For nearly six decades as a practicing artist, Arlan Huang has quietly collected art. While some of the pieces were purchased, much has been amassed through “art swaps,” or friendly exchanges between fellow artists.

Like a confidence between friends, intel given off the record, or a shared history or experience, this exhibition was “just between us.” The phrase evokes the major principles that form the bedrock of Huang’s collecting ethics: that art should circulate outside the nefarious concerns of the market, that it should not seek approval from heteropatriarchal white institutions, and that a secret language in the form of gossip and complaint forges the most precious and intimate of friendships.

The works on view narrated both historic and deeply personal moments. His collection traces his time in the Asian American arts network, Godzilla, and the Chinatown-based collective Basement Workshop. Featured artists included Tomie Arai, Ken Chu, Corky Lee, Alex Paik, Hoyt Soohoo, Bob Hsiang and Martin Wong. As the owner of the frame shop Squid Frames, Huang kept longtime correspondence with conceptual artist Sol Lewitt.

Curated by Howie Chen and Danielle Wu, “Just Between Us” was presented in partnership with Think!Chinatown.

A catalog published by Pearl River Mart and Think!Chinatown with an essay by Danielle Wu and an interview between Howie Chen and Arlan accompanied the exhibition. The exhibition is made possible thanks to support of the State of New York and New York State Council on the Arts. It is also supported, in part, by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

About the artist

Arlan Huang is an artist based in New York. His work is characterized by its play with translucency and opacity, darting between a wide variety of mediums including acrylic paint, glass, and multimedia installations. His abstractions are informed by the conflation of recent and collective memory, as well as everyday life; for example, his freehanded paintings reference his mother’s cheongsams and grapes harvested at only certain times a year in Japan. Taken together, his work probes the possibility of Asian Americanness, or the feeling of belonging amidst feelings of placelessness.

As an active member in Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network, Huang has been a key player in broadening opportunities for Asian Americans in the Arts and Asian American activism more broadly. His murals have dotted various public spaces in New York, and he has placed permanent installations in New York and San Francisco.

About the curators

Howie Chen is the Curator of 80 Washington Square East Gallery at NYU. A founding director of Chen’s, a townhouse gallery in Brooklyn, and Dispatch, he has held curatorial roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1. His writings have been published by Primary Information and Badlands Unlimited and have appeared in magazines such as Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America. Chen is the editor of the anthology Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001 (Primary Information, 2021), a comprehensive collection of writings, art projects, publications, correspondence, organizational documents, and other archival ephemera from the trailblazing Asian American artist collective that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy.

Danielle Wu is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently Communications & Database Manager at Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) and was previously a Digital Fellow at Democracy Now! Her reviews have been published in Art in America, Artforum, Frieze Magazine, and The Offing. Notable curatorial projects include Ghost in the Ghost at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York, with scholar Anne Anlin Cheng (2019) and Water Works at International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2022).

About Think!Chinatown

Think!Chinatown is a place-based intergenerational non-profit in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts and neighborhood engagement. We believe the process of listening, reflecting and celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to work on larger neighborhood issues. By building strength from within our neighborhood, we can shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, celebrate our cultural heritage and innovate how our collective memories are represented. Visit www.thinkchinatown.org and follow on Instagram at @thinkchinatown.

Accompanying materials

• Exhibition catalog (sold out)
• The Amp: Arlan Huang and Howie Chen on Art and Activism
• Press release

Press

• The New York Times: What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in August
• ARTnews: An Asian Imports Store, Not a Museum, Is the Site of the Summer’s Most Surprising Art Show
• South China Morning Press: 50 years of Asian-American art, community and protest celebrated in archive exhibition by New York artist and activist Arlan Huang
• Tetsudo: Between a Storefront and a Mini-Mall, Two Visions of Asian American Art
• WNYC's All of It: Interview with Arlan Huang and Danielle Wu