“I don't make political art”(1), emphasizes New Yorkbased artist Paul Chan. And yet, based on his political activities, which until 2008 were primarily directed against the Bush administration,(2) despite the varying directions of his art and political commitment, his relationships and mutual influences, Chan's works also contain philosophical, social and also political art. While he turns his attention at the political level to current social living conditions, he wants to raise “new questions for possible futures”(3) at the artistic level. In one of his earlier videos, in which the aesthetics is oriented to video games or the animated comedy series South Park, Chan has fallen back on the ideas of the French social theoretician and critic of early capitalism Charles Fourier, who in the early nineteenth century developed the utopian ideal of a harmonious world order, one which was not based on the repression of needs and drives, but on free expression of natural desires. Chan's video work 2nd Light, which belongs to the seven-part series The 7 Lights, 2005-2007, places him in a medially extended tradition of illusionistic painting. [...]

(1) Paul Chan quoted in: Magdalena Kröner: Paul Chan. Politik vereinfacht. Kunst differenziert, in: Kunstforum International, vol. 189, January/February 2008, pp. 94-107, here p. 97.
(2) All of Paul Chan's political projects and activities can be found on his web site: http://www.nationalphilistine.com.
(3) Paul Chan quoted in: Scott Rothkopf: Embedded in the Culture. The Art of Paul Chan, in: Artforum, Summer 2008, pp. 304-311, here p. 305.

Andreas F. Beitin
Translation: Elizabeth Gahbler


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010

Paul Chan, Recessionale I, 2008
Single-channel video installation, color, without sound
Edition 4/5
10'