Alisan Fine Arts is proud to present Hong Kong Landscapes, its sixth solo exhibition for ink master Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975).
With a focus on Lui’s modern landscape paintings from the 1950s and 1960s, the paintings on display literally follow Lui’s footsteps while he visits the various sites around Hong Kong Island. They include iconic landmarks such as Victoria Harbour, Victoria Peak, Lion Rock, Happy Valley, and the beautiful beaches of Repulse Bay and Shek O, as well as the various hills and valleys in the country parks.
Through these works one can trace the extra-ordinary techniques that Lui developed to meticulously depict the changing seasons, weather, and the various times of day while maintaining the literati spirit of traditional ink painting. Liu was painting these landscapes all the while when he was working on his iconic Zen paintings.
This exhibition is the third in a series of important shows the gallery has planned for its 40th Anniversary celebration this year.
Red Dot Exhibition The Essence of Design – Creating Value Nov 26 – Apr 10, 2022 Wed – Mon, 10am to 8pm
HKDI GALLERY Hong Kong Design Institute & Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Lee Wai Lee), 3 King Ling Rd, Tseung Kwan O, NT 新界將軍澳景嶺路3號香港知專設計學院HKDI Gallery
In collaboration with Red Dot Institute, the exhibition The Essence of Design – Creating Value deals with the importance of good design in the companies’ and brands’ profitability besides its aesthetic, cultural and social aspects. It showcases a wide range of game-changing products and brands that won the prestigious Red Dot Design Award.
As the founder of Red Dot, Prof. & Dr. Peter Zec mentions, “Many people believe if it does not cost anything it is not worth anything. It is clear that good quality is more expensive and inferior quality costs less. Quality has its price, but the price alone says nothing about value. The price simply shows that something is expensive or inexpensive. Only when quality comes into play can it be determined if something is better or worse. The difference and interplay of price and quality allow us to think about the essential role of good design: creating value.”
White Cube Hong Kong is pleased to present His Own Worst Enemy, an exhibition by Damien Hirst.
On view in Asia for the first time, sculptures from Hirst’s acclaimed series Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable feature alongside a new series of paintings titled The Revelations, produced in 2021.
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, a project that Hirst developed over ten years, is based on the fictional discovery of an ancient shipwreck. Realised through a large suite of sculptures, drawings and other ephemera, all created in an extraordinary array of techniques and materials, the series weaves fantasy and historical references to expose the myth and mutability of history, belief systems and art itself.
Sin Wai Kin (fka Victoria Sin) It’s Always You Nov 23 – Jan 8, 2022
Blindspot Gallery 15/F, Po Chai Industrial Building 28 Wong Chuk Hang Road, Wong Chuk Hang Hong Kong +852 2517 6238 Tuesday – Saturday, 10.30am – 6.30pm
Blindspot Gallery is delighted to present It’s Always You, Sin Wai Kin’s first solo exhibition in Asia. Presenting works never previously shown in Hong Kong, chronologically from 2016 to 2021, this exhibition traces the creative journey of the artist, who again and again reinvents themselves to hold multiple identities, and to shift between different ways of being. Encompassing film, face wipes, performance, texts, ephemera, Sin’s practice embraces a breadth of material and gender expressions and the worlding of alterity. The manifold journey of It’s Always You manifests the perils and joys of naming, the cycle of birth and endless rebirth, the inevitability of change, and the ease and grace of metamorphosis. Sin Wai Kin is a carrier bag, a gatherer and forager of characters, dances, fictions, truths, histories, and possible futures.
Empty Gallery’s second solo exhibition with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, Olistostrome, is closing soon on next Saturday, November 20.
Often aiming to reconfigure received hierarchies between audience, performer, and exhibition architecture, Gork’s hybrid practice exists in the slippery disciplinary interstice between sculpture and sound installation. Acutely sensitive to the ways in which the sonic world regulates and molds our sense of subjective interiority, Gork both draws on and subverts the legacy of cybernetics—creating systems of embodied feedback which seek to mobilize the emancipatory potential latent within everyday materials and infrastructures, as well as the simple act of listening.
The visual and sonic (Solutions to Common Noise Problems) landscape is punctuated by a series of sculptures known as Attenuators. At once resembling sacred rocks, greco-roman statuary, and topological formations, these enigmatic structures– dispersed like islands within a reservoir of dry pebbles– function simultaneously as sculptures in the classical sense, and as sonic modifiers for Gork’s psychoacoustic environment. Formed out of felted wool through a laborious hand-needling technique, they continue her long-term exploration of the shared vocabulary common to handicrafts, fiber art– specifically in it’s feminist and post-minimal incarnations– and industrial sound-proofing textiles.
Kay Mei Ling Beadman / Andy Li San Kit / South Ho / Arielle Tse / Eunice Tsang / Yuk King Tan / Huey / Chan x Joey Zhu / Batten and Kamp /
Glossy tiles in shades of pink appear to be airy pieces of foam, while actual foam is concealed by a deceptive brick facade. From afar, white, interlinked chains look like party decorations, but on closer inspection turn out to be interconnected zip ties. A soft, fluffy cushion is actually hardened white cement. A barely visible, delicate wire fence is like a conjured mirage. Subverting expectations and upending perceptions, nothing is as it seems at experimental art space Present Projects’ latest exhibition, Fault Lines.
An equally curious image marks the beginning of the exhibition. A track of colossal footprints vertically scale a limestone slab, seemingly defying gravity and questioning perception. Known as Cal Orcko, and located within Parque Cretacico, just south of the Bolivian town of Sucre, this imposing 90m wall features 70 million-year-old dinosaur tracks. That the wall has survived erosion and fossilisation is a phenomenal feat, its verticality resulting from a powerful tectonic plate shift that rendered it almost mountain-like. Born out of curator Eunice Tsang’s fascination with this image, dinosaurs and geological phenomena, Fault Lines asks how to find steady ground when it’s being pulled out from under you.
Installation view of On the Line by Arielle Tse, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Present Projects.
Essentially wounds inflicted on the earth’s surface, or cracks in its foundations, fault lines occur from displacements caused by tectonic movements, and are vulnerable to earthquakes. Tsang and the participating artists consider the term’s conceptual allusions, from lines serving as boundaries and connections, to the word “faults” referring to both defects and wrongdoing.
Structures and systems are equated to the earth, and their flaws to fault lines. When these flaws are made visible, our beliefs in these constructs are shaken, resulting in a feeling of disillusionment – a globally resounding sentiment at this time. Each work in this exhibition effectively channels a similar sensation, achieving this vulnerability by toying with our perception.
Artists Arielle Tse and South Ho engage in visual trickery by highlighting the contrast between heavy and light, both physically and emotionally. In a pandemic-ridden world, where mobility has been paralysed, Tse’s take on long-distance relationships and logistics mirrors that sense of stagnation. In Lovespace (2021), the name taken from a British logistics company, a box contains pinkish tiles resembling foam packing peanuts that spill out onto the gallery floor, but cast in resin and plaster so they are far heavier. This irony is carried through into her neighbouring installation On the line (2021), featuring two smashed-in telephones made out of plaster either side of a dividing screen with disconnected wires. The artist creates a metaphorical representation of a communication breakdown, conveying the challenges of long-distance relationships.
South Ho. Installation view of Fault Line at Present Projects. Courtesy Present Projects.
The weight of burden further manifests itself in Ho’s Heaviness and Lightness (2021). He covers the gallery floor with deceptively soft, grey foam yoga bricks, resembling those used in pavements. The audience is invited to disrupt the given formation, by throwing the bricks at each other, playing with them and even building their own constructions. In doing so, he transforms a sombre, seemingly heavy installation into a light, playful one. Designer duo Batten and Kamp’s installation Soft Bodies, Hard Lines (2021) originates from a playful point of departure but takes a rather dark turn. What appear to be soft, pillowy, circular forms, conforming to various corners of a singular room, are in fact cast in concrete from plastic balls children play with. Immovable, these sculptures are impaled by rods, almost resembling interconnected pressure points, ready to burst at any given time.
Tightly wound with elegant silk string, objects collected from protests around the world, including paper cranes, saws and water bottles, feature in Yuk King Tan’s Crisis of the Ordinary (2019-21). In blue, red, yellow and white, the most common colours on national flags, the string strangles objects associated with resistance. Similarly, for Secure (2021), she uses zip ties to create linked chain streamers, the insides of which contain lines from Ursula Leguin’s 1973 dystopian story The Ones Who Walk Away from the Omelas. Inscribed with quotes such as, “we can no longer describe a happy man”, combined with the zip tie’s violent and restrictive connotations, the work heralds an ominous, uncompromising future.
Focused on chronicling the past, Andy Li’s poetic Exercises of Time (2021) encapsulates Present Projects’ evolution since it opened in January 2021, employing the concept of a line to do so. Drawing on his film-based practice, Li explains that the frames capture images in a continuous line, which are then projected back as moving images to our brain. He measured the perimeter of the space in film, finding its length to equal 42.19m, or 3 minutes 48 seconds of 16mm film. For him, the space’s physicality is translated through the film reel – a line demarcating the passage of time.
Yuk King Tan. Exhibition view of Fault Line at Present Projects. Courtesy Present Projects.
Tsang proposes another means of measuring spatial relationships with time in her durational piece Grout Job (2021), in which she actively performs her role as both curator and caretaker of the space. Pushing along a trolley, she slowly fills voids and fixes cracks with grout, its blue colour making the dents and damage between the tiles even clearer. The process of mending becomes futile, but she persists in leaving her mark on the physical space, which will remain even after Present Projects ceases to exist.
Visitors need to leave their own impression on Kay Beadman’s installation just to encounter it. Subtle and sophisticated in both appearance and concept, Enmeshed (2021) consists of a barely visible, fine-gauge gold and silver metal net running across the main gallery space, which most visitors run into before realising it’s there. The net posits invisibility as a way of understanding power structures – those so deeply implemented, we only become aware of them when they affect us. Racial constructs and systems are specifically examined here, an extension of Beadman’s PhD thesis, focused on Qing dynasty scholar Kang Youwei’s troublesome treatise Datong Shu, on creating the ultimate Chinese and white mixed race. The intertwined wires denote the respective races, with gold symbolic of Chinese and silver of white. Here lines are conceived as constructs which simultaneously connect and divide.
Batten and Kamp. Installation view of Fault Line at Present Projects. Courtesy Present Projects.
Architect-artists Huey Chan and Joy Zhu reimagine lines in architectural, cosmological and, most prominently, bodily forms in their digital drawing Chasms (2021). Pondering the multiple possibilities of what constitute fault lines, they project physical wounds inflicted on their own bodies, with the splitting of skin analogous to the way fault lines split the earth. In a far more sensuous comparison, Zhu and Chan liken a kiss to fault line. Depicting two interlocked lips, Kiss and the Crack (2021) encapsulates a tension and vulnerability entrenched at the site of a fault line. Yuk King Tan’s photograph Mountain Skin (2020) captures an intimate, maternal moment, as the artist connects mosquito bites on her sons back with ink paint, forming a mountainous landscape. The image almost mirrors that of Cal Orcko, which it’s hung across from, bringing the inquisition full circle.
Intricate and layered, the exhibition features works with minimalist aesthetic flair, belying their con-ceptual complexity. In forcing us to confront the fallacy of our own perceptions, the works effectively evoke a desire to reconsider established norms, resonating strongly with the current cultural climate. As the ground shifts beneath our feet, a state of disillusionment and displacement replaces a meticulously constructed sense of security – the falsity of which we were perhaps unwilling to acknowledge.
藝術家謝恩旗和何兆南通過突出物理和心理層面的輕重對比營造出視覺欺騙的效果。在疫情肆虐的世界裡，流動性已陷入癱瘓，謝氏對遠距離關係和物流的詮釋反映這種停滯感。得名於一家英國物流公司的作品《Lovespace》（2021年）中，一個盒子裡裝有粉色瓷磚，看似像包裝用的發泡膠粉一般灑落在畫廊地板上，實際上它們是以樹脂和石膏澆鑄，所以要重得多。這種諷刺在她鄰近的裝置作品《On the Line》（2021年）中也體現得淋漓盡致。有兩部用石膏製成的電話分別置於屏風的兩側，電話都斷了線。藝術家在隱喻溝通中斷，以此表達遠距離關係中存在的挑戰。
負擔的重量進一步體現在何氏的作品《沉重與輕浮》（2021年）中。他將看似柔軟的灰色發泡膠瑜伽磚鋪在畫廊地板上，就像人行道上的磚塊。觀眾受邀上前打亂已定的形式，把磚塊互扔、擺弄磚塊，或者用磚塊來自由搭建。在此過程中，他將一個昏暗看似沉重的裝置變的輕盈、俏皮起來。設計雙人團隊Batten and Kamp帶來的裝置作品《Soft Bodies, Hard Lines》（2021年） 從頑皮的出發點，轉向了頗為陰暗的方向。看似柔軟、像枕頭一樣的圓體自動變成了展廳牆角的各種形狀，它們實際是用小孩常玩的塑膠球再澆以混凝土製成的。這些雕塑當中穿著杆子不可移動，酷似相互關聯的壓力點，隨時準備破裂。
從世界各地的抗議活動中收集來的物品：紙鶴、鋸子和水瓶，用精美的絲線緊緊纏繞著，這是陳玉瓊的作品《Crisis of the Ordinary》（2019-21年）)。 藍色、紅色、黃色和白色，這四種國旗上最常見的顏色的繩子壓制著與反抗相關的物品。同樣，在作品《Secure》（2021年）中，她將紮線帶串聯起來，上面印有Ursula Leguin1973年所著反烏托邦作品 《遠離歐米拉斯的人》裡的文字，如「我們無法再描述一個快樂的人」。這些文字配合紮線帶所蘊含的暴力和限制意味，使整個作品預示著一個不安定、不妥協的未來。
Andy Li 在其詩情畫意的作品《Exercises of Time》（2021年）中專注於記錄過去，他採用線的概念概括了Present Projects自2021年1月開業以來所歷經的成長和演變。李氏引他的電影實踐解釋道，畫面連續地逐格被記錄，然後在我們的大腦中串連為移動影像。他測量了膠片的周長，它的長相當於42.19米，按時間長度換算等於16毫米膠片的3分48秒。 如此在他看來，藝術空間的物理性通過電影膠片發生了轉化，成了一條標記時間流逝的線。
In 2018, Joseph Chen was sauntering through the street markets in Sham Shui Po when he happened upon a stack of 50 hard drives. The Hong Kong artist bought all of them for “under HK$100” and extracted the deluge of personal images and documents.
That exercise culminated in Shameplant in Glory Hole, a series of performances, a series of performances, a research group and exhibitions from 2019-21 exploring the idea of “second-hand memories”. The latest event was a solo exhibition, Shameplant in Glory Hole, that ran from June 19 to July 17 at Videotage. At the dim art space, one sees as well as enters Chen’s immersive installation, where 8-10 terabytes of “second-hand memories” have been collaged into a psychedelic whole.
Walls are plastered with a mishmash of images and documents, from selfies to song lyrics to travel photos to pornographic images, while the objects in the space offer a glimpse into lives, real or imaginary, underlined by the artist’s predilection for juxtapositions.
Having kicked off his career as a video artist, Chen is increasingly drawn towards found objects, though his interests remain the same: technology’s impact on the way we receive and process information, and the idea of originality in a digital age.
Christie Lee: Why drew you to the images and documents of strangers? Joseph Chen: They are testaments to lives lived. Sometimes I’d see a pornographic image and immediately think: this was likely to be a guy. But then I’d think: wait a minute, doesn’t that assumption reveal certain gender biases? After all, women also watch pornography. As an artist, I’m interested in the ways I can reappropriate these found materials to tell new stories.
CL: How did you conceptualise this exhibition? JC: I am always into correlative thinking when I make art, versus causality. It’s about finding the patterns between things, whether visually or conceptually. The abundance and disorder of materials on the hard drives drove me to chaotic imaginations, inspiring me to build a universe with excessive and maximal elements, not focusing on a specific thing. Hopefully it can open up a variety of perceptions and interpretations.
CL: Who or what are your visual inspirations? JC: Animes, video games, internet meme culture and 80s consumerist culture.
Big Data Big Other by Joseph Chen, Mattress, barbwire, steel knife, rose, expanding spray foam, 2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sze Ming Li..
CL: One of your installation pieces refers to a hospital environment. An impregnated figure lies on a stainless steel bed, while beneath it a pendulum swings menancingly over an ultrasound image of twin foetuses. Could you tell us more about this work? JC: I was reading [philosopher] Bernard Stiegler, who spoke about how a lot of what makes up our consciousness is externalised or coded in different objects. I thought: isn’t ultrasound our earliest externalised memory?
CL: Meanwhile, a few objects in the exhibition are coded with messages. JC: Yes: for example, a headboard I picked up near where I live. When I picked it up, there were already children’s stickers all over it, so I decided to work with that idea. I proceeded to carve some of the messages from the hard drives onto it. You know how we used to carve messages on our desks during secondary school days, as a way of leaving your mark on something – of leaving a memory behind?
CL: But you also installed three spiky plants in front of it, which evokes the image of a gravestone. JC: There is innocence but there is also pain and a bit of absurdity. I like to contrast ideas and visual images in my works.
Unconditional Love by Joseph Chen, Silicone, Steel table, reciprocating rocking motor, LED screen, 2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sze Ming Li..
CL: Your exhibition also intermingles organic and inorganic in a way that blurs the line between the two. For example, you attempted to grow weeds from the hard drives. JC: I want to appropriate objects in a way that appears absurd. That’s why I created a sculpture of a pair of wings that might look like a vagina at a different angle, a dildo that evokes the image of an animal’s tail or a pointed sword. I suppose all this is because I like abundance and disorder, as [they allow] my eye and mind to wander till they decide to focus on something.
CL: Let’s talk about the rather provocative exhibition title. Originating in London in 18th century, glory holes were a way for gay men to engage in sexual behaviour while safeguarding their identity. JC: I am a queer person, so I am naturally drawn to idea. The idea is quite intriguing. You are revealing the most private part of yourself, which is exhibitionist, but you’re also doing it in a way that won’t reveal your identity.Normally, I am ‘Shameplant’, but when I’m exhibiting, I feel like ‘Glory Hole’.
Hard Collage 1-7 by Joseph Chen, PVC sticker, 2020-2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sze Ming Li..
CL: Do you think there is such a thing as queer aesthetics? JC: To be queer is to resist categorisation. I think my art has that inclination, as I like to mix various ideas and styles. I think that queer identity will have an impact, but since queerness is also a sort of anti-identity identity, there won’t a singular definition. As an artist, my works don’t explicitly talk about queerness.
Feature image: Eye, Tail, Bait, Rite, Wing by Joseph Chen, Installaion view from Shameplant in Glory Hole at Videotage, 2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sze Ming Li.
Soluna Fine Art is proud to present Storyteller, a dual exhibition by Bing Lee (b. 1948, New York-based Hong Kong artist) and Kim Ha-Young (b. 1983, London-based South Korean artist). It is both artists’ first exhibition with Soluna Fine Art. While the artists are primarily known for their distinct, witty, and iconographic visuals related to contemporary culture and social concerns, they come from different cultural and generational backgrounds. Bing Lee, who lived in Hong Kong before moving to New York, relays his personal myths and social concerns through his iconographic visual vocabulary, ‘Pictodiary’. While Kim Ha-Young, a Korean artist who continues to pursue her artistic practice in London, speaks about contemporary culture through multi-layered imageries that are inspired by the concept of augmented reality. The dual exhibition will feature paintings and drawings that facilitate dialogues about the contemporary psyche and will open the floor for the audience to explore multiculturalism and art.
Bing Lee (b. 1948, Guangzhou, China) grew up in Hong Kong and moved to New York in 1979. Since Lee launched his “Pictodiary” project in 1983, he has been committed to working on a daily iconographic journal. The comprehensive visual vocabulary he developed while working on this still ongoing project became a significant portrayal of his work, relaying his personal belief and social concerns. As a multimedia artist, Lee transforms excerpts from the “Pictodiary” to paintings on canvas, engravings on wood, graphite on paper, dye on latex, etched glass, mosaics, ceramics, as well as site-specific murals. His works have been exhibited in art festivals, galleries and museums internationally. Lee’s most recent work is a mural entitled ‘Animal Farm’ at Taikwun Hong Kong, and an upcoming project is a mural at Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) in Ohio, USA.
Kim Ha-Young (b.1983 in Seoul, Korea) previously studied painting at Hongik University in Seoul and completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools. Since graduating from the Schools in 2011, she has also completed a Doctor of Fine Art (D.F.A.) at The School of Arts and Digital Industries in London. Primarily painting on polyester canvas and drafting films, Kim often incorporates her paintings into animation and installation, exploring the issues of modern technology and science in her works. She is particularly fascinated by our high-tech society’s effects on the human mind and the process of people becoming ‘characterless characters’. While the controlling, cold, rational, and ‘intelligent’ logic onset by advanced technology makes people lose some sense of humanity and individuality, it also makes them more susceptible to vulnerable and fragile feelings.
About Soluna Fine Art
Soluna Fine Art is a gallery specialising in Asian fine art and objects with deep roots in South Korea. Our mission is to revitalise interest in Eastern aesthetics and philosophy by showcasing established and emerging artists and works of traditional value with contemporary interpretation. Works by artists represented by Soluna Fine Art can be found in private collections and institutions around the world. As well as exhibitions, our annual programme includes fairs, educational initiatives and multi-disciplinary collaborations on an international level.
Image: Left: Honey cone series-HA 02 by Bing Lee, Mixed media on honey cone aluminum, 82 x 62cm, 2017. Right: Augmented Vision-2 by Kim Ha-Young, Acrylic on polyester canvas, 100 x 100cm, 2014. Courtesy the artists and Soluna Fine Art.
A new episode of trust & confusion presents two significant works by the critically acclaimed artist Tino Sehgal: These Associations, on the Prison Yard of Tai Kwun, and This Variation, on the 3/F Tai Kwun Contemporary gallery.
One of the most important artists in recent decades, the work of Tino Sehgal (b. 1976, UK; lives in Berlin) unfolds not by way of the object but by ephemeral constructed situations. Redefining the museum as a place for social relations, Sehgal radically eliminates the conventional art object, shifting the focus to live interconnections—compositions of voices, choreographies, and people, without involving or generating any physical materials.
Marked by his training in political economy and dance, Sehgal’s live works consist of language, conversations, games, movements, and choreographies, poignantly reflecting on the ways society today takes and is given shape. Like no other, Sehgal rearticulates art spaces as a ritualistic environment of social interactions. Visitors often take part in the very construction of the works, which in turn prompt the visitors’ responses, opinions, and sentiments, and carry them to a new place. Thus, the conventional subject-object relation is challenged and redirected into a fleeting production of implication, engagement, connection, and belonging. Meaning and value are thereby produced through the exchange of language and movement, rather than through the traditional operation of visual object and beholder.
Sehgal’s work raises pertinent questions about the mass production and consumption of materials that have taken hold of our contemporary life. With a deep consideration of locality and minimal carbon footprint, a full cast of over 170 people was chosen in Hong Kong through a long process of exchange, training, and collaboration—offering immeasurable community impact and turning the institution towards engagement beyond its usual remit.
Originally commissioned for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, These Associations involves participants of various ages and backgrounds, from all walks of life. Here, adapted for the context of Hong Kong, 30 interpreters at any given time transform Tai Kwun’s historic Prison Yard into a changing and fluctuating live environment. In the 3/F Tai Kwun Contemporary gallery space is This Variation—first presented at d(OCUMENTA) 13—where Sehgal’s most exuberant and musical work opens up dance to be experienced through listening and sensing.
This episode of trust & confusion is curated by Xue Tan with Louiza Ho and Erin Li.
Limited capacity for This Variation in the 3/F gallery space; online reservation is recommended before visiting on weekends and public holidays.
About Tai Kwun Contemporary Tai Kwun Contemporary is the contemporary art programming arm of Tai Kwun, dedicated to showcasing contemporary art exhibitions and programmes as platforms for a continually expanding cultural discourse in Hong Kong. Operated by the contemporary art team, Tai Kwun Contemporary is an integral part of Tai Kwun at the Central Police Station compound, Hong Kong.
Lehmann Maupin Seoul presents Alchemy in Real Life, featuring new paintings by artist David Salle from his Tree of Life series. The artist’s fourth exhibition with the gallery and first with Lehmann Maupin in Seoul features seven of Salle’s newest paintings, created during the course of the pandemic. Born in 1952 and raised in Wichita, Kansas, Salle attended California Institute of Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles, receiving a B.F.A. in 1973 and an M.A. in 1975. A member of the influential Pictures Generation, Salle combines popular, or commercial imagery with images made from direct observation, as well as a range of art historical references to create a personal pictorial language. His work features a sophisticated and highly intuitive approach to composition, one that suggests new associations and relationships between familiar (or un-familiar) subjects. Salle’s multi-layered works do not rely on subject matter alone, however—his paintings pack an immediate formal impact and present multiple points of entry for the viewer. Built to draw the eye through and across the picture plane, they reward close looking and prolonged contemplation.
