Untitled

Paul Chan is a multimedia artist whose work encompasses collage and drawing, multichannel video and projection, and kinetic sculpture. He is intellectually voracious, drawing on a wide array of philosophical, textual and visual sources. In 2010 he founded the digital imprint Badlands Unlimited. Drawing is an important facet of Chan's practice, whether in charcoal drawings like this, or in the drawings he uses for projections and animations. Untitled, 2006, relates to Chan's ambitious cycle of projections, The 7 Lights (2005-2007), which refer to the seven days of creation. The forms in the projections are shadows images, similar to the torn black paper. He made a number of charcoal and torn-paper compositions like this one, as well as "scores," pasting torn black paper onto musical notation paper. Chan has written, "Light first divides the world into the thing and its other, its shadow. This shadow then develops through technique to inhabit color, form, representation, narrative, illusion, and finally, art."