Paul Chan: Bathers at Night

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Paul Chan, "Bathers at Night (detail of Stormy)," 2018

9.45 m x 4.27 m x 4.85 m. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.

Bathers at Night features a new body of work by Paul Chan, which the artist calls “breathers.” The breathers are sculptural works that act like moving images. Each breather is composed of a fabric body, designed by Chan and attached to one or more specially modified fans. Incorporating techniques that combine fashion, drawing and physics, the artist directs the breathers’ movements through the manipulation of their internal architectures, such that they direct the airflow and pressure from the fans to create different types of motion. Simply by the means through which they are shaped and sewn, the breathers can be choreographed in ways unlike anything Chan has created to date. They are physical animations—images moving in all three dimensions.

The figure of the bather has fascinated artists throughout history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, artists like Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso took up this motif to express evolving notions about the body, one’s relationship to nature, and how longing for the new (in art) creates a broader and more inclusive understanding of what it means to live with or against societal changes. Chan takes up this age-old subject to renew the constellation of themes and ideas that the bather embodies in and for the 21st century. The animated and abstract forms in Bathers at Night call up a range of conflicting associations, such as leisure and survival, privacy and evasion, and freedom and marginality. Perhaps most of all, they evoke the pleasure and thrill of swimming at night, under soft moonlight.

Curated by Gregory Burke, Executive Director & CEO