梅尔-秦 艺术家

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Mel Chin
Artist | Class of 2019
Harnessing the power of art to raise awareness of social concerns through a practice that defies categorization.


Portrait of Mel Chin

Title
Artist
Location
Egypt, North Carolina
Age
67 at time of award
Area of Focus
3-D Visual Art, Community/Social Practice
Website
melchin.org
Fundred Project
Social
Facebook
Instagram
Published September 25, 2019
ABOUT MEL'S WORK
Mel Chin is a category-defying artist whose practice calls attention to complex social and environmental issues. In an expansive body of work ranging from collages, sculptural objects, animated films, and video games to large-scale, collaboratively produced public installations, Chin demonstrates a unique ability to engage people from diverse backgrounds and to utilize unexpected materials and places.

Chin initiated the GALA Committee, an artist collective, for the conceptual work In the Name of the Place (1994–1996), in which original works of art appeared in the background of scenes of the television drama Melrose Place. With visual messages that touched on issues like gender, the environment, and global conflict, Chin and collaborators effectively infiltrated the airwaves with challenging and topical art. Chin was an early pioneer of the practice that now falls under the rubric of socially engaged art, and he has undertaken several community-based projects that address environmental health. For Revival Field (1990–1993), he collaborated with a USDA agronomist to create an experimental “green remediation” garden on the site of a landfill that confirmed a scientific technology. Incorporating aspects of formal garden design, Revival Field is planted with species known to extract heavy metals from toxic soil. Chin’s Fundred Project (2006–present) has involved nearly half-a-million children and adults across the country who create their own paper currency, “fundred dollar bills,” in a collective effort to bring visibility to the widespread threat of lead poisoning. The “Fundred Reserve” has been displayed in museums, schools, and the halls of Congress, where it brought the value of constituent voices directly to members of Congress and served as an educational opportunity for community members and policymakers.

Public spectacle and educational ambitions again combine in Chin’s two-part installation, Wake and Unmoored (2018), which occupied Times Square in 2018. Wake is a large-scale sculpture that assumes the form of a wrecked ship but also resembles the skeletal remains of a beached whale, while Unmoored exists as a mixed-reality experience that enables viewers to glimpse what Times Square would look like submerged under water as sea levels rise due to climate change. Through these and numerous other projects, Chin is redefining the parameters of contemporary art and challenging assumptions about the forms it can take, the issues it can address, and the settings it can inhabit.

BIOGRAPHY
Mel Chin received a B.A. (1975) from the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He has served as a visiting professor or fellow at a number of institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology CoLab, George Washington University, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, and the University of Georgia. Chin’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the Queens Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Menil Collection in Houston, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, and he has created installations and public commissions in New York City, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Jose, California, and Charlotte, North Carolina, among other national and international sites.



梅尔-秦
艺术家 | 2019级
利用艺术的力量来提高人们对社会问题的认识，其实践是不分类的。


梅尔-秦的画像

标题
艺术家
地点
埃及，北卡罗来纳州
年龄
获奖时为67岁
关注领域
3-D视觉艺术, 社区/社会实践
网站
Melchin.org
资助的项目
社会
脸书
Instagram
2019年9月25日出版
关于梅尔的作品
梅尔-秦是一位打破常规的艺术家，他的实践呼吁人们关注复杂的社会和环境问题。在广泛的作品中，从拼贴画、雕塑品、动画电影、视频游戏到大规模的、合作制作的公共装置，Chin展示了一种独特的能力，使来自不同背景的人参与进来，并利用意想不到的材料和地方。

Chin发起了GALA委员会，一个艺术家集体，为概念作品In the Name of the Place（1994-1996），其中原创艺术作品出现在电视剧Melrose Place的场景背景中。通过涉及性别、环境和全球冲突等问题的视觉信息，秦和合作者有效地将具有挑战性和话题性的艺术渗透到电波中。秦是早期实践的先驱，现在属于社会参与艺术的范畴，他已经开展了几个以社区为基础的项目，解决环境健康问题。在《复兴之路》（1990-1993）中，他与美国农业部的一位农学家合作，在一个垃圾填埋场的现场创造了一个实验性的 "绿色补救 "花园，证实了一种科学技术。融合了正式花园设计的各个方面，"复兴之田 "种植了一些已知能从有毒土壤中提取重金属的物种。Chin的Fundred项目（2006年至今）涉及全国各地近50万儿童和成人，他们创造了自己的纸币，即 "Fundred一元纸币"，以集体努力使人们认识到铅中毒的广泛威胁。Fundred Reserve "已经在博物馆、学校和国会大厅展出，它将选民的声音直接带给国会议员，并作为社区成员和决策者的教育机会。

在Chin的两部分装置作品《Wake》和《Unmoored》（2018）中，公众的观感和教育的野心再次结合起来，该作品于2018年占据了时代广场。Wake "是一个大型雕塑，具有失事船只的外形，但也类似于搁浅鲸鱼的骨骼，而 "Unmoored "则作为一种混合现实体验存在，使观众能够瞥见时代广场在气候变化导致的海平面上升时被淹没在水中的样子。通过这些和其他众多的项目，钱文忠正在重新定义当代艺术的参数，并挑战关于它可以采取的形式、它可以解决的问题以及它可以居住的环境的假设。

个人简历
梅尔-秦在范德比尔特大学皮博迪学院获得了学士学位（1975年）。他曾在许多机构担任客座教授或研究员，包括麻省理工学院联合实验室、乔治华盛顿大学、密歇根大学人文研究所和乔治亚大学。他的作品曾在皇后区博物馆、多伦多皇家安大略博物馆、明尼阿波利斯沃克艺术中心、休斯顿梅尼尔收藏馆和新奥尔良艺术博物馆等场所举办过个展和联展，他还在纽约市、新奥尔良、费城、加州圣何塞和北卡罗来纳州夏洛特等国内和国际场所创作过装置作品和公共委托项目。