Epoxy Art Group
Founded in 1982 by Eric Chan, Kang Lok Chung, Ming Fay, Jerry Kwan, Kwok Mang Ho, and Bing Lee, New York, NY
Erotica slideshow, 1984
Slide scan transfer to digital video
Selection from 36 Tactics, 1988
Epoxy on Xerox
Collection of Ming Fay

This gallery features two works by Epoxy Art Group, a group founded by Hong Kong artists who worked in Lower Manhattan. The name “epoxy” was chosen to represent the hypothetical “gluing” of their Eastern and Western cultural experiences through art. Presented is an archival adaptation of Erotica features a selection of original slides from the ephemeral performance at Red Spot Outdoor Slide Theatre that serves as a historical reflection of the 1989 event. To create Erotica, Epoxy artists conceived of the slideshow by posing a question: “Can eroticism be art?” Bing Lee, Jerry Kwan, “Frog King” Kwok Mang Ho, Esther Liu, Ming Fay, Kang Chung, and Cissy Pao each answered with a series of bodily - and perhaps taboo - images as their responses. In the original display of Erotica, Hasselblad PCP-80 projectors automated by an ABL Show Pro-5 computer, perched from a loft apartment across the street. The loft belonged to Allen Daugherty, who was known as “Red Spot” to Lower Manhattan’s denizens. Originally accompanied by a score from Andrew Culver that played over radio, Erotica was projected onto a building at the intersection of Spring and Broadway in lieu of a formal gallery. Passersby encountered the images via a transformed apartment’s exterior. Slide exhibitions such as Erotica exemplified one aspect of Epoxy’s unique forms of collaboration with each other and artists active in New York’s downtown scene and helped to popularize the slide as an important art form within New York’s urban context.Featured alongside Erotica is a previously-unseen sample selection for Epoxy’s 36 Tactics. In addition to slideshows, Epoxy worked with other ephemeral materials prevalent amongst downtown New York artists, such as the Xerox. 36 Tactics was a collection of thirty-six Xeroxed copies based on the Chinese military treatise The Art of War by Sun Tzu. The Epoxy artists - whose individual names were not visible, unlike Erotica - revisited the 5th century B.C.E. text to offer their own contemporary interpretations of militant messages that spoke to rising internationals and global politics in the 1980s. The resulting images were sardonic responses to Sino- American relations, the global Cold War, and the Mao regime, amongst other topics. The use of an alternative art medium to convey their international sentiments seemingly served to conflate local and global artistic production.In the featured image, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s headshot is accompanied by the text “Fool Heaven Sail Sea.“ The listed military tactic is accompanied by a quote from one of Reagan’s most controversial speeches, given in 1986 in the wake of the United States’ conflict with Iran. The quote reads: “We did not - repeat - did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages - nor will we.”The selection on view was included in Epoxy’s finalized version of 36 Tactics. 36 Tactics exhibited in New York and internationally at three art institutions: as part of the Out of Context exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1987; at Sabrina Fung Gallery in 1988 in New York City; and lastly, at the New Museum’s Decade Show in 1990. The Decade Show, which featured over 100 artists across multiple institutions, is largely cited as the first exhibitions in contemporary art history to center multiculturalism in the arts in the United States.