Hung is a collage artist; his collage is animated; colorful shapes pass across a singular wall-mounted video screen. And in that psychedelic motion, the most readily identifiable figure appears to be Hung's protagonist: President Barack Obama. It's through a series of graphic vignettes that Hung causes Obama to incarnate again-and-again as a prominent religious figure: Jesus, Buddha, Eshu [Nigerian], the Virgin Mary, Krishna, Mohammad, and finally Abraham. Sorry Moses!
One wonders how many consumers of Hung's work fixate upon the foreground, noticing only Obama. In fairness, the video's vivid hues and queer pace--if not also the smiling face of the President--are hypnotic. So that it's good to stop the action, examine a still frame, and ask: What is this fellow doing?
Well, one interpretation might be that Hung imagines the United States of America and the state of Israel to be real obstacles to world peace. So that his lampoon is an effort to effect change?
Curiously, though, Hung manipulates not only the symbols of political regimes--but also the symbols of religious and economic orders, viz., Judaism and Capitalism. And the more closely one looks at any given frame of Hung's video, the more suspect Hung's motives become. It isn't, for example, "Zionism" as represented by a historical personality which Hung shows as an obstacle to peace; rather it's a hanukkiah [nine-branched menorah employed at Hanukkah] that, per the artist, blocks the dove. It really looks like Hung aims at Judaism and the Jewish people.
Intellectually, In G.O.D. We Trust is at best sloppy. Yet, Hung was careful about what he chose to include. "Every piece," writes Hung, "of graphical element contains meanings."
It's an upsetting sort of failure on the part of critics and curators not to question such content. What does their silence mean? Is no one looking, carefully, at what is put on display? Why does Hung not facilitate honest dialogue: placing his most controversial material front and center? Had another "community" been portrayed in a similar manner? It is, indeed, a "Sign of the Times."
Poscript: The title of the work, and juxtaposition of Christ and the dollar, appear to "borrow heavily" from Winston Smith's artwork on the cover of the Dead Kennedys' album of the same name: In God We Trust, Inc., 1981:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust,_Inc.
http://www.tinkin.com/arts/obama
http://www.moniquemeloche.com
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As I look at the still, the video and your interpretation I think the work could be interpreted in a lot of ways. There's certainly room for your opinion, or one that sees Obama as god (or G.O.D.). Maybe the work is rich enough that we take out of it what we bring to it. I see it as being anti-religious across the board, but if someone said it had nothing to do with religion in particular, it's about politics, I could see that as a possibility, too.
Thank you, Paul, for taking the time to read and to comment.
I attended the opening of the show that included Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung's piece. And then, over the course of the following 7-10 days, I struggled to make sense of what I had seen. It was during that period that I learned that Hung was not only a fine artist but also a political activist.
Hung has certain regular targets and strategies, e.g., on Hung's website George Bush II was depicted as Adolf Hitler--with dollar signs flashing in his eyes. So that the conflation [above] of banking, Fascism, Pro-Israeli policy, and the Republican Party in America is not altogether surprising.
More, if I felt provoked by the content in Meloche's gallery, or on Hung's website, well, Hung had labored to be provocative. Sadly, I don't see him as artist who is in any way novel, or clever, in his handling of the subject matter. Worse, I don't see him as a person who has demonstrated an understanding of the impact of the symbols he has chosen to employ, or the issues upon which he has chosen to comment.
In his seven incarnations, Hung's Obama brings things in which Hung himself seems to believe: (1) clean energy, (2) sex that is safe and easy, (3) open borders, (4) a nuclear free world, and (5) peace. I can't help but wonder about the other two: (6) Islam to America and (7) whatever that green swastika being dragged over the six-pointed stars is meant to represent...
I don't understand how Hung's piece is meant to promote dialogue and understanding. Semitic people are portrayed [by Hung] as hopelessly violent: blinded by their religious attachments. Though there isn't [that I can find] a treatment of an Islamic symbol comparable to his use of the hanukkiah. And I can't help but wonder how the piece would have been received had those "hopeless" and "violent" people been Africans in tribal dress, instead of Arabs and Jews.
For me, Hung doesn't even rise to the level of a propagandist--as he preaches only to the converted. This thing has become a shibboleth: Bush=Hitler; War=Unjustified; Capitalism=Exploitation; blab, blah, blah. What I see motivating Hung is a desire to mock those with whom he does not agree. That America has become divided into camps--each secure in the rightness of its own position and the wrongness of the other--seems terribly dangerous. Some subtlety, some nuance, would be nice...
Robert Bly: "The world will soon break up into small colonies of the saved."
Gods, this just looks like a childish Art Foundation Level attempt at social commentary. I can see the attempt at a critique of U.S-Israel relations, but honestly this looks plain childish.
This work is crude in a South Park sort of way, and tries to ram home a message (mess being the operative word)with the literal, hackneyed eye of an adolescent.
No subtlety, no imagination, this is little more than moving poster art fit only for a pseudo-socialist student rally.
Sadly, a further reminder that Monique's program is rapidly moving towards irrelevance. Although she'll certainly court those "art" patrons looking for simple minded pieces they see as provocative while shopping for their hipster clothes on Division.
The video is at the link on my name or here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdW_fXiARU4
Obviously looking at this thread we in our haste here on sharkforum are not practicing what we preach and insisting that all posters - be known -either by name or a recognized pseudonym- this will be rectified -and is the law of the lake so to speak-
Paul, I actually owe you an apology of sorts for cutting you short over on Badatsports concerning Phillip von Zweck -in all of that inconsequential speciousness -it is more of the same tired, recycled, academic garbage rearing its ugly head which, should immediately be lopped off! -fyi -it should be noted that Paul Klein was VOTED OFF! the board of Three Walls for daring to level criticism at von Zweck on the studio blog spot -more on this coming up.