Attributed to Sōtatsu school. Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons. Edo period, about 1620–1650. Japan. One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; color and ink on gold leaf on paper. Each, H. 63 x W. 143 in. (160 x 363.2 cm). Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Acquisitions Fund, 1985.1.1

How does Asian art made hundreds or thousands of years ago inspire contemporary art?

(Re)Generations examines this question and attempts to present a thoughtful answer. The exhibition showcases key works made in Asia from the second century to the seventeenth century and features creative responses from three leading contemporary New York-based artists who have deep ties to Asia: Rina Banerjee (born 1963, Kolkata, India), Byron Kim (born 1961, La Jolla, CA), and Howardena Pindell (born 1943, Philadelphia). Each artist has selected a number of works in the museum’s collection with which to situate their own existing and new works, paying attention to such elements as color, shape, and iconography present in the historical works. The artists approach these objects from multiple cultures, heritages, and points of view, and they consciously reach beyond their individual backgrounds and experiences to render a capacious proposition of diaspora and international exchange today. In this exhibition, conversations abound: between the contemporary artists and their historical peers, and among Banerjee, Kim, and Pindell themselves, who not only have found inspiration and present-day relevance in the premodern works, but have discovered renewal and regeneration in their own practices through interacting with powerful and enduring art across time. 

Rina Banerjee

Rina Banerjee (born 1963, Kolkata, India) transforms historical materials and collected objects into mystical sculptures, paintings, and installations, which explore topics of colonialism, migration, masculinity and femininity, identity, exoticism, ornament, and tradition. Banerjee’s family hails from Kolkata and present-day Bangladesh, finding a home in Queens after spending time in London and Manchester. Following multiple urban migrations that echo the exodus of many during the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent and continuing through the 1971 war to liberate Bangladesh, her work speaks to the aftereffects of colonialism and complex cultural identities. She evokes the multifaceted nature of the “self” and loss of agency across her work and through poetic and narrative titles, which can be interpreted as another medium of Banerjee’s expression. Among many cultural sources, the artist often integrates South Asian materials and iconographies and an awareness of urban commerce into her assemblages, creating figures and building architectural forms that echo Hindu goddesses and the silhouettes of real, historic buildings, such as the Taj Mahal. For this exhibition, she reimagined a community of figures from Asia Society’s collection, including a Tang dynasty court lady and a princely male. She also built strong material, formal, and chromatic connections with a range of ceramics from across Asia, including a Ming dynasty porcelain dish, to complement her new domed large-scale installation and existing works.

Byron Kim

Byron Kim (born 1961, La Jolla, CA) is a Korean American painter whose work often merges the sublime and the everyday. For example, Kim relies on color choices and structural formats in works that often appear minimalistic yet have larger personal or cultural significance. Most of Kim’s works in (Re)Generations address imagery and unexpected associations, in which works that appear as abstractions are portraits of people (Synecdoche), and forms that appear bodily (Belly Paintings) are conceptual and abstract. In selecting objects from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, Kim was drawn to those that manifest an intangible “presence” or feel “nearly alive,” reflecting his own contemplative and humanistic approach to art making. For this exhibition, Kim extended his ongoing celadon painting series by creating a new work inspired by the collection’s stoneware bottle from Korea, dating from the late eleventh to early twelfth century; he suggests a directness to the notion of “regeneration” by focusing the viewer’s attention on the alluring and enigmatic color of the historical work.

Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell’s (born 1943, Philadelphia) artistic practice spans fifty years and extends the materiality and form of traditional canvas painting, photography, drawing, collage, video, and performance. Following her graduation from Yale University with a master of fine arts in 1967, she worked at the Museum of Modern Art in successive curatorial roles until 1979, when she accepted a teaching position in the Art Department at Stony Brook University. The following decade was critical for Pindell as an arts professional and as an artist, and included transformative trips to India (1975 and 1983) and Japan (a brief visit in 1979 and a seven-month stay beginning in June 1981 on a U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Exchange Artist Fellowship). These travels were challenging and rewarding in equal measure: challenging due to the racism and xenophobia Pindell encountered, and rewarding in shaping the artist’s Autobiography series, initiated in 1980. This decade-long series explores themes of travel, history, multiculturalism, racism, spirituality, and the disorientation that occurs when visiting foreign places. Pindell’s time in Asia had a lasting impression on her work beyond the Autobiography series, as can be seen in other works in this exhibition created within the decade after her travels there. This gallery presents a selection of Pindell’s mid-career works alongside historical objects from Asia Society’s collection that inspire her and resonate deeply with the formal qualities and subject matter of her own works.

The exhibition is made possible in part by Mary Dee & George Hicks, Andrew and Denise Saul, Garth Greenan Gallery, James Cohan Gallery, Kukje Art and Culture Foundation, Ota Fine Arts, Arthur Ross Foundation, Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions, The Hazen Polsky Foundation, and The Mary Griggs Burke Fund established by a gift from The Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation. 

Support for Asia Society Museum is provided by Asia Society Council on Asian Arts and Culture; Asia Society Friends of Asian Arts; Arthur Ross Foundation; Sheryl and Charles R. Kaye Endowment for Contemporary Art Exhibitions; The Hazen Polsky Foundation; The Mary Griggs Burke Fund established by a gift from the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.