: Anne Predock Swett
Printing: Sievers and Burnett
THANK YOU!
Pasadena Art Alliance
ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation
323 Projects
Laura Bouza, John Burtle, Chase Carter, the Chan Family, Carol Cheh, Aaron Drake,
Elephant Art Space, Erik Greenberg, Robbie Hansen, Emily Hopkins, Iris Yirei Hu,
Jason Kunke, Jean-Paul Leonard, Eileen Levinson, Cinthia Lozano, Carole Lung, the
Mann Family, Marc Mayer Susan Mogul, Avigail Moss, James Naish, Tucker Neel,
Pocket Niko, Jason Pierre, Sandy Rodriguez, Frank Sánchez, Side Street Projects,
Juliana Snapper, Niko Solrio, and Lucretia Stinnette
JUNE 22 – AUGUST 30, 2013
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video stills), High-definition,
single channel video, 16:30
Photography: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, Chris Warner
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation detail)
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video still), High-definition, single
channel video, 16:30
Elana Mann, LEFT: In a perfect world, the moon will be visible, the dish would be set up for Moon Bounce,
and she will bounce her voice off the moon, 2013, pigment on paper, 14 x 22 inches;
TOP: From Apollo 11 to Tiananmen Square, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches
BOTTOM: Reflexive Behavior, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches;
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (detail), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world
through their creativity, their skill and their vision.
3 Solo Projects
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device II), 2013, metal, fiberglass, hose, headphones, 186 x 36 inches
Elana Mann, Searching for a Signal, 2013, (video still), High-definition video, 5:00
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device III), 2013, metal, fiberglass, plastic, wood, and headphones, 84 x 60 x 48 inches
By Avigail Moss
In the eclectic practices of Audrey Chan and Elana Mann,
themes of identity politics and sensitivity to place merge with
a plethora of influences both personal and political. As young
artists co nscious of their cultural identities—Chan is ChineseAmerican and Mann is Jewish—they collaboratively address
contemporary feminist theory and its generational legacies,
re-investing art historical tropes with humorous and
idiosyncratic meanings.
Elana Mann is interested in apparatuses of both power and
collectivity. In her current work she invokes anachronistic
audio technologies in order to meditate on the transformative
possibilities of sound. An outdoor manipulable horn-shaped
device resembles pre-radar listening technologies, and invites
viewers to broadcast as well as receive communiqués. Other
sculptures act as passive receptors, amplifying a building’s
interior reverberations. For instance, one resembling a halved
Nautilus shell is designed to encase a visitor’s head. But
Mann is interested in more than passive reception. Two films
recorded at historic surveillance and detection sites ask what
active sonic engagement with a space would look like. In one
film entitled Searching for a Signal (2013), Mann performs at
the Jamesburg Earth Station, a decommissioned satellite dish
in Carmel, California that was built in 1968 to receive images of
the Apollo 11 moon landing. Wearing a dish-shaped fascinator
and a costume implanted with multiple speakers referring to
Louise Bourgeois’ famous rubber breast dress, Mann performs
a series of poses, mimicking and genuflecting to the Station,
perhaps paying a wordless tribute to past messages relayed
and alluding to the body’s capabilities to generate and transmit
sound. She investigates what Pauline Oliveros, legendary
American composer, calls “Deep Listening” or a kind of improvisational encounter with an environment. A second film
entitled FM1-4 (2013) takes these forms of interaction further
to consider interpersonal exchange. With Juliana Snapper, a
musician and frequent collaborator, Mann performs at Long
Beach’s Fort MacArthur, a military site active between 1919
and 1974. Dressed in costumes resembling radio towers and
again outfitted with characteristic receptive headgear, Mann
and Snapper gesture and vocalize to and with one another in
an open-air amphitheater. They evoke military hand signals as
well as “Confidence” paintings: a nineteenth-century genre that
typically presented women consulting one another in domestic
interiors. In Mann’s film, the relational gestures transposed to the
defunct military context call to mind both classical and modern
drama. Combining a Constructivist-like aesthetic with a setting
reminiscent of Greek tragedy, Mann engages with
communication’s affective subtexts.
In Audrey Chan’s work, the autobiographical becomes
monumental. A massive vinyl mural entitled Center of the
Universe, Ahma (detail) (2013) revolves around Chan’s ninetytwo-year-old grandmother, Sool-sin Chan Ling, who she calls
Ahma, a recurring figure in Chan’s practice. Ahma immigrated
to the United States in 1982 (the same year Chan was born).
Having fled China with her family during the Communist
Revolution, Chan describes Ahma as a civic-minded citizen as
well as an avid reader of philosophy and contemporary politics.
In the mural, Chan portrays Ahma in multiple guises: as a
towering mythical scholar holding a book and an oak leaf to
symbolize Chicago’s Oak Park, Chan’s hometown; as a massive
sun rising above the scene; and finally at a more diminutive scale
in Ahma’s earthly pajamas and walker. Rendered with Adobe
Illustrator in the style of a Chinese landscape painting, the mural’s
depthless space eschews Western perspectival traditions and is
scattered with allegorical figures. Iconic Chicago architecture—
the soon-to-be-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital, the
Sears Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio and Bertrand
Goldberg’s Marina City apartment complex—share space with
images of a rock and mountain, natural forms culled from the
canon of traditional Chinese painting. Also included are scenes
and text from a lullaby Ahma sang to her when she was a child.
Like a Greek chorus, flocks of pigeons link the work’s various
vignettes. They provide comic relief and refer to a serial op-art
cartoon that Chan published as an undergraduate at
Swarthmore College. Entitled “The French Blob,” the
strip’s protagonist was a blob-shaped character navigating a political landscape occupied by flying guinea pigs
and Republican politicians. In the mural, Chan’s comic
preoccupations take a less satirical, more reflective turn. She
renders figures drawn from contemporary news cycles in a
flat, graphic manner that she has borrowed from a Chineseto-English visual culture dictionary. In their diagrammatic
structure, they also recall Richard Scarry’s Busytown series
of children’s books. Only here, Chan presents a world quite
different from that of Scarry’s whimsical anthropomorphic
animals: a dreamlike setting in which the matriarch is the
monument.
For their collective work, Chan & Mann playfully merge their
individual preoccupations at a table of “interculturalintergender-intergenerational-Asian-Jew-feminisms.” In
a video entitled Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video)
(2013) the artists face the viewer through a fair-groundstyle peep-scene that is based upon the painting Gabrielle
d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (1594). The original
painting of two nude women is an allegory of feminine
intimacy, eroticism, and fertility. In Chan & Mann’s
interpretation, the artists depict themselves in the midst of
editing a video of a feminist panel discussion. That is, we are
seeing a mise-en-abîme-slash-mise-en-scène where creative
production takes precedence over biological fertility. An
arrangement of talking objects that recalls both Frida Kahlo
still lifes and Pee Wee’s Playhouse surrounds them on the table.
In addition to props from past performances, some of the objects
stand in for familial and ethnic stereotypes: a Jewish menorah
and a Chinese take-out box are the parental figures who wish the
artists would adhere to conventional self-representations (“…if
only they made more art about traditional Chinese culture, we’d
be so proud!”) while a framed photograph of Michelle Obama
represents the über-domestic “mom-in-chief” foil to Jackie-thepetulant-bullhorn, who agitates for direct feminist activism in the
streets. In a dreamlike interlude and nomenclatural homology,
the artists join a surrealistic caterpillar on a journey to another
monument, the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (originally built
in 1927 by Sid Grauman and Charles E. Toberman and known
as Grauman’s Chinese Theater until 1973 when it was renamed
Mann’s Chinese Theater through 2011). Following this journey,
a young scholar performs a slam poem about discovering
contemporary feminist theory, depositing Chan & Mann back
where they started, but thoroughly scrambled. The film ends on
a material constant which Chan & Mann share in their Chinese
and Jewish cultural experience: the promise of a delicious meal.
Theirs is an intersectional world where feminist foremothers loom
large and art videos and chicken fat render at the same speed.
Avigail Moss is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include presentations
on the artist Marianne Wex, and the book, Painting -- The Implicit Horizon (co-edited with
Kerstin Stakemeier. Published by Jan van Eyck Academie, 2012).
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (mural and details), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Audrey Chan, Elana Mann
and Chan & Mann
3 Solo Projects
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device II), 2013, metal, fiberglass, hose, headphones, 186 x 36 inches
Elana Mann, Searching for a Signal, 2013, (video still), High-definition video, 5:00
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device III), 2013, metal, fiberglass, plastic, wood, and headphones, 84 x 60 x 48 inches
By Avigail Moss
In the eclectic practices of Audrey Chan and Elana Mann,
themes of identity politics and sensitivity to place merge with
a plethora of influences both personal and political. As young
artists co nscious of their cultural identities—Chan is ChineseAmerican and Mann is Jewish—they collaboratively address
contemporary feminist theory and its generational legacies,
re-investing art historical tropes with humorous and
idiosyncratic meanings.
Elana Mann is interested in apparatuses of both power and
collectivity. In her current work she invokes anachronistic
audio technologies in order to meditate on the transformative
possibilities of sound. An outdoor manipulable horn-shaped
device resembles pre-radar listening technologies, and invites
viewers to broadcast as well as receive communiqués. Other
sculptures act as passive receptors, amplifying a building’s
interior reverberations. For instance, one resembling a halved
Nautilus shell is designed to encase a visitor’s head. But
Mann is interested in more than passive reception. Two films
recorded at historic surveillance and detection sites ask what
active sonic engagement with a space would look like. In one
film entitled Searching for a Signal (2013), Mann performs at
the Jamesburg Earth Station, a decommissioned satellite dish
in Carmel, California that was built in 1968 to receive images of
the Apollo 11 moon landing. Wearing a dish-shaped fascinator
and a costume implanted with multiple speakers referring to
Louise Bourgeois’ famous rubber breast dress, Mann performs
a series of poses, mimicking and genuflecting to the Station,
perhaps paying a wordless tribute to past messages relayed
and alluding to the body’s capabilities to generate and transmit
sound. She investigates what Pauline Oliveros, legendary
American composer, calls “Deep Listening” or a kind of improvisational encounter with an environment. A second film
entitled FM1-4 (2013) takes these forms of interaction further
to consider interpersonal exchange. With Juliana Snapper, a
musician and frequent collaborator, Mann performs at Long
Beach’s Fort MacArthur, a military site active between 1919
and 1974. Dressed in costumes resembling radio towers and
again outfitted with characteristic receptive headgear, Mann
and Snapper gesture and vocalize to and with one another in
an open-air amphitheater. They evoke military hand signals as
well as “Confidence” paintings: a nineteenth-century genre that
typically presented women consulting one another in domestic
interiors. In Mann’s film, the relational gestures transposed to the
defunct military context call to mind both classical and modern
drama. Combining a Constructivist-like aesthetic with a setting
reminiscent of Greek tragedy, Mann engages with
communication’s affective subtexts.
In Audrey Chan’s work, the autobiographical becomes
monumental. A massive vinyl mural entitled Center of the
Universe, Ahma (detail) (2013) revolves around Chan’s ninetytwo-year-old grandmother, Sool-sin Chan Ling, who she calls
Ahma, a recurring figure in Chan’s practice. Ahma immigrated
to the United States in 1982 (the same year Chan was born).
Having fled China with her family during the Communist
Revolution, Chan describes Ahma as a civic-minded citizen as
well as an avid reader of philosophy and contemporary politics.
In the mural, Chan portrays Ahma in multiple guises: as a
towering mythical scholar holding a book and an oak leaf to
symbolize Chicago’s Oak Park, Chan’s hometown; as a massive
sun rising above the scene; and finally at a more diminutive scale
in Ahma’s earthly pajamas and walker. Rendered with Adobe
Illustrator in the style of a Chinese landscape painting, the mural’s
depthless space eschews Western perspectival traditions and is
scattered with allegorical figures. Iconic Chicago architecture—
the soon-to-be-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital, the
Sears Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio and Bertrand
Goldberg’s Marina City apartment complex—share space with
images of a rock and mountain, natural forms culled from the
canon of traditional Chinese painting. Also included are scenes
and text from a lullaby Ahma sang to her when she was a child.
Like a Greek chorus, flocks of pigeons link the work’s various
vignettes. They provide comic relief and refer to a serial op-art
cartoon that Chan published as an undergraduate at
Swarthmore College. Entitled “The French Blob,” the
strip’s protagonist was a blob-shaped character navigating a political landscape occupied by flying guinea pigs
and Republican politicians. In the mural, Chan’s comic
preoccupations take a less satirical, more reflective turn. She
renders figures drawn from contemporary news cycles in a
flat, graphic manner that she has borrowed from a Chineseto-English visual culture dictionary. In their diagrammatic
structure, they also recall Richard Scarry’s Busytown series
of children’s books. Only here, Chan presents a world quite
different from that of Scarry’s whimsical anthropomorphic
animals: a dreamlike setting in which the matriarch is the
monument.
For their collective work, Chan & Mann playfully merge their
individual preoccupations at a table of “interculturalintergender-intergenerational-Asian-Jew-feminisms.” In
a video entitled Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video)
(2013) the artists face the viewer through a fair-groundstyle peep-scene that is based upon the painting Gabrielle
d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (1594). The original
painting of two nude women is an allegory of feminine
intimacy, eroticism, and fertility. In Chan & Mann’s
interpretation, the artists depict themselves in the midst of
editing a video of a feminist panel discussion. That is, we are
seeing a mise-en-abîme-slash-mise-en-scène where creative
production takes precedence over biological fertility. An
arrangement of talking objects that recalls both Frida Kahlo
still lifes and Pee Wee’s Playhouse surrounds them on the table.
In addition to props from past performances, some of the objects
stand in for familial and ethnic stereotypes: a Jewish menorah
and a Chinese take-out box are the parental figures who wish the
artists would adhere to conventional self-representations (“…if
only they made more art about traditional Chinese culture, we’d
be so proud!”) while a framed photograph of Michelle Obama
represents the über-domestic “mom-in-chief” foil to Jackie-thepetulant-bullhorn, who agitates for direct feminist activism in the
streets. In a dreamlike interlude and nomenclatural homology,
the artists join a surrealistic caterpillar on a journey to another
monument, the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (originally built
in 1927 by Sid Grauman and Charles E. Toberman and known
as Grauman’s Chinese Theater until 1973 when it was renamed
Mann’s Chinese Theater through 2011). Following this journey,
a young scholar performs a slam poem about discovering
contemporary feminist theory, depositing Chan & Mann back
where they started, but thoroughly scrambled. The film ends on
a material constant which Chan & Mann share in their Chinese
and Jewish cultural experience: the promise of a delicious meal.
Theirs is an intersectional world where feminist foremothers loom
large and art videos and chicken fat render at the same speed.
Avigail Moss is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include presentations
on the artist Marianne Wex, and the book, Painting -- The Implicit Horizon (co-edited with
Kerstin Stakemeier. Published by Jan van Eyck Academie, 2012).
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (mural and details), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Audrey Chan, Elana Mann
and Chan & Mann
3 Solo Projects
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device II), 2013, metal, fiberglass, hose, headphones, 186 x 36 inches
Elana Mann, Searching for a Signal, 2013, (video still), High-definition video, 5:00
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device III), 2013, metal, fiberglass, plastic, wood, and headphones, 84 x 60 x 48 inches
By Avigail Moss
In the eclectic practices of Audrey Chan and Elana Mann,
themes of identity politics and sensitivity to place merge with
a plethora of influences both personal and political. As young
artists co nscious of their cultural identities—Chan is ChineseAmerican and Mann is Jewish—they collaboratively address
contemporary feminist theory and its generational legacies,
re-investing art historical tropes with humorous and
idiosyncratic meanings.
Elana Mann is interested in apparatuses of both power and
collectivity. In her current work she invokes anachronistic
audio technologies in order to meditate on the transformative
possibilities of sound. An outdoor manipulable horn-shaped
device resembles pre-radar listening technologies, and invites
viewers to broadcast as well as receive communiqués. Other
sculptures act as passive receptors, amplifying a building’s
interior reverberations. For instance, one resembling a halved
Nautilus shell is designed to encase a visitor’s head. But
Mann is interested in more than passive reception. Two films
recorded at historic surveillance and detection sites ask what
active sonic engagement with a space would look like. In one
film entitled Searching for a Signal (2013), Mann performs at
the Jamesburg Earth Station, a decommissioned satellite dish
in Carmel, California that was built in 1968 to receive images of
the Apollo 11 moon landing. Wearing a dish-shaped fascinator
and a costume implanted with multiple speakers referring to
Louise Bourgeois’ famous rubber breast dress, Mann performs
a series of poses, mimicking and genuflecting to the Station,
perhaps paying a wordless tribute to past messages relayed
and alluding to the body’s capabilities to generate and transmit
sound. She investigates what Pauline Oliveros, legendary
American composer, calls “Deep Listening” or a kind of improvisational encounter with an environment. A second film
entitled FM1-4 (2013) takes these forms of interaction further
to consider interpersonal exchange. With Juliana Snapper, a
musician and frequent collaborator, Mann performs at Long
Beach’s Fort MacArthur, a military site active between 1919
and 1974. Dressed in costumes resembling radio towers and
again outfitted with characteristic receptive headgear, Mann
and Snapper gesture and vocalize to and with one another in
an open-air amphitheater. They evoke military hand signals as
well as “Confidence” paintings: a nineteenth-century genre that
typically presented women consulting one another in domestic
interiors. In Mann’s film, the relational gestures transposed to the
defunct military context call to mind both classical and modern
drama. Combining a Constructivist-like aesthetic with a setting
reminiscent of Greek tragedy, Mann engages with
communication’s affective subtexts.
In Audrey Chan’s work, the autobiographical becomes
monumental. A massive vinyl mural entitled Center of the
Universe, Ahma (detail) (2013) revolves around Chan’s ninetytwo-year-old grandmother, Sool-sin Chan Ling, who she calls
Ahma, a recurring figure in Chan’s practice. Ahma immigrated
to the United States in 1982 (the same year Chan was born).
Having fled China with her family during the Communist
Revolution, Chan describes Ahma as a civic-minded citizen as
well as an avid reader of philosophy and contemporary politics.
In the mural, Chan portrays Ahma in multiple guises: as a
towering mythical scholar holding a book and an oak leaf to
symbolize Chicago’s Oak Park, Chan’s hometown; as a massive
sun rising above the scene; and finally at a more diminutive scale
in Ahma’s earthly pajamas and walker. Rendered with Adobe
Illustrator in the style of a Chinese landscape painting, the mural’s
depthless space eschews Western perspectival traditions and is
scattered with allegorical figures. Iconic Chicago architecture—
the soon-to-be-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital, the
Sears Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio and Bertrand
Goldberg’s Marina City apartment complex—share space with
images of a rock and mountain, natural forms culled from the
canon of traditional Chinese painting. Also included are scenes
and text from a lullaby Ahma sang to her when she was a child.
Like a Greek chorus, flocks of pigeons link the work’s various
vignettes. They provide comic relief and refer to a serial op-art
cartoon that Chan published as an undergraduate at
Swarthmore College. Entitled “The French Blob,” the
strip’s protagonist was a blob-shaped character navigating a political landscape occupied by flying guinea pigs
and Republican politicians. In the mural, Chan’s comic
preoccupations take a less satirical, more reflective turn. She
renders figures drawn from contemporary news cycles in a
flat, graphic manner that she has borrowed from a Chineseto-English visual culture dictionary. In their diagrammatic
structure, they also recall Richard Scarry’s Busytown series
of children’s books. Only here, Chan presents a world quite
different from that of Scarry’s whimsical anthropomorphic
animals: a dreamlike setting in which the matriarch is the
monument.
For their collective work, Chan & Mann playfully merge their
individual preoccupations at a table of “interculturalintergender-intergenerational-Asian-Jew-feminisms.” In
a video entitled Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video)
(2013) the artists face the viewer through a fair-groundstyle peep-scene that is based upon the painting Gabrielle
d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (1594). The original
painting of two nude women is an allegory of feminine
intimacy, eroticism, and fertility. In Chan & Mann’s
interpretation, the artists depict themselves in the midst of
editing a video of a feminist panel discussion. That is, we are
seeing a mise-en-abîme-slash-mise-en-scène where creative
production takes precedence over biological fertility. An
arrangement of talking objects that recalls both Frida Kahlo
still lifes and Pee Wee’s Playhouse surrounds them on the table.
In addition to props from past performances, some of the objects
stand in for familial and ethnic stereotypes: a Jewish menorah
and a Chinese take-out box are the parental figures who wish the
artists would adhere to conventional self-representations (“…if
only they made more art about traditional Chinese culture, we’d
be so proud!”) while a framed photograph of Michelle Obama
represents the über-domestic “mom-in-chief” foil to Jackie-thepetulant-bullhorn, who agitates for direct feminist activism in the
streets. In a dreamlike interlude and nomenclatural homology,
the artists join a surrealistic caterpillar on a journey to another
monument, the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (originally built
in 1927 by Sid Grauman and Charles E. Toberman and known
as Grauman’s Chinese Theater until 1973 when it was renamed
Mann’s Chinese Theater through 2011). Following this journey,
a young scholar performs a slam poem about discovering
contemporary feminist theory, depositing Chan & Mann back
where they started, but thoroughly scrambled. The film ends on
a material constant which Chan & Mann share in their Chinese
and Jewish cultural experience: the promise of a delicious meal.
Theirs is an intersectional world where feminist foremothers loom
large and art videos and chicken fat render at the same speed.
Avigail Moss is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include presentations
on the artist Marianne Wex, and the book, Painting -- The Implicit Horizon (co-edited with
Kerstin Stakemeier. Published by Jan van Eyck Academie, 2012).
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (mural and details), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Audrey Chan, Elana Mann
and Chan & Mann
3 Solo Projects
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device II), 2013, metal, fiberglass, hose, headphones, 186 x 36 inches
Elana Mann, Searching for a Signal, 2013, (video still), High-definition video, 5:00
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Elana Mann, Untitled (Listening Device III), 2013, metal, fiberglass, plastic, wood, and headphones, 84 x 60 x 48 inches
By Avigail Moss
In the eclectic practices of Audrey Chan and Elana Mann,
themes of identity politics and sensitivity to place merge with
a plethora of influences both personal and political. As young
artists co nscious of their cultural identities—Chan is ChineseAmerican and Mann is Jewish—they collaboratively address
contemporary feminist theory and its generational legacies,
re-investing art historical tropes with humorous and
idiosyncratic meanings.
Elana Mann is interested in apparatuses of both power and
collectivity. In her current work she invokes anachronistic
audio technologies in order to meditate on the transformative
possibilities of sound. An outdoor manipulable horn-shaped
device resembles pre-radar listening technologies, and invites
viewers to broadcast as well as receive communiqués. Other
sculptures act as passive receptors, amplifying a building’s
interior reverberations. For instance, one resembling a halved
Nautilus shell is designed to encase a visitor’s head. But
Mann is interested in more than passive reception. Two films
recorded at historic surveillance and detection sites ask what
active sonic engagement with a space would look like. In one
film entitled Searching for a Signal (2013), Mann performs at
the Jamesburg Earth Station, a decommissioned satellite dish
in Carmel, California that was built in 1968 to receive images of
the Apollo 11 moon landing. Wearing a dish-shaped fascinator
and a costume implanted with multiple speakers referring to
Louise Bourgeois’ famous rubber breast dress, Mann performs
a series of poses, mimicking and genuflecting to the Station,
perhaps paying a wordless tribute to past messages relayed
and alluding to the body’s capabilities to generate and transmit
sound. She investigates what Pauline Oliveros, legendary
American composer, calls “Deep Listening” or a kind of improvisational encounter with an environment. A second film
entitled FM1-4 (2013) takes these forms of interaction further
to consider interpersonal exchange. With Juliana Snapper, a
musician and frequent collaborator, Mann performs at Long
Beach’s Fort MacArthur, a military site active between 1919
and 1974. Dressed in costumes resembling radio towers and
again outfitted with characteristic receptive headgear, Mann
and Snapper gesture and vocalize to and with one another in
an open-air amphitheater. They evoke military hand signals as
well as “Confidence” paintings: a nineteenth-century genre that
typically presented women consulting one another in domestic
interiors. In Mann’s film, the relational gestures transposed to the
defunct military context call to mind both classical and modern
drama. Combining a Constructivist-like aesthetic with a setting
reminiscent of Greek tragedy, Mann engages with
communication’s affective subtexts.
In Audrey Chan’s work, the autobiographical becomes
monumental. A massive vinyl mural entitled Center of the
Universe, Ahma (detail) (2013) revolves around Chan’s ninetytwo-year-old grandmother, Sool-sin Chan Ling, who she calls
Ahma, a recurring figure in Chan’s practice. Ahma immigrated
to the United States in 1982 (the same year Chan was born).
Having fled China with her family during the Communist
Revolution, Chan describes Ahma as a civic-minded citizen as
well as an avid reader of philosophy and contemporary politics.
In the mural, Chan portrays Ahma in multiple guises: as a
towering mythical scholar holding a book and an oak leaf to
symbolize Chicago’s Oak Park, Chan’s hometown; as a massive
sun rising above the scene; and finally at a more diminutive scale
in Ahma’s earthly pajamas and walker. Rendered with Adobe
Illustrator in the style of a Chinese landscape painting, the mural’s
depthless space eschews Western perspectival traditions and is
scattered with allegorical figures. Iconic Chicago architecture—
the soon-to-be-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital, the
Sears Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio and Bertrand
Goldberg’s Marina City apartment complex—share space with
images of a rock and mountain, natural forms culled from the
canon of traditional Chinese painting. Also included are scenes
and text from a lullaby Ahma sang to her when she was a child.
Like a Greek chorus, flocks of pigeons link the work’s various
vignettes. They provide comic relief and refer to a serial op-art
cartoon that Chan published as an undergraduate at
Swarthmore College. Entitled “The French Blob,” the
strip’s protagonist was a blob-shaped character navigating a political landscape occupied by flying guinea pigs
and Republican politicians. In the mural, Chan’s comic
preoccupations take a less satirical, more reflective turn. She
renders figures drawn from contemporary news cycles in a
flat, graphic manner that she has borrowed from a Chineseto-English visual culture dictionary. In their diagrammatic
structure, they also recall Richard Scarry’s Busytown series
of children’s books. Only here, Chan presents a world quite
different from that of Scarry’s whimsical anthropomorphic
animals: a dreamlike setting in which the matriarch is the
monument.
For their collective work, Chan & Mann playfully merge their
individual preoccupations at a table of “interculturalintergender-intergenerational-Asian-Jew-feminisms.” In
a video entitled Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video)
(2013) the artists face the viewer through a fair-groundstyle peep-scene that is based upon the painting Gabrielle
d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters (1594). The original
painting of two nude women is an allegory of feminine
intimacy, eroticism, and fertility. In Chan & Mann’s
interpretation, the artists depict themselves in the midst of
editing a video of a feminist panel discussion. That is, we are
seeing a mise-en-abîme-slash-mise-en-scène where creative
production takes precedence over biological fertility. An
arrangement of talking objects that recalls both Frida Kahlo
still lifes and Pee Wee’s Playhouse surrounds them on the table.
In addition to props from past performances, some of the objects
stand in for familial and ethnic stereotypes: a Jewish menorah
and a Chinese take-out box are the parental figures who wish the
artists would adhere to conventional self-representations (“…if
only they made more art about traditional Chinese culture, we’d
be so proud!”) while a framed photograph of Michelle Obama
represents the über-domestic “mom-in-chief” foil to Jackie-thepetulant-bullhorn, who agitates for direct feminist activism in the
streets. In a dreamlike interlude and nomenclatural homology,
the artists join a surrealistic caterpillar on a journey to another
monument, the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood (originally built
in 1927 by Sid Grauman and Charles E. Toberman and known
as Grauman’s Chinese Theater until 1973 when it was renamed
Mann’s Chinese Theater through 2011). Following this journey,
a young scholar performs a slam poem about discovering
contemporary feminist theory, depositing Chan & Mann back
where they started, but thoroughly scrambled. The film ends on
a material constant which Chan & Mann share in their Chinese
and Jewish cultural experience: the promise of a delicious meal.
Theirs is an intersectional world where feminist foremothers loom
large and art videos and chicken fat render at the same speed.
Avigail Moss is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. Recent projects include presentations
on the artist Marianne Wex, and the book, Painting -- The Implicit Horizon (co-edited with
Kerstin Stakemeier. Published by Jan van Eyck Academie, 2012).
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (mural and details), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Elana Mann, FM 1-4, 2013, (video still), High-definition, four channel video, 4:10
Audrey Chan, Elana Mann
and Chan & Mann
The series “3 Solo Projects” began in 2004 with the intention to introduce the
Otis community and region to new work by Southern California based sculptors/
new genre artists. The gallery is divided into three equal parts to create a project
space for each artist to present a single body of work or experience that encourages
dialogue and experimentation with practices of display and interchange between
artist and viewer. To date there have been three projects and the artists include: Jane
Mulfinger, Ross Rudel, and Elizabeth Turk in 2004; Lynn Aldrich, Jessica Rath, Carrie
Ungerman in 2009; and Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and Chan & Mann in 2013.
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation view)
Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions
Jinger Heffner, Exhibitions Coordinator and Gallery Registrar
Kathy MacPherson, Gallery Manager and Outreach Coordinator
Jeseca Dawson, 2012-2014 Curatorial Fellow
Rhonda Purdom, 2013 Getty Multicultural Intern
Laura Lindlief, Student Assistant
Liliana Sanchez, Student Assistant
Alex Becerra, Preparator
AUDREY CHAN
ELANA MANN
CHAN & MANN
Audrey Chan is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator whose projects address political and cultural identities,
rhetoric, and the feminist construct of “the personal is political”
through performance, video, and image/text. She received
a BA with Honors from Swarthmore College and a MFA
from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.
She co-organized Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions:
2007 CalArts Feminist Art Project. She was previously an
artist-in-residence at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts
de Nantes, France. Her work has been reviewed in the Los
Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Chronicle of Higher Education,
New York Sun, Hyperallergic, and OC Weekly. Her writing has
appeared in Afterall Journal, East of Borneo, and the Art 21
blog. She published her first book, Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel (2011), which explores the
promiscuous relationship between art and politics in French
law. Her animated video, Chinatown Abecedario: A Folk
Taxonomy of L.A.’s Chinatown (2012), is in the collection of
the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles. In 2013, Chan
was recipient of the ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural
Innovation and California Community Foundation Fellowship
for Visual Artists.
Elana Mann is a multidisciplinary artist whose artwork
explores alternative economies, empathetic exchange, and
the politics of resistance. Recently she has been investigating
listening strategies in protest movements and armed conflict.
She has presented work at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Apex
Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles; the Ford Foundation, New York; Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.;
Galerie Califia, Horazdovice, Czech Republic; A Gentil
Carioca, Rio de Janeiro; Side Street Projects, Pasadena, CA;
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Mann is a recipient of
the California Community Foundation’s 2009 Fellowship
for Visual Artists and a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center
for Cultural Innovation. She has produced six publications,
in the form of books, newspapers and ‘zines, four of which
are in the collection of the Getty Research Institute. Her
projects have been written about in the Los Angeles Times,
LA Weekly, NPR, O Globo, El Pais, La Reuppublica and
X-Tra Magazine. She is the co-founder of the Artist Bailout
Collective and the People’s Microphony Camerata. Mann
received her BFA with honors from Washington University,
St. Louis in 2003 and her MFA from California Institute of
the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007. Currently, Mann is a Visiting
Lecturer at Scripps College, Claremont, CA.
Chan & Mann formed as a collaborative duo in 2005 with
the aim to liberate, motivate, and gyrate through feminist
and ethnic role-play within live, painted, and animated realities. During their studies at California Institute of the Arts they
created performances such as Soul Satisfaction (2005) and
Nature! This One’s For You! (2007). Recent projects in Los
Angeles include: Chann & Mhann: A Historical Retrospective
2005-2012 at Elephant Art Space; Myths of Rape at the
2012 LA Art Show; Shares & Stakeholders: The Feminist
Art Project Day of Panels at the 2012 College Art Association
Conference held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
John Weston, Preparator
© 2013 Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
310.665.6905; galleryinfo@otis.edu
Edition: 1000
Design: Anne Predock Swett
Printing: Sievers and Burnett
THANK YOU!
Pasadena Art Alliance
ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation
323 Projects
Laura Bouza, John Burtle, Chase Carter, the Chan Family, Carol Cheh, Aaron Drake,
Elephant Art Space, Erik Greenberg, Robbie Hansen, Emily Hopkins, Iris Yirei Hu,
Jason Kunke, Jean-Paul Leonard, Eileen Levinson, Cinthia Lozano, Carole Lung, the
Mann Family, Marc Mayer Susan Mogul, Avigail Moss, James Naish, Tucker Neel,
Pocket Niko, Jason Pierre, Sandy Rodriguez, Frank Sánchez, Side Street Projects,
Juliana Snapper, Niko Solrio, and Lucretia Stinnette
JUNE 22 – AUGUST 30, 2013
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video stills), High-definition,
single channel video, 16:30
Photography: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, Chris Warner
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation detail)
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video still), High-definition, single
channel video, 16:30
Elana Mann, LEFT: In a perfect world, the moon will be visible, the dish would be set up for Moon Bounce,
and she will bounce her voice off the moon, 2013, pigment on paper, 14 x 22 inches;
TOP: From Apollo 11 to Tiananmen Square, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches
BOTTOM: Reflexive Behavior, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches;
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (detail), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world
through their creativity, their skill and their vision.
The series “3 Solo Projects” began in 2004 with the intention to introduce the
Otis community and region to new work by Southern California based sculptors/
new genre artists. The gallery is divided into three equal parts to create a project
space for each artist to present a single body of work or experience that encourages
dialogue and experimentation with practices of display and interchange between
artist and viewer. To date there have been three projects and the artists include: Jane
Mulfinger, Ross Rudel, and Elizabeth Turk in 2004; Lynn Aldrich, Jessica Rath, Carrie
Ungerman in 2009; and Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, and Chan & Mann in 2013.
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation view)
Meg Linton, Director of Galleries and Exhibitions
Jinger Heffner, Exhibitions Coordinator and Gallery Registrar
Kathy MacPherson, Gallery Manager and Outreach Coordinator
Jeseca Dawson, 2012-2014 Curatorial Fellow
Rhonda Purdom, 2013 Getty Multicultural Intern
Laura Lindlief, Student Assistant
Liliana Sanchez, Student Assistant
Alex Becerra, Preparator
AUDREY CHAN
ELANA MANN
CHAN & MANN
Audrey Chan is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and educator whose projects address political and cultural identities,
rhetoric, and the feminist construct of “the personal is political”
through performance, video, and image/text. She received
a BA with Honors from Swarthmore College and a MFA
from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.
She co-organized Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions:
2007 CalArts Feminist Art Project. She was previously an
artist-in-residence at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts
de Nantes, France. Her work has been reviewed in the Los
Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Chronicle of Higher Education,
New York Sun, Hyperallergic, and OC Weekly. Her writing has
appeared in Afterall Journal, East of Borneo, and the Art 21
blog. She published her first book, Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel (2011), which explores the
promiscuous relationship between art and politics in French
law. Her animated video, Chinatown Abecedario: A Folk
Taxonomy of L.A.’s Chinatown (2012), is in the collection of
the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles. In 2013, Chan
was recipient of the ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural
Innovation and California Community Foundation Fellowship
for Visual Artists.
Elana Mann is a multidisciplinary artist whose artwork
explores alternative economies, empathetic exchange, and
the politics of resistance. Recently she has been investigating
listening strategies in protest movements and armed conflict.
She has presented work at REDCAT, Los Angeles; Apex
Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles; the Ford Foundation, New York; Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.;
Galerie Califia, Horazdovice, Czech Republic; A Gentil
Carioca, Rio de Janeiro; Side Street Projects, Pasadena, CA;
The Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Mann is a recipient of
the California Community Foundation’s 2009 Fellowship
for Visual Artists and a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center
for Cultural Innovation. She has produced six publications,
in the form of books, newspapers and ‘zines, four of which
are in the collection of the Getty Research Institute. Her
projects have been written about in the Los Angeles Times,
LA Weekly, NPR, O Globo, El Pais, La Reuppublica and
X-Tra Magazine. She is the co-founder of the Artist Bailout
Collective and the People’s Microphony Camerata. Mann
received her BFA with honors from Washington University,
St. Louis in 2003 and her MFA from California Institute of
the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007. Currently, Mann is a Visiting
Lecturer at Scripps College, Claremont, CA.
Chan & Mann formed as a collaborative duo in 2005 with
the aim to liberate, motivate, and gyrate through feminist
and ethnic role-play within live, painted, and animated realities. During their studies at California Institute of the Arts they
created performances such as Soul Satisfaction (2005) and
Nature! This One’s For You! (2007). Recent projects in Los
Angeles include: Chann & Mhann: A Historical Retrospective
2005-2012 at Elephant Art Space; Myths of Rape at the
2012 LA Art Show; Shares & Stakeholders: The Feminist
Art Project Day of Panels at the 2012 College Art Association
Conference held at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
John Weston, Preparator
© 2013 Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
310.665.6905; galleryinfo@otis.edu
Edition: 1000
Design: Anne Predock Swett
Printing: Sievers and Burnett
THANK YOU!
Pasadena Art Alliance
ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation
323 Projects
Laura Bouza, John Burtle, Chase Carter, the Chan Family, Carol Cheh, Aaron Drake,
Elephant Art Space, Erik Greenberg, Robbie Hansen, Emily Hopkins, Iris Yirei Hu,
Jason Kunke, Jean-Paul Leonard, Eileen Levinson, Cinthia Lozano, Carole Lung, the
Mann Family, Marc Mayer Susan Mogul, Avigail Moss, James Naish, Tucker Neel,
Pocket Niko, Jason Pierre, Sandy Rodriguez, Frank Sánchez, Side Street Projects,
Juliana Snapper, Niko Solrio, and Lucretia Stinnette
JUNE 22 – AUGUST 30, 2013
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video stills), High-definition,
single channel video, 16:30
Photography: Audrey Chan, Elana Mann, Chris Warner
Chan & Mann, Chan’s Mannese Theater, 2013, (installation detail)
Chan & Mann, Chan & Mann’s New Fantasy (The Video), 2013, (video still), High-definition, single
channel video, 16:30
Elana Mann, LEFT: In a perfect world, the moon will be visible, the dish would be set up for Moon Bounce,
and she will bounce her voice off the moon, 2013, pigment on paper, 14 x 22 inches;
TOP: From Apollo 11 to Tiananmen Square, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches
BOTTOM: Reflexive Behavior, 2013, (detail), pigment on paper, 26 x 40 inches;
Audrey Chan, Center of the Universe, Ahma (detail), 2013, (detail), Inkjet on vinyl, 168 x 327 inches
Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world
through their creativity, their skill and their vision.