Spring Exhibits at the Wang Center

Seas of Blue: Asian Indigo Dye in the Skylight Gallery Now through July 27

Celebrating indigo both as a color and as a meaningful link to past and current design practices, “Seas of Blue: Asian Indigo Dye” is a site-specific installation of traditional and contemporary indigo-dyed textiles from India, Indonesia, Japan and Korea. Indigo is one of few natural blue dyes, and has historically been both an important commodity and a fixture in textile art and design. Exploring and evoking indigo’s traditional associations with wealth, truth, authority, peace and spirituality, “Seas of Blue” features works that integrate indigo dye methods into innovative designs with vivid compositions.

This exhibit includes works on loan from Galeri Batik Jawa, Sri (Brooklyn), Annapurna Mamidipudi, and contemporary textile artists including Leonie Castelino, Chunghie Lee, Won-Ju Seo and Merdi Sihombing. Co-curated by Laretna T. Adishakti (Associate Professor of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Annapurna Mamidipudi (South Indian textile expert) and Jinyoung Jin (Associate Director of Cultural Programs, Charles B. Wang Center).

Boundless Fantasy: Multimedia Art from East Asia in the Zodiac Lobby Gallery Now through May 31

With an array of outstanding media art from East Asia, “Boundless Fantasy” explores the relationship between lived experience and fantasy in the current era of mixed reality. Using cutting-edge computer-generated objects, materials and techniques – including kinetic sculpture, interactive installation and ferrofluid art – these artworks engage with the cultural encounter between meditative experience and technology, inviting us to ruminate on the fantastical possibilities of that encounter and to discover the connections between the seemingly very different domains of the real and the imagined. This exhibition welcomes us to engage and ignite our limitless minds and spirits, immersing ourselves in a flow of sensations that propels us toward boundless fantasy.

This exhibit features contemporary media artists Minha Yang, Sachiko Kodama, Wang Yuyang, Wu Juehui and duo artists Ujoo+Limheeyoung. Co-curated by Doo Eun Choi (Independent Curator) and Jinyoung Jin (Associate Director of Cultural Programs, Charles B. Wang Center). In partnership with the School of Intermedia Art, China Academy of Art.

Marvels and Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 in the Theatre Lobby Gallery Now through July 27

“Marvels and Monsters” showcases a selection of potent and indelible images of Asians and Asian Americans in mainstream comics from four defining decades of American history. The images are placed in historical context and in a discourse with contemporary Asian American writers and creators including Ken Chen, Larry Hama, David Henry Hwang, Vijay Prashad and Gene Luen Yang. The exhibition also contains elements designed to encourage direct engagement with the archetypes, such as life-sized cutouts that allow visitors to put themselves “inside the image” and an installation called “Shades of Yellow” that matches the shades used for Asian skin tones in the comics with their garish Pantone^TM color equivalents.

Drawn from William F. Wu’s comic book collection — the largest archive of American comics books featuring images of Asians and Asian Americans — at New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections, the exhibition is curated by Asian Pop columnist Jeff Yang and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. The loan of the exhibition to the Charles B. Wang Center was made possible by the support of the Presidential Mini-Grant for Diversity Initiatives and by Stony Brook University Libraries.

Curator Jeff Yang is a veteran communications professional whose career in media and marketing has spanned more than a decade and a half. Since 2011 he has written the weekly “Tao Jones” column for the Wall Street Journal Online. Yang has authored and edited a number of bestselling books, including Eastern Standard Time, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (the international action hero’s official autobiography), Once Upon a Time in China and the new graphic novel collection Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology.