Hong Kong-born, Nebraska-raised artist Paul Chan began his art exploration with photojournalism before branching out into drawing, animation, and video. His work engages with fundamental themes including politics, poetry, war, and death. A political activist as well as an artist, Chan is known for his presentation of dualities—violence and joy, utopia and apocalypse, the Bible and the Marquis de Sade, Samuel Beckett and hip-hop.


Paul Chan’s institutional solo exhibitions include Schaulager, Basel, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, New Museum, New York, Serpentine Gallery, London, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Portikus, Frankfurt, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Group exhibitions include dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, 2012, Museum Ludwig, Köln, SITE Sante Fe, Sante Fe, 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009, Torino Triennale, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy, 2008, 10th International Istanbul Biennial, 2007, 2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo and the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. In 2010 Chan founded Badlands Unlimited, a press that publishes e-books, limited edition paper books, and artist works in digital and print form. Chan has lectured and taught in the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among other institutions. 

He is the 2014 recipient of the Hugo Boss Prize. The biennale award honoring the artist coincides with his solo exhibition Nonprojections for New Lovers at the Guggenheim, New York.