Gigi Janchang

the Cube

A site-specific installation by Bay Area artist Gigi Janchang

February 13 – April 18, 2009

Exhibition Reception:

SFAC Gallery Friday, February 20, 6 – 8pm

(joint reception for Gigi Janchang and the SFAC Gallery exhibition imPOSSIBLE! )

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is pleased to present a new site-specific installation, the Cube, by San Francisco-based artist Gigi Janchang in our window installation site at 155 Grove Street.

Situated in the center of the larger installation space at 155 Grove Street, the Cube is a constructed model of a common living room with an entrance door, two windows, a table and a chair. No one piece of the room particularly stands out, except that everything in the room is upside down, attached to the ceiling and held in place by compressed wire cloth. Gigi Janchang is concerned with how people respond to situations that create great stress and tension in the world, when they feel as if their lives have been turned upside down. She says, “When a crisis happens, the world does look as if it is upside down.  We feel that everything is reversed.  It is a shock.  How will we cope?  Are we searching for new perspectives and new directions?  Or, will we be craving for things to return to its original state?” Janchang, who is Chinese, also reflects on Chinese Taoism Philosophy. “The Yin and Yang form Taiji, which is the state of “One,” when two opposites are tightly joined. the Cube explores the tension between and the coming together of: positive space vs. negative space; solid vs. perforated; heavy vs. light and up vs. down.”

Viewing the Cube challenges the viewer to search for the familiar objects in our lives while at the same time seek out undiscovered patterns in the spaces between what we already know.

About Gigi Janchang

Janchang was born in Shanghai, China and later fled to Taiwan with her family due to the political changes in China. In 1985, Janchang went to Paris, and after visiting innumerous museums and galleries, she decided to study art in the U.S. Two years later, she immigrated to the U.S. and entered the San Francisco Art Institute to study sculpture, conceptual art and new genre art. From 1989 - 1990, invited as a guest student, Janchang studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under Professor Klaus Rinke. Janchang graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute and earned a Master degree in fine arts. In 1994, Janchang created an 11-meter-long photographic work which was shown at the National Academy Gallery in Hangzhou, China. In 1995 Janchang won the Flintridge Fellowship, and later that year was accepted to the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. Janchang won SFAI’s Adaline Kent Award in 1998. In 2002, Janchang participated in the Düsseldorf’s Höherweg E.V. residency program and exhibited a site-specific installation Relative Room II. In 2002, invited by the Culture Department of the city of Düsseldorf, she showed a site-specific installation Up & Down Scaling in Gallery Atelier am Eck. Janchang received the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation’s Individual Support Grant in 2004. In 2007, she presented a solo exhibition with a large-scale site-specific installation Above Under Glass at Mission 17 Gallery in San Francisco.