ART IN AMERICA
Tseng Kwong Chi at Paul Kasmin
In 1978, the artist joseph Tseng, not yet 30, changed his name to Tseng Kwong Chi and moved to New York. Born and educated in Hong Kong, he had studied in Vancouver, Montreal and Paris...
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INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
An Artist who made "taking a holiday" his Life's Work
Like many over the course of art history, Tseng kwong Chi was what they call a genre artist. But the genre he picked was unusually common and current: the tourist snap. Tseng, whose career neatly bridged the '80s (his first show was in 1980; he died in 1990) took literally thousands of photos, more than 50,000 alone documenting the activities of his friend Keith Haring...
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PAPER MAGAZINE
The Resurrection of Tseng kwong Chi
On april 3, 2008, the late artist and photographer Tseng Kwong Chi will live again, when over 90 of his legendary large-scale black-and-white photographs will be exhibited at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City. Throughout the '80s, the Hong Kong-born, Paris-educated artist created an extraordinary "expeditionary" series of images featuring himself as a mysterious stranger called the "Ambiguous Ambassador."...
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ART ASIA PACIFIC
Suitable Attire Required
"Clothes make the man," said Mark Twain. "Naked people have little or no influence on society." Little did the humorist know the impact that statement would make over a hundred years hence, when artist Tseng Kwong Chi chose a Mao suit for his cultural identity and entry into society at large. "In 1978, when my parents came to visit us in New York, they took us to Windows on the World in the World Trade Center," said his sister Muna in a voiceover text for her dance performance, SlutforArt, which memorializes Tseng's life...
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POST MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2004
Unless you know Tseng Kwong Chi, a Hong Kong-born photographer and performance artist, you could be forgiven for believing he was an official ambassador for China.
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ART IN AMERICA
The Accidental Ambassador
Joseph Tseng disappeared on the day in 1979 when he first put on the Mao suit he had found in a thrift store in Montreal. He was 29, broke and, after several years of art studies in Paris, living in New York with his sister, Muna. When their visiting parents took the siblings to dinner at an upscale Manhattan tourist restraurant that required gentlemen to wear a jacket and tie, Joseph showed up dressed like Mao Tse-tung in the only suit he owned...
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ASIA AMERICA 94-96
In Contemporary Asian American Art
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ARTS MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1986
The Expeditionary Photographs of Tseng Kwong Chi
In the peace of Tseng Kwong Chi's beautiful nature-endowing photographs, there is the spirit and quest of the adventurer whose reward from unceasing travels is in the rare passages of beauty one surveys.
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FLASH ART 1983
Tseng Kwong Chi and Rammellzee
Two-man shows in one gallery space is a dangerous game.
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