Sijia Chen 05

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on October 19, 2014 at 7:00pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

This presumably untitled painting has an interesting winding road as entry into the abstraction.  Like the succeeding two works with central vanishing points, all of the elements seem to swirl towards an invisible, distant spot or aspect within the composition.   But the scrawling gestural lines also form meandering detours, so that the viewer is lifted up and through the space.  I respond to the more irregular mark making in this work, which appears to take visual cues from graffiti and maps.  The dark grey road nicely balances the lighter lines and blue-green and semi-transparent blocks. Some more specific natural shapes as well as inorganic forms like the light post on the floating swath of rectangular green humorously nod to a deconstructed landscape. As I came across this piece through a random search, I was surprised to realize you were also the creator of the Scaffold series of photographs.  That work has a decidedly more reserved aesthetically sensibility.