Paper Trail and Unauthorized Collaborations by Mel Chin

Art League Houston is excited to present Paper Trail and Unauthorized Collaborations by Mel Chin, a selection of forty years of drawings, diagrams and paraphernalia accompanied by new (unauthorized) physical alterations of oil portraits. The exhibition features many studies and artifacts relating to artwork in the Houston presentation of Mel Chin: Rematch, the most expansive survey of Chin's work to date, which launches the following day at four Houston spaces simultaneously: The Contemporary Art Museum, The Blaffer Art Museum, The Asia Society Texas Center and The Station Museum.

Special thanks to Ann and Jim Harithas for their support for this project.

ABOUT MEL CHIN

Mel Chin was born in Houston in 1951. His art, which is both analytical and poetic, evades easy classification. He is known for his broad range of approaches, including works that require multidisciplinary, collaborative teamwork and works that conjoin cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas.

Chin insinuates art into unlikely places, investigating how it can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. He developed Revival Field, a project that has been a pioneer in the field of “green remediation,” the use of plants to remove toxic heavy metals from the soil. In KNOWMAD, Chin worked with software engineers to create a video game based on rug patterns of nomadic people facing cultural disappearance. He also continues the Operation Paydirt initiative, which invites children and families to imagine and actualize a future free of lead poisoning. Representing nearly a half a million drawn Fundreds (original, hand-drawn interpretations of $100 bills) thus far, the artist collaborating with the educational and lead poisoning prevention community are in the process of creating the best way to demonstrate the power and value of collective expression to transform an invisible nationwide threat. These projects are consistent with a conceptual philosophy that emphasizes the practice of art to include sculpting and bridging the natural and social ecology.

Chin’s work was documented in the popular PBS program Art 21 - Art of the 21st Century. He has received numerous awards from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, Art Matters, Creative Capital, and the Penny McCall, Pollock/Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Rockefeller, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundations, among others.