My work highlights the mundane visual language of the suburbs. These paintings begin with observations of my neighborhood: home exteriors, plants, and animals that make up my local landscape. I look for subtleties in these spaces, which point to how we inhabit and effect our environment. Starting with my own reference photographs taken on long walks, I use unconventional paint colors and distorted light to explore the line between the banal and the sublime.

 

 

 

 

 

I task myself with finding a new genre of visual expression that is representative of the contemporary Asian geopolitical psyche without the influence of Western stereotypes. One main strand of my work includes taking the imagery of traditional Asian tropes and questioning it in a humorous or insouciant way through the physical manipulation of paint. The second strand involves extensive research comparing contemporary popular images that relate to both classical Chinese culture and paintings.

My work combines different imagistic rules and visual languages to create new dimensions that are almost always located in a “wonder world.” These reflect reality—from personal experiences, to events happening in our surroundings. I place characters in different settings, experiment with space and rhythm, then create paintings that become curious simulacra.

In my current work, I explore the history of colonization by embracing simple methods of crafting the environment so as to emphasize the primitive qualities of the materials. For example, I utilize the fluidity of house paint by dripping it on the work; I represent the absorbency and malleability of drop cloth by leaving it bare and wrinkled. Abstracting images of the African Diaspora allows me to present Blackness in a vulnerable and primitive state, one in which it often isn’t allowed to exist.