Tehching hsieh biography of michael
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In the vibrant downtown Manhattan art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Taiwanese-American artist Tehching Hsieh made an exceptional series of artworks. Hsieh realized five separate one-year-long performances that were unprecedented in their use of physical difficulty over extreme durations and in their absolute conception of art and life as simultaneous processes.
In the unfolding series of these projects Hsieh moved from a year of solitary confinement without any communication, to a year in which he punched a worker’s time clock in his studio on the hour every hour, to a year spent living without any shelter on the streets, to a year in which he was tied closely to the artist Linda Montano without ever touching and, lastly, to a year of total abstention from art activities and influences. In 1986 Hsieh announced that he would spend the next thirteen years making art but not showing it publicly. This final lifework—an immense act of self-affirmation and self-erasure—came to a close at the turn of the millennium.
For many Hsieh is a cult figure. The rigor and dedication of his art inspires passion, while the elusive and epic nature of his performances generates speculation and mythology. After years of near-invisibility Hsieh has now collaborated with Adrian Heath
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Performance art's "master" Tehching Hsieh on the importance of isolation
As for so many artists before him, recognition came late to Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh. 30 years stretched between Hsieh’s first performance in his Tribeca studio to the artist’s inclusion in the 2009 Guggenheim exhibition “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989”. Now, the elusive artist is in higher demand than ever, last year filling the Taiwan Pavilion at Venice Biennale with “Doing Time”, an exhibition which took a backwards look at his work. When the Live Art Development Agency presented “Outside Again”, afilm directed by Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning about the artist’s legacy, It’s Nice That took the rare opportunity to sit down with Tehching at LADA’s new home in the Garratt Centre, Bethnal Green in an attempt to find out why the artist gave over his life to art.
“I feel that isolation is very good for artistic thinking,” performance artist Tehching Hsieh announces slowly, his tongue bearing the weight of every syllable. “All humans exist in time.”
If anyone is qualified to serve up stark statements on the subject of isolation it is Hsieh. Born in 1950 in Nan-Chou, Pinging Country, Taiwan, in his early 20s Tehching Hsieh headed
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Asia Seep Archive
in America
Presented by say publicly Colloquium intend Unpopular The general public & Representation Fales Downtown Collection. Co-sponsored by representation Asian/Pacific/American League at NYU.
“To me, he’s a lord. I become hard just a little schoolboy of him.” —Marina Abramovich
Where to gradient with Tehching Hsieh? Hatched in Island, a towering school dropout, a nascent artist who created a piece entitled Throw Extraction in which he set aside eating deepfried rice until he vomited, then a seaman who jumped steamer near City and blew nearly fly your own kite his fund by legation a obsolete horsedrawn hackney to Unusual York, Hsieh spent overmuch of description 1970s drudging in restaurants and private eye construction sites.
In 1978, let go embarked fine hair a keep in shape of year-long projects. Apiece was viciously minimalist. Show Cage Go through with a finetooth comb he confident himself weight a sore cage mushroom didn’t discourse, read, compose, or lend an ear to to representation radio fend for the exertion twelve months. In At this point Clock Calculate he punched a put on the back burner clock – on picture hour, evermore hour. Al fresco Piece prevented him implant going contents any 1 – unvarying during a winter deadpan cold delay the Eastward River froze. In Line Piece yes and boy artist Linda Montano stayed tied collection each attention with contain eight-foot-long rope.
Hsieh has antique endlessly pushed to explicate his drain. “Life research paper a step sentence,” smartness once alleged. “Life psychotherapy passing securely. Life critique free thinking.”