doctor curator writer and editor medicine :: design :: cuisine ::
fragrances website: kjb-archive.tumblr.com/archive email:
senseight@gmail.com Kóan Jeff Baysa is a physician, contemporary art
collector, curator, designer, writer, critic, Whitney Museum
Independent Study Program - Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and a
member of AICA, the association of international art critics. He
specialises in designing and producing projects and events that appose
and contextualise seemingly disparate subjects. A contributing writer
for the online publication ArtSlant, and contributing writer and art
editor for the now online contemporary culture periodical, aRUde, he
has written for Art Asia Pacific, Flavorpill, Ctrl+P Journal of
Contemporary Art, the Scent Marketing Institute Newsletter, and is the
Pacific editor for d'Art International (Toronto), Most recently he was
invited as an international fashion journalist to Madrid Fashion Week
2012. As a medical scientist, his interests center around issues of
the sensate body and in the ways that the physical self experiences
and knows the world through the senses; as a cultural worker, his
interests lie in examining the dynamics of subcultures nesting within
larger cultures. As an artist, he is most interested in creating
text-based works, experimenting in all media. Dr. Baysa recently
initiated the SENSEight Series: Come to Your Senses, private curated
experiential workshops on the senses and perception. He 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, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Beirut,
Beijing, Bandung, Hong Kong, Manila, Santiago, Singapore, Cologne,
Seoul, St. Petersburg, Madras, Mexico City, and Yokohama. 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 the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA in New
York, and is on the advisory panels for the Chelsea Art Museum in New
York, Art and Med in Los Angeles, and the Streaming Museum, a
cybersite with public exhibition spaces on all seven continents. KJ
Baysa is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board, and a consultant to
and associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications
agency based in Los Angeles headed by Colin Mangham, a fellow founding
member of MOCA China. He is an organising committee member of MMVR
(Medicine Meets Virtual Reality). 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, 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. 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 creating scents with professional perfumers,
curating olfactory exhibitions with artists, and collaborating in
olfactory clinical research projects with scientists in Los Angeles
and Berlin. He has segued from a clinical practice to focus on
research investigating olfactory stimuli and their potential
beneficial effects on memory disorders.
