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Arts & Photography

Paul Chan

Other Media

Badlands Unlimited

The work of Paul Chan (born 1973) has charted a course in contemporary art as unpredictable and wide-ranging as the thinking that grounds his practice. Paul Chan: Selected Writings 2000–2014 collects the critical essays and artist’s texts that first appeared in Artforum, October, Texte zur Kunst and Frieze, among other publications, as well as previously unpublished speeches and language-based works. From the comedy of artistic freedom in Duchamp to the contradictions that bind aesthetics and politics, Chan’s writings revel in the paradoxes that make the experience of art both vexing and pleasurable. He lays bare the ideas and personalities that motivate his work by reflecting on artists as diverse as Henry Darger, Chris Marker, Sigmar Polke and Paul Sharits, and grapples with writers and thinkers who have played decisive roles in his practice, including Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett and the Marquis de Sade.

Paul Chan: Selected Writings 2000-2014

History & Criticism

Schaulager, Laurenz Foundation/Badlands Unlimited

New New Testament documents Paul Chan’s monumental project Volumes, a series of more than 1,000 paintings made out of dismantled book covers and the texts that complement each painting. "I began destroying books to paint on them, on weekends," Chan says. "Each cover seemed to call for different things; some expressionistic, others naturalistic, still others plainly monochrome. I never read the books I tore apart." A selection of Volumes premiered at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, in 2012, but New New Testament is the first time all the paintings have been united in a single book. Each painting evokes how books and works of art now exist in our digitally interconnected world chiefly as objects of search. The texts that accompany each painting are composed with bewildering combinations of phrases and lexical marks that reflect how historical distinctions between art, media and celebrity culture are rapidly dissolving.

Paul Chan: New New Testament

Individual Artists

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Books by Paul Chan