THEME: BLACK AND WHITE
- Chen Jiao's Dali depicts the characters for the Chinese city in southwest Yunnan province. It takes a moment to read the characters—the second character is positioned backwards—and they stand out more for their bold form and rich texture than their content, an effect achieved through layering colors and a variety of materials, such as paper, paint, chalk, and blackboard. Chen's use of signage is abstract even as her manipulation of medium creates a very specific effect—Dali has a quality of urban vibrancy about its embrace of the material, allowing a two-dimensional surface to invoke a myriad of social connotations, opening up the abstracted work to many possibilities.
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$35.00
- Chen Jiao's November 7th is named after a date, but features an industrial building, sketched lightly against a square grid. More than the building itself, its form stands out against the blank background, with perspective points and the foreground's boundary clearly visible. Against the front building's side, a slogan is available: “safe production,” painted in bold red characters. The final two characters are each drawn backwards, giving a clue that this is image is not actually meant to be a precise rendering of an actual structure. The markings of light color washes are visible in the background, and the work is dotted with Chen's calculations, leaving building measurements and calculations visible. But Chen is no architect. Trained in oil paiting at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chen leaves the calculations visible as a means of voicing the utility and design that goes into the sketch, asking which meanings remain when the building is described in only its signs.
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$35.00
- The fresh blossom in A Touch of Plum stands out against a desolate grey background of bare winter branches. While the other portraits Yang Xun's Flowers series all depict a supernatural light shining from the center of their subjects, this early bloomer appears woefully mortal. According to the artist, "The pale pink petals are tender and innocent, but in this desolate scene, seem to have bloomed in vain. This defiant but fragile blossom is bound to inspire hope for an early Spring." Yang’s Flowers series was inspired by Song dynasty flower paintings on round fans. With brilliant light and soft shadow, he uses his subjects to portray multisensory memories of attraction, hope, longing or despair.
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$35.00