|
The June Kelly Gallery is
pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by artist and poet
Su-Li Hung - seductive, colorful abstractions of trees and flowers
that serve as metaphors for the cyclical nature of our lives.
The exhibition will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer
Street, on Thursday, June 26. The work will remain on view
through July 31.
Few things are as beautiful
as trees and flowers, so it s no surprise that they ve attracted the
attention of artists from ancient times to the present. Beyond
its sheer beauty, nature offers artists vast opportunities to
experiment with color and form.
Hung says, I have been a
serious birdwatcher since my college days. When the birds were
gone from my binoculars, I saw the leaves, the tree, the wind, and
the blue sky. Then I started to examine the trees and leaves.
They are so beautiful! I painted them all, trees, birds, and
butterflies, symphonies of our precious natural world. Hung s
work reflects her passion for the abstraction in nature.
Especially in winter, she says, when trees lose their leaves, a
wonderful pattern of tangled branches emerges, and the sky is
revealed in this tangle as a mosaic of colorful tiles of light held
firmly in the trees grip.
Throughout her years as a
painter and poet, Hung repeatedly returned to the subject of
flowers, either as still lifes or as elements in compositions where
they seemed much like portraits, given their emotional resonance.
Hung sees beauty in the tree itself -- in the strength of its trunk,
the limitless variety in the shape of its leaves, its bark, rough or
perhaps smooth, and in the remarkable skeletal appearance of its
branches when the leaves fall. Trees have been a principal
focus of her work since the 1990s an enduring, passionate interest
in the abstraction she sees in trees in all their permutations.
The tree grows, leaves come, go, and return, evoking for me new
inspiration with each season, Hung says.
Hung has used diptychs with
some paintings to contrast the dominant presence of the tree itself
and the hypnotic tracings of the branches against the sky with the
delicacy and uniqueness of a single leaf, in which she says, I see
a map, the wind, the air, the seasons.
Hung s approach to
representational painting is elegant, welcoming, and direct as she
embodies a focused approach to medium and method. She often
paints images repeatedly because, regardless of the subject at hand,
her genuine interest lies in the relationship between observation,
appropriation, and reproduction. The pictorial representation
and creativity inherent in her visual statements suggest a
considerable impact of Buddhist theories of consciousness devoid of
poetic and political meanings, yet reflective of the intertwined
relationship between art, nature, and Chinese cultural identity.
Hung s works have been
shown in many one-person and group exhibitions in the United States,
Asia, and Europe. Thirty-one books of her poetry and essays
have been published in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Hung was born in Taiwan and
lives and works in New York. She is a graduate of the National
Taiwan University in Taipei and also studied at the Art Students
League and the National Academy of Fine Arts in New York.
Hung s work is represented in numerous collections worldwide,
including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fogg Museum at Harvard
University, the British Museum In London, the National Museum of
Fine Art in Hanoi, the National Museum of History in Taipei, the New
York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Alliance Capital
Management, New York.
|
