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Description

For his first US museum exhibition, Hong Kong-based sound artist Samson Young looks to the idealism presented at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago to explore varying concepts of social progress and utopia through a trilogy of animated music videos. The catalog addresses questions of how people adapt to societal changes that they have little control over. For Young, “progress” as it was defined in the 1933 fair’s subtitle “A Century of Progress” represents a specific variant of aspirational thinking. From cars to shopping malls and houses designed for the future to political change, progressive thinking has had contrasting consequences as it made its impact felt across the globe in the decades that followed.
 

Contributors: Orianna Cacchione, G. Douglas Barrett, Seth Kim Cohen, Samson Young

Publisher: Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Language: English 

Hardcover: 184 pages

Dimensions: 8.25 x 10.75 inches

ISBN: 978-0935573619

 

About the artist

Samson Young (b. 1979, Hong Kong)

Multi-disciplinary artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Music Composition from Princeton University in 2013. In 2017, he represented Hong Kong at the 57th Venice Biennale. Other solo projects include the De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; SMART Museum, Chicago; Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art in Manchester; M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Ryosoku-in at Kenninji Temple, Kyoto; and Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, among others. Selected group exhibitions include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Performa 19, New York; Biennale of Sydney; Shanghai Biennale; National Museum of Art, Osaka; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Ars Electronica, Linz; and documenta 14: documenta radio, among others. In 2020, he was awarded the inaugural Uli Sigg Prize. His works are in the collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong; Mori Art Museum, Japan; and KADIST, Paris.