Join us for a walkthrough of Michael Asher with artist Simon Leung.
Simon Leung is a project-based artist whose work in various media addresses “the ethical,” broadly defined, as challenge, possibility, and limit. Works include an opera set in Griffith Park; a live/video performance addressing AIDS, activism, and the beginning of queer theory through the figure of the glory hole; a trilogy on “the residual space of the American-Vietnam War;” an extended proposal of Duchamp’s oeuvre as a discourse in ethics; a reframing of Smithsonian site/non-site dialectic by way of Poe; context-specific works centering on the squatting body as heuristic cipher; “art workers’ theater” dealing with the intersection of art, labor, and education; and a 27-year collaboration with the late Warren Niesłuchowski.
Leung has presented work in exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial (1993), the Venice Biennale (2003), the Guangzhou Triennial (2008), the Gwangju Biennale (2018), and Scratching at the Moon at ICA LA (2024). His curatorial projects include You may add or subtract from the work: On the work of Christopher D’Arcangelo and Michael Asher, with Sebastien Pluot (MAK Center, 2017); and The Look of Law, a meditation on where state power meets the psyche in times of endless war (University Art Gallery at UC Irvine, 2006). In collaboration with Sora Han, Leung will return to the project as Before / The Look / of Law in Fall 2026. Leung teaches at the University of California, Irvine, where he is faculty in Art, Asian American Studies, and Critical Theory.
