AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Lin Shih Pao林世寶 shihpao62@yahoo.com

220E 112th st #C New York N.Y. 10029

Paying tribute to invention and contradiction

20000 telephones assembled into a vehicle

Lin Shih Pao recycles contemporary high level trash – namely telephones - to create a silent paean to environmental protection. Although he is talking about environmental protection, Lin salutes the great inventors for their creativeness in bringing humans ever-higher standards of living. Technological development is vital to keeping the country competitive, but significantly impacts society by imposing costs in medical care, ecological degradation, and energy scarcity.

Lin’s work always involves audience participation. Lin likes to be face to face with the crowd, and typically collects cheap products to tell a story and demonstrate the links between human beings. The artist thus addresses environmental issues, and hopes to move us to make the earth more habitable.

Lin Shih Pao lives and works in New York and Japan. He was born in Taiwan, studied in Japan, and completed graduate school at New York University. Lin’s work always reflects the most profound concepts of Asian philosophy, namely a deep sympathy for human beings and an appreciation of the value of the union of humans and nature. His installations are urgently concerned with communication, and gather thousands of participants to form a huge conceptual sculpture. Therefore, the participants lend a democratic character to his work. In 2006, he collected one hundred thousand pacifiers to form a Christmas tree piece. In 2005, he was invited to make a piece called "Gate of Peace" for the world's fair in Tokyo, for which he collected one million pens. Lin’s work has been collected by many museums, corporations, and exhibited in many international museums.

from Franklin Furnace