Kóan Jeff Baysa, a member of PRN, is an independent contemporary art collector, curator, writer, critic, physician, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program – Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and is a member of AICA, the association of international art critics.
KJ Baysa specialises in designing and producing projects and events that bring together seemingly disparate subjects, i.e. art and science, smell and architecture. A contributing writer for the online publications Flavorpill and Journal of Contemporary Art, he has written for Art Asia Pacific, is the Pacific editor for d’Art International (Toronto), contributing writer and editor for contemporary culture periodicals, aRUde, The Royal, and a member of and medical consultant for the KDU, a global network of talent headed by David Gensler.
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.
KJ Baysa has curated shows for the London Biennale, LA International 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, Beijing, Bandung, Hong Kong, Manila, Santiago, Singapore, Cologne, Seoul, and Yokohama. On the boards of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University, Art Omi International Artist Colony, the Asian American Art Centre, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, he has presented lectures at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA in New York and is on the advisory panels for the Chelsea Art Museum in New York as well as the Streaming Museum, Nina Colosi’s cybersite with public exhibition spaces on all seven continents.
He is 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. The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, 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.
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 has a special interest in the role of the sense of smell in health and aesthetics, creating olfactory projects with chemists and artists and collaborating in clinical research with scientists in Los Angeles and Berlin. The research focus is on olfactory stimuli and their potential beneficial effects on memory disorders, specifically Alzheimer’s and ADHD.
One of his medicine-related projects includes consulting for a wine consortium in South Africa to help with their educational and prevention programs addressing fetal alcohol syndrome engendered by the now illegal dop system. He has also been asked to help outfit an ambulance for Darfur refugees.
For more information about KJ Baysa and his ongoing projects, please visit his websites:
http://usartdoc.googlepages.com/
