Art & Technology #30: Ian Cheng

The lives of the characters, both in games and films, are virtual and artificial. The virtual reality in the films, however, aims to represent situations in which the viewers can immerse themselves and actually believe. Cheng’s works intends the opposite. He attempts to destroy the virtual reality by using virtual reality technologies and break the simulations. To put it simply, he only sets the basic conditions and leaves the rest to the players. Though the artist programs the characters that first appear on the virtual world, he does not intervene or control in any way. Instead, he leaves the characters and the situations to influence each other in the virtual reality of a freer form, where the narrative and the ending are not already set. This makes his works even more realistic than movies and closer to the essence of creativity. Through Cheng’s artworks, simulation and virtual reality can be met more frankly, as it is.

Recently, Cheng completed the <Emissary trilogy>(2015-2017), a simulation series consisting three pieces that are dedicated to the history of the evolution of cognition. These are also animated works in a free form without fixed results or narratives, which are characterized by open endings. Many things happen and disappear in the works according to the act of the viewers. The films start with a basic programmed feature at first, and then present an experience of living in the virtual world that evolves by itself without the creator’s intention or pre-determined endings. This corresponds to the concept of “live simulation”.

Ian Cheng was born in Los Angeles, the United States of America in 1984. He currently lives and is based in New York. Cheng has held solo exhibitions throughout the world, including the recent exhibition in New York’s MoMA PS1, Zurich’s Migros Museum, London’s Pilar Corrias Gallery, Turin’s Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Milan’s La Triennale di Milano, Oslo’s Standard, Düsseldorf’s Off Vendome, Los Angeles’ The Vanity, and Miami Beach’s Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club. His works were also presented in group exhibitions at art spaces in the U.S. such as Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Cleveland’s MOCA, and New York’s SculptureCenter, MoMA PS1, Greene Naftali, and The Artist's Institute and also in the art museums all around Europe including Paris’ Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, London’s Pilar Corrias Gallery, and Berlin’s Julia Stoschek Collection. Some of his works are housed by MoMA in New York. Cheng has made his name by participating in many biennales such as the Biennale de Lyon 2013, Taipei Biennial 2014, and Liverpool Biennial 2016.