Albert Chong retrospective to open at Projective Eye Gallery

September 8, 2015
Categories: General News Tags: Arts and Culture, College of Arts + Architecture

The Projective Eye Gallery at UNC Charlotte Center City will present “Amalgamation: The Mixed-Media Works of Albert Chong,” opening Friday, Sept. 18, with a reception at 6 p.m., followed by an artist lecture at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibition runs through Friday, Dec. 4.

Chong (b. 1958) is an artist who is known for an ability to move with ease between seemingly disparate worlds, both culturally and artistically. Born and reared in Jamaica, Chong is of African and Chinese ancestry. He moved to the United States in 1977 and studied photography in New York and California before settling in Colorado, where he is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The juxtaposition and integration of cultural influences, the politics of race and the role that ethnicity plays in identity – as experienced in both his home country and his adopted one – are the substance of Chong’s work.

In artistic practice, Chong travels fluidly along the 2D-3D continuum, made manifest by the interplay between his photographic and installation works. His photographs often originate as sculptures or installations; his installations contain photographs and sculptures. This confident mixing of media eliminates the distance between flatness and volume, making his exhibitions an experience rather than a presentation.

In “Amalgamation,” the Projective Eye Gallery will host a retrospective of Chong’s photographic work. Featuring more than 30 pieces that span three decades, the exhibition focuses on three bodies of work: still lifes, portraits and examples from his “Thrones” series. The exhibition also includes the installation “Throne for the Third Millennium.”

A long-time professor of photography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Chong has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Mira Costa College in Oceanside California and Rhode Island School of Design. He has received an NEA Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pollock-Krasner Grant.