Shirley Tse: Lompoc Stories

JUNE 18th - JULY 30th, 2022

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present Lompoc Stories by Shirley Tse. This is the Calfiornia-based artist’s sixth solo show with the gallery. Lompoc Stories will be on view from June 18th through July 30th, 2022, with an opening reception on June 18th from 2-5 pm.

Continuing on the concept of “Stakeholders”- a solo exhibition representing Hong Kong at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019- Tse wants to bring to attention the biggest stake we all hold as stakeholders is anthropogenic climate change. Her current work contemplates all form of sustainability: our environment, our energy use, our mental health and our economic disparity. Tse has relocated to Lompoc – “stagnant waters, or lagoon” in Purisemeño language by the Chumash people - in search of a model for a sustainable art practice.

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Non-human stakeholders of Lompoc- animals, minerals, flower seeds, rocket- enter into her studio. Incorporating shed snake skin, diatomaceous earth, tar and charred wood from wild fire into her sculptures, Tse makes palpable the fragility of our life-world.

Hong Kong–born, California– based artist Shirley Tse works in the media of sculpture, installation, photography, and text. She at once deconstructs the world of synthetic objects that carry paradoxical meanings and constructs models in which differences might come together. To visualize heterogeneity, Tse conflates different scales, fuses the organic with the industrial, moves between the literal and the metaphorical, merges narratives, and collapses the subject and object relationship. Tse received a Master of Fine Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including: M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong (2020); the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2004/2017); Osage, Hong Kong (2010/2011); K11, Hong Kong (2009); Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge (2009); the Museum of Modern Fine Art, Minsk (2006); the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University (2005); Para Site, Hong Kong (2000/2005); the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (2003); the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2002); the Bienal Ceará América, Fortaleza (2002); the Biennale of Sydney (2002); Capp Street Project, San Francisco (2002); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2002); MoMA PS1, New York (2002); the New Museum, New York (2002); Palazzo dell’Arengo, Rimini (2002); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2001); TENT, Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam (2001); and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2000). Her work is held in the permanent collections of  M+ Museum, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, among others. Tse represented Hong Kong at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Tse received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2009 and has been on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts since 2001.