NEW YORK.- The New Museum of Contemporary Art will exhibit Shangri-La, a newly commissioned work by artist Patty Chang, through September 10, 2005. Shangri-La is one of three projects jointly developed and commissioned by the Three M Project, a consortium of American institutions – Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles – formed to stimulate the creation of new work by artists not yet well known in the United States. Patty Chang: Shangri-La is organized by Russell Ferguson, Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum.

Patty Chang: Shangri-La examines the concept of Shangri-La, the mythical hamlet of James Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon. The novel and the subsequent 1937 film by Frank Capra propelled the notion of Shangri-La into the collective cultural vocabulary. In 1997, a rural farming town in South Central China near the Tibetan border declared itself the place upon which Shangri-La was based, in the hope of attracting tourism to the area. Subsequently a dozen other towns in the area claimed that they were the real Heaven-On-Earth, resulting in a relentless marketing battle that continued until the Chinese government intervened by officially acknowledging one town as Shangri-La.

Interested in the notion of warring “Shangri-Las”, Chang visited the town, only to be disappointed by its lackluster landscape and building projects. Returning six months later, the artist discovered a town completely transformed into a more heavenly version of it’s old self. Chang’s Shangri-La is about the reality and fiction inherent in the idea of a place that exists in both real and mythical incarnations. Through a narrative created in collaboration with local residents, Chang fuses the reality of daily life with fictionalized constructions of culture and identity.

The installation centers on a video approximately 40 minutes in length, shot on location in Shangri-La. The film follows the creation and movement of a mirrored mountain born of Chang’s imagination, an object meant to mimic and reflect the peaked mountains of the Chinese landscape. Shangri-La follows the mirrored mountain through the town as if on a guided tour of people looking for the “real” Shangri-La. A similar sculpture situated on the back of a pickup truck will be displayed in reference to how the work was transported during the filming of Shangri-La.

Chang is best known for her performance work and for videos and photographs that use her own body as the primary vehicle of expression. Shangri-La is a departure from her previous work in that Chang is less visibly present in the work, instead directing others from behind the camera or acting as a prop for someone else in an on-camera photography segment, adding to the broader theme of identity construction that runs through the entire video.

About the Artist - Chang was born in 1972 in San Francisco, California and currently lives in New York City. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1994 from the University of California, San Diego. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain; FRI-ART Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland; and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Exhibition Funding - Patty Chang: Shangri-La is part of The Three M Project—a series by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York to commission, organize and co-present new works of art. Generous support for the series has been provided by the Peter Norton Family Foundation and the American Center Foundation. Patty Chang: Shangri-La also received support from Altria Group, Inc. and Susan and Leonard Nimoy. Patty Chang received a Media Arts Fellowship, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, for this project. The New Museum of Contemporary Art receives general operating support from the Carnegie Corporation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, JPMorgan Chase, and members of the New Museum.