NARS is pleased to present Known Unknown Unknown, the next show in our Spotlight series by NARS artist-in-residence J.A Feng.
Feng’s recent oil paintings in Known Unknown Unknown are a continuation of her earnest and bemused desire to personally investigate the primal origins of human existence, through her particular feminist lens.
Her protagonists take on nebulous forms which occupy suggestive spaces. These forms, which riff off of art history, mythology, poetry, cartoons and her memories, play with the sensation of encountering what is not readily recognizable and yet inexplicably familiar. Feng applies layers upon layers of vibrant hazes of color, using each pass as an opportunity to erode certain spatial relationships while refining others, within the picture plane. Visible remnants of a painting’s evolution have been left to lurk beneath the resulting scabrous surface of the painted image. Residual forms, such as a hand, a moon or a bird, beckon for a deeper visual excavation, encouraging and rewarding sustained looking on the viewer's part. The viewer encounters these figures at a particular moment, perhaps meditative, eerie, or celebratory, but most certainly seminal.
Spotlight, curated by Eriola Pira, is a series of solo exhibitions by artists who are a part of the NARS community, started in June 2017 in our new second floor exhibition space.
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J.A Feng (b. 1982) is a Chinese-American painter who draws upon her personal experiences to depict vibrant and colorful narratives that are tethered to no identifiable place or time but instead are suggestive and psychologically charged. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois-Urbana and her MFA from Boston University. She was recently a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a fellow at Vermont Studio Center. She now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.