限华 / CHINESE ONLY
CHINESE ONLY Television Bumpers is a series of six 10-seconds television bumpers.
These short videos reference signs used during a time when local, white-only establishments blatantly refused and restricted Chinese people.
The Chinese Only characters, however, can also be interpreted as “Chinese Exclusion” as the characters 限 and 华 were often used in Canada’s historical exclusion of Chinese people in public spaces from the 1800’s to the mid-20th Century.
These video logos have been created for the grunt gallery’s MPCAS and intended to be presented interspersed in between other artists projects. Five of the logos are in Chinese only, one is in English.
1. Planet
2. Sunset
3. B/W
4. Neon
5. Traditional and Simplified
6. Countdown
Bio
Paul Wong has been creating daring work for over 40 years, pushing the boundaries of conventional cultural stereotypes and art. He has produced large-scale interdisciplinary artworks in unexpected public spaces since the 1970s. His work subverts stereotypes in form and content. Many works are bilingual and trilingual, meshing English, Cantonese and Mandarin codes.
He is an award winning artist and curator who is known for pioneering early visual and media art in Canada, founding several artist-run groups, leading public arts policy, and organizing events, festivals, conferences and public interventions since the 1970s. Writing, publishing and teaching have been an important part of his praxis. With a career spanning four decades he has been instrumental proponent to contemporary art.
Born in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, in 1954, Paul Wong has shown and produced projects throughout North America, Europe and Asia. His works are in many public collections including those of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), and the Vancouver Art Gallery. He is in numerous private collections and is the recipient of several major commissions and grants.
His past works can be found at paulwongprojects.com