SEIZAN Gallery New York is pleased to announce LIFE STUDIES, a group exhibition featuring works by Vincent Chong, Aya Fujioka, Alex Ito, Charlie Mai, and Homer Shew. Coinciding with Miné Okubo’s solo exhibition, on view January 9 through March 1, 2025, LIFE STUDIES explores the diverse varieties of contemporary life and identity as experienced by individuals of Asian descent and diaspora in New York and beyond.

 

Vincent Chong (b. 1992, Binghamton, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses Chinese calligraphy, seal carving, painting, drawing, and performance art. Chong’s work explores the intersection of contemporary Queer experience with traditional art forms, representing a unique fusion of cultural and personal expression. The exhibition features Chong’s intimate portrait paintings of close friends. They have performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at Stanford University, and exhibited works at Fort Street Studio, Lehman College Art Gallery among many others.

 

Aya Fujioka (b. 1972, Hiroshima, Japan) presents selected works from her new book of photography, LIFE STUDIES, forthcoming this spring. The series documents her life as an emerging artist in New York, 2003 to 2013. It is a personal, introspective portrait of diasporic experience, highs and lows, joys and weariness. Fujioka’s works have been exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan and the Tbilisi Photo Festival. Her photographs are in public collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. Fujioka won the Kimura Ihei Award in 2018 for her iconic series Here Goes River.

 

Alex Ito (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA) employs an interdisciplinary practice to reframe the visual cultures of violence at the intersection of war, industrialization, and popular culture. As a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Ito often reflects on his grandparents’ experiences of incarceration at a camp in Arizona during World War II. For this exhibition, Ito has created Western Verbiage V (Risk Management), a site-specific assemblage of curated objects. It includes an ikebana-inspired sculpture, atomic science books, and photographs and documents belonging to his grandfather. This piece is presented in dialogue with Miné Okubo’s charcoal camp drawings and Aya Fujioka’s Here Goes River (74).  Ito’s works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, including Other World/s at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon, on view from January 16 through March 15, 2025.

 

Charlie Mai (b. 1995, Arlington, VA), an American artist based in Bogotá, Colombia, transforms found objects and recognizable images into thought-provoking works that explore identity and inclusion. His recent pieces delve into the spiritual technologies employed by Chinese immigrants to achieve economic and political mobility. For this exhibition, Mai presents new works from his Chinese Figurine series, inspired by souvenir ceramic dolls sold in Chinatowns. With a playful yet critical lens, the artist examines the tokenization of identity and cultural expectations. Mai held his first solo exhibition in New York at LATITUDE Gallery in 2023 and has shown work in Los Angeles, Bogotá, and Mexico City.

 

Homer Shew (b. 1990, Chicago, IL), a New York City-based artist, is renowned for his evocative portraits in oil on canvas of Asian Americans. On view at SEIZAN are recent works that delve into the social dynamics of Asian American communities in New York and explore how individuals navigate contemporary cultural landscapes. By portraying subjects across generations and locales, Shew’s art contributes historical depth to the discourse on Asian visibility in American narratives, and celebrates resilience and adaptability. Shew is represented by Kiang Maligue in Hong Kong, and has exhibited widely, at Art Basel, Praise Shadow in Boston, Museum of Chinese in America,  New York among many others.