Phillip Chen

According to art historian Wu Hung any artifact of the past has to exist in the present. In the work of Phillip Chen the opposite is also true. His artifacts of the present exist in the past. His prints collapse time creating an incongruous space where linear knowledge is replaced by a state of simultaneity. Drawing from personal experiences, memories and written history his work incorporates both long departed and surviving traditions, beliefs, objects and landscapes, positioning all firmly with in a contemporary context. His work is at once a documentation and a schematic diagram of the present as seen through the past and the past as seen through the present. This lecture acompanied the exhibition When After Comes Before on display at the A+D Gallery January 13 - February 12, 2011.