Alison Kuo :
You Pick The Moon
Curated by Danielle Wu
Artist Reception: Thursday, March 14, 6–8pm
Dates: March 14 – April 20, 2024
NEW YORK, February 22, 2024 – Field Projects is pleased to present You Pick The Moon, a solo exhibition of a new work by Alison Kuo. The central sculpture You Pick The Moon (2024) features an intricate array of ornaments, gems, and trinkets that Kuo saved over the course of several years. Kuo breathes new life into these found objects, transforming them into enchanting characters that feel charmingly cohesive despite their wildly different origins and styles. A glass vase holds two rose quartz rollers transformed into walking sticks. Jewelry boxes appear washed ashore like fresh clams in a pearl-studded froth. Together, they form an apt metaphor for Kuo's ongoing social practice as community-centered and prospering from social bonds, including her work as co-founder of Sisters in Self-Defense. With some imagination and repair, life after trauma is made anew.
A large blue-and-white porcelain planter anchors the scene, holding a fishing net with a wooden handle. Also inside the china's cavernous chamber is a beaded womb in a contradiction of the rich abundance of life on the surface. The work's title and composition refers to a longstanding concept in Chinese traditions such as qigong, where choreography mimics lifting the moon's reflection out of water, as well as the parable of monkeys grasping for the moon. Strings of luminous pearls drop vertically from the net, as if water and smaller creatures escaping its clutches have crystallized in time. The resulting hybrid aesthetic echoes not only Kuo's prior education in Jingdezhen and personal family history (her grandfather Guo Baochang was a ceramicist commissioned by the royal family during the late Qing dynasty), but also contemporary Asian styles such as Japanese decoden and horror vacui.
While Kuo's art of accumulation fostered a sense of safety, hunting and gathering dynamics haunt the fairytale-like scene. The viewer, then, becomes implicated and invited to contemplate larger questions about what it means to covet and be a coveteur, how the act of looking can act as a form of capture, and what it means to pursue illusory prey like the moon.
About the Artist
Alison Kuo is a Brooklyn-based artist who pursues intersectional relationships across communities through artistic engagement. She is the co-founder of the group Sisters in Self-Defense based in Manhattan’s Chinatown along with the writer Ava China. Kuo has shown work at Abrons Art Center, New York; Beverly’s, New York; CANADA, New York; Cuchifritos, New York; Grace Exhibition Space, New York; Happy Family Night Market, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Marvin Gardens, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; Think!Chinatown, New York; UNTITLED Art Fair, Miami, Florida; Yeh Art Gallery, New York; and Young At Art Museum, Plantation, Florida. Internationally, her work has been shown in the 4th Overseas Chinese Artists Invitational Exhibition at the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen (2022), Singapore Arts Week (2022), the Nanjing International Art Festival (2016), and the MATERIAL art fair in Mexico City (2016). She made site specific performance works for Paraiso Bajo in Bogotá, and Malagana Macula in Managua. She is a recipient of a Rema Hort Mann Foundation 2020 Artist Community Engagement Grant.
About the Curator
Danielle Wu is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently Communications & Database Manager at Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) and was previously a Digital Fellow at Democracy Now! Her reviews have been published in Art in America, Artforum, Frieze Magazine, The Offing, and other publications. Notable curatorial projects include Just Between Us: From the Archives of Arlan Huang with Howie Chen at Pearl River Mart, New York (2023); Water Works at International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2022); and Ghost in the Ghost with scholar Anne Anlin Cheng at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York (2019). She is a recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts Grant (2022), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Manhattan Arts Grant (2022), the Critical Minded Grant from Allied Media Projects (2020), and the Brooklyn Arts Council Grant (2019). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, ArtNews, South China Morning Post, WNYC, and other media outlets.
