Come to Your Senses: An Evening with Physician and Curator Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.

Image by Daniel Margulies at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, May 2009.

Image by Daniel Margulies at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, May 2009.

Date: Friday, May 21st
Time: 8pm
Admission: $5

Phantasmaphile presents Come to Your Senses, an evening with physician and international curator extraordinaire, Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D.

Come to Your Senses is an image-rich presentation that looks at a decade of curatorial practice, informed by Dr. Baysa’s medical background, that centers on the sensate human body as viewed systematically through its twelve cranial nerves, eight senses, and specific organ systems.

Kóan Jeff Baysa, M.D. is an international curatorial advisor who builds new audiences and markets through innovative contexts. He bridges art and science with credentials as a physician, fragrance researcher, medical suspense and nonfiction writer, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program - Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and member of AICA, the association of international art critics. Dr. Baysa has curated shows for the London Biennale, LA International Biennial, Chinese Biennial, Whitney Museum, Canon Corporation, The United Nations, and has organised and participated in art events throughout the US and in Paris, Cork, London, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Beijing, Bandung, Hong Kong, Manila, Santiago, Singapore, Cologne, Seoul, St. Petersburg, Hanoi, Chennai, Mexico City, and Yokohama. He has organised art events in parallel with Art Basel Miami and the Frieze Art Fair.

On the boards of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University and the Art Omi International Artist Colony, he has presented lectures at NextMed in California, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and MoMA in New York. He is on the special advisory board for the Chelsea Art Museum and is a creative advisor for 3 Legged dog, a media and theater group, both in New York, and is an associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications agency based in Los Angeles.

He has written for Flavorpill and Art Asia Pacific, is the Pacific editor for d’Art International (Toronto), and is a contributing writer and art editor for the contemporary culture periodical aRUde (New York), contributing writer for THE magazine (Los Angeles), guest curator for the online publication Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art (Asia) and critic-reviewer for the online art journal ArtSlant (International). He has recently lectured at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and the Anthenaeum in La Jolla, California, and has been invited to lecture at the Carnegie Institute in Washington DC, and universities in Hanoi, Vietnam, Bodrum, Turkey, and Poznan, Poland.

The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, in 2007 he received a Ford Foundation grant to lecture on contemporary curatorial practice at the Hanoi University of Culture in Vietnam and conducted a survey of contemporary art in south and north Vietnam. In March 2009, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on the curatorial process from his unique perspective as a physician-curator, at Zayed University campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Born and raised in Hawaii and completing his medical training at UCSF with a fellowship in allergy and clinical immunology, Dr. Baysa divides his time between New York and Los Angeles. While practicing medicine in Hawaii he was an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. With a special interest in the role of the sense of smell in health and aesthetics, he is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board. Still an active physician, Dr. Baysa has shifted from a clinical practice to focus on independent clinical research investigating olfactory stimuli and their potential beneficial effects on memory disorders in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD.

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