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.

A word from The Artist

I was born in a “satellite city,” a place with lots of factories and warehouses for kids to play in. During my idle time (which was most of the time during my childhood) I wandered around the silent corners a lot, whiling away my days. At the granary, for example, I would watch the farmers drying grain on vast fields, and then wait for the sparrows to come and eat it; I would find two pieces of flint from the shoolyard’s rockpile to bring home; or I would take long walks along newly discovered trails and then try to find my way home before sunset… I loved killing time like this. But I never imagined that that such an idle childhood would help me construct such a rich inner world. The deserted riverbank, the playground corner, the shade under the trees - those places were paradise in my mind.

I want to recreate that paradise in my paintings, without any disguise, glorification or mystification, just the bare truth. And I hope that this truth will move those who share my experience.