Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present “As Far as the Eye Can Feel,” an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist, J.A Feng. Feng’s works explore the painted image and its possibilities.
In her new body of work, “As Far As the Eye Can Feel,” Feng celebrates paint’s capacity to render poetic moments of tenderness, vulnerability, humor and triumph in creation myths. Vibrant scenic spaces are populated by various luminous entities. Seemingly singular instants depicted hint at transformation to come, with greater cycles, systems and external forces at play. Progressions between dichotomies of loss and renewal, manmade and organic, light and darkness, nobility and awkwardness, distinctive and commonplace feature in the works.
As is typical of her process, the artist begins paintings with simple sketches or visual prompts. She approaches each piece with an openness to the resolved image, leaving herself room to figure out the content and inner logic of a painting as she goes. Working in an additive process by building and amending color and imagery in layers, the artist walks a delicate line between specificity and ambiguity in her paintings. The resultant surface and physicality of her paintings embodies the time and energy spent in search of meaning and the viewer is invited to partake.
What appears at first glance to be one thing may upon prolonged looking reveal itself be something completely different than first presumed. In her searching, she discovers and depicts literal and metaphorical parallels between nameable but disparate subject matters.
In "No Island, 2" separate desert island-presenting forms, each complete with a token palm tree, upon further examination reveal themselves to be lemon halves, trailing lemon peels in a corkscrew pattern (a nod to the peeled lemons of 17th century Dutch still lifes), to intimately touch tips beneath the watery surface. In "The Sticky Grid," what seems like an ethereal fuschia cloud mass embedded with x’s and o’s being carried upon the wind, depicted in the context of a sunrise or sunset, is arranged in such a way as to coalesce into the form of an atmospheric, celestial pineapple. When read from top to bottom, it contains a series of small stills, of a sunset progressing to a sunrise.
Recurring circular loops, spirals and meandering waves propose that our experience of time does not necessarily progress linearly, and at times incoherently. In "Siblings," where there should be a convex spiraled shell for the snail in the foreground, there is instead an assemblage of elements in its place: a cresting wave that recedes into the picture plane and the moon as the locus point for the night sky to spiral off farther away into space. It would be natural to expect the sky to pictorially exist behind the wave, but upon further examination there is instead a spatial contradiction: according to the the implied spiral line, the outermost (and therefore closest) layer of the wave actually melds into the same plane as the farthest layer of the night sky.
It is within these painted spaces such as these that Feng asks the human eye to exercise its own unique dual nature, to perceive such depths and distances, and in doing so experience the emotional magnitudes which the medium of painting still conveys so very well.
“As Far as the Eye Can Feel,” is dedicated in loving memory of the artist’s father, Albert Shih-hung Feng (1944-2021).
J.A Feng (b. 1982, Champaign, IL) received a BFA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, IL) and an MFA from Boston University (Boston, MA). Recent exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and 12.26 Gallery (Dallas, TX). Feng’s works have been included in solo and group exhibitions at Craig Krull Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY); Agency Gallery (Brooklyn, NY); Centotto Gallery (Brooklyn, NY); Gallery Korea of the Korean Cultural Center (New York, NY); Commonwealth Gallery (Boston, MA); Huret & Spector Gallery, Emerson College (Boston, MA); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Madison, ME). Her work has been featured in publications such as 7x7 and Outback Arthouse. Feng lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
J.A Feng’s exhibition is on view at the gallery May 26 through June 25, 2022. There will be a reception from 2-5pm on Thursday, May 26, 2022.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday from 10-5. For additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 310-559-0100. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034 in the Culver City area of Los Angeles between Venice Blvd. and Washington Blvd., just south of the 10 Freeway.