Introduction: An Aesthetics of Dissonance

Paul Chan is an artist whose work transcends any potential boundaries of convention, skill, or intellect. He has applied any medium possible—film and animation, sculpture and typography, painting and publishing—to a sly and exuberant exploration of contemporary life and what it now means to be an ethically directed artist. Holland Cotter is a writer and critic whose seminal writings have nurtured an entirely new field of globally engaged art practices. His language is one of the most finely calibrated instruments for accessing an individual artist’s work, regardless of its locality. Given their stature, these insights by Chan and Cotter regarding their skepticism as to the potency of art are evidence of tectonic shifts in art thinking, and not isolated observations.