Chinese Take Out at Art in General, New York City, New York 2011

 Art in General is pleased to present Chinese Take Out, a New Commissions project conceived by Jason Bailer Losh, in which he invited ten artists to engage in a creative cultural exchange with restaurants in New York’s Chinatown neighborhood. The interactive project, on view from May 20 – July 2, at Art in General and seven local Chinese restaurants, explores notions of home, cultural memory and nostalgia, and how place, context, and association with images and objects represent individuals to the outside world. Audiences chart their own course through Chinatown, aided by a website and an interactive map, to fully experience the exhibition.

Chinese Take Out is an exhibition in two parts:

A gallery show at Art in General features objects, images and artifacts Losh selected and removed from their original contexts at seven local Chinese restaurants. In exchange, each restaurant received a new commissioned artwork, created for their specific location by one of the ten participating artists. Each artist worked in consultation with the restaurant owner, fusing the artist’s ideas of tradition and heritage with those of the restaurant owners in this direct exchange experiment.

Chinese Take Out explores the culturally symbolic representations of ‘home’ that adorn the walls of New York City’s Chinatown restaurants. Grandiose photographs of famous historic sites like The Forbidden City, The Great Wall, and the Summer Palace can be seen in many establishments and seem to represent a sense of nationalistic pride and personal connection to Chinese cultural heritage, even a sense of nostalgia. Chinese Take Out’s creative mode of exchange calls attention to the fact that more and more, people are rooted in countries removed from their family’s origins and as a result, have a complicated and intricate relationship to the notion of home. This transience speaks to the modern condition of place, emphasizing the need to attach memory, history, and story to the images and objects that represent home to an outside world.

Chinese Take Out is a collaborative project, initiated and coordinated by Jason Bailer Losh, who has employed a multiplicity of voices, with the artists and restaurant owners, to provide a glimpse into the complexity surrounding the formation of cultural and personal identities. His creative mode of exchange also calls attention to the social dynamics of public space, recasting the viewer as an active participant. Viewers to the exhibition chart their own course through Chinatown to complete the exhibition, experiencing this vibrant neighborhood in a new light. At the same time the transferred objects from the restaurants are recontexualized within the physical architecture of the Storefront gallery, requiring the viewer to reexamine how their relationships to these objects contribute to more complex ideas of a sense of place.

Participating Artists and Restaurants:
Martin Basher 88 Palace, 88 East Broadway (2nd floor)
Lucas Blalock Old Shanghai Deluxe, 50 Mott Street
Nicholas Brooks East Market Restaurant, 75 East Broadway
Sarah Chacich Sanur, 18 Doyers Street
Vincent Como Excellent Pork Chop House Inc., 3 Doyers Street
Rory Donaldson Full House Café, 97 Bowery
Nick Kramer East Seafood Restaurant, 17 Division Street
Ted Riederer 88 Palace, 88 East Broadway (2nd floor)
Thuridur Ros Sigyrthorsdottir East Market Restaurant, 75 East Broadway
Ryan Sullivan East Market Restaurant, 75 East Broadway