text by Lin Ping
Created in an intimate scale, the paintings and drawings in this exhibition form a sense of “thing” with their box-like patterns and remind the viewer of physicists’ work pads, revealing a mathematics world. But most of all, this exhibition intertwines abstraction with concreteness by alluding to and combining the viewer’s tangible and imaginative worlds. For Jason Chi- the exhibition’s artist who loves salsa dancing, badminton, and living and traveling between western and Asian cultures- these works are both pure abstractions and pictorial encouragements for free associations.
An intentional gesture to create texture and to suggest the element of time through its layers is the physicality of the picture plane that also provides evidence of earlier paintings. The concept of space intrigues the viewer through the way the small, tangible canvas appears as a timeless and limitless field, implying the vastness of the sky, sea and land. The lines with a taste of orange cutting through spaces are reminiscent of the first sunray of dawn and the dimming sunlight of dusk. They further hint at the total quietness before or after these moments of the day. Other lines crisscross. The themes of space/time, abstraction and concreteness continue in a shape that can appear as a still mountain one moment, and then as a layering of transparent veils, definitively shaped and yet simultaneously defying boundaries. Concretely, the image’s layers are just rubber bands that provide a box-shape for time.
In the drawings, the multiple linear movements convey constant, pendulum-like energy that creates magnetic fields. The traces of actions and the forms from nature and science comment seriously on the issue of existence, but at the same time they playfully create lighthearted patterns. Eventually, the viewer sees how the Tao of nature in Chi’s pictorial world both evokes and governs the rule of the physical world. |
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