The tangram, a dissection puzzle first invented in China in the 18th Century, is composed of seven polygons, including triangle, square, and parallelogram shapes. I have found these basic geometric shapes to be very enigmatic and expressive, thus offering infinite creative possibilities. In this group of paintings, I have employed, merged, twisted, and turned the tangram shapes into unexpected compositions.
The I-Ching, also known as “the Book of Changes”, is an ancient Chinese text of divination and philosophy. It utilizes 64 hexagrams composed of broken and solid lines. Broken lines are "yin" and solid lines are "yang”, and each of the 64 hexagram has its own unique meaning. With the hexagrams as my main visual vocabulary, and armed with color theories developed by Josef Albers, I created this series of conceptually meditative yet, visually active paintings, while simultaneously investigating how different surface treatments affect viewer perceptions.
Over time, I have found myself repeatedly returning to paint on 12x12 square surfaces regardless of the specific visual vocabulary I might be investigating at the time. Therefore, this type of intimate square format must hold some magical power over me. I consider them my “Small but Mighty” ongoing series.
Seal script is a style of writing Chinese characters that was common during the Zhou Dynasty, around 1000BC, when the I-Ching, also known as “ the Book of Changes”, was first created. In this body of work, I am using the seal script characters, which describe each of the 64 I-Ching hexagrams, as my direct visual source. I have scratched in the characters in the framing devices I used in these paintings as a visual clue to viewers, while the center of each painting is a ‘contemporary diagram’ of the specific seal script character, channeling both its appearance and meaning in the context of the I-Ching.
In this body of work, I used color gradient, along with maze-like lines, both straight and curved, to create active optical sensations.
I created this body of work during the intense isolation period of the Covid pandemic. Leaning into my interest in exploring the connection between visual art and music, my goal with this series was to convey a strong sense of rhythm, motion and connectedness.
I exhibited this body of work in my very first solo show in 2019. Growing up in the center of Beijing, I was frequently exposed to unique urban architectural environments. These paintings were subconsciously influenced by my past experiences and depict imaginary interior and exterior urban spaces.
Having grown up in a courtyard home in the center of Beijing, the structures and rhythms of urban environments became ingrained in me. This led me to create a series of paintings inspired by the concept of the “urban” grid, which I titled after Mondrian's masterpiece, “Broadway Boogie Woogie”.
This is a group of older works on paper. I explored color and geometry in a number of different approaches using watercolor and gouache.
