ASIA
This group of works came from my walks on Canal Street in downtown New York City, through the cacophonous streets of shops with the 18 karat gold trinkets of Confucius, Jesus, and Mercedes logos, industrial junks, mounds of fruits and fishes, and Pearl Paint art supply store(now gone) near Broadway.
This part of lower Manhattan must have been idyllic farmlands when Europeans first arrived in their costumes centuries ago. Now this multi-ethnic area is a place brimming with refreshingly uninhibited life force devoid of self-consciousness or social protocol where people's frenzied lives are precariously hanging in the balance. A tantalizing mirage of our ever becoming ephemeral world.
At the Buddhist Temple of America Inc., there is a sign in the shrine under the smiling Kwan Yin (the Bodhisattva of Compassion) with Gladiolus, incense, and Mazola Corn Oils, which announces in Chinese idiograph "Watch for pick-pockets," and a donation slot with a big arrow under, the point of procreation in our body. *The literal translation of the word Kwan Yin (觀音) or Kwan Se Eum (觀世音) is "Observe the sounds of the world."
In our uprooted time of rapidly disappearing regional colors, and the homogenizing force of globalization, these are my personal notes on changing times and scenaries. I, as a mere strand in infinite Indra's Net, a hyphen between two disparate worlds.
I took photographs of things I saw on Canal Street which runs through Chinatown and Little Italy and down into the Holland turnel, with cheap mass-produced classical Asian iconographies such as mythological fruit trees, fishes & amphibians, and white bearded mountain sages from the old tales I heard in my childhood.
I worked with those photographs obliterating their background with gray paint exposing only the image I wanted to use. Straightforward snapshots with their digital grains made more sense to me, documenting our time without altering with my hands. And I paired those disparate images as they clicked and made sense in my memory chamber.
Painting as an act of muting, or painting the space between two thoughts like the way music happens between the musical notes.
*I added some footnotes on my works here, since images resonate different things in each cultural traditions.
This group of works came from my walks on Canal Street in downtown New York City, through the cacophonous streets of shops with the 18 karat gold trinkets of Confucius, Jesus, and Mercedes logos, industrial junks, mounds of fruits and fishes, and Pearl Paint art supply store(now gone) near Broadway.
This part of lower Manhattan must have been idyllic farmlands when Europeans first arrived in their costumes centuries ago. Now this multi-ethnic area is a place brimming with refreshingly uninhibited life force devoid of self-consciousness or social protocol where people's frenzied lives are precariously hanging in the balance. A tantalizing mirage of our ever becoming ephemeral world.
At the Buddhist Temple of America Inc., there is a sign in the shrine under the smiling Kwan Yin (the Bodhisattva of Compassion) with Gladiolus, incense, and Mazola Corn Oils, which announces in Chinese idiograph "Watch for pick-pockets," and a donation slot with a big arrow under, the point of procreation in our body. *The literal translation of the word Kwan Yin (觀音) or Kwan Se Eum (觀世音) is "Observe the sounds of the world."
In our uprooted time of rapidly disappearing regional colors, and the homogenizing force of globalization, these are my personal notes on changing times and scenaries. I, as a mere strand in infinite Indra's Net, a hyphen between two disparate worlds.
I took photographs of things I saw on Canal Street which runs through Chinatown and Little Italy and down into the Holland turnel, with cheap mass-produced classical Asian iconographies such as mythological fruit trees, fishes & amphibians, and white bearded mountain sages from the old tales I heard in my childhood.
I worked with those photographs obliterating their background with gray paint exposing only the image I wanted to use. Straightforward snapshots with their digital grains made more sense to me, documenting our time without altering with my hands. And I paired those disparate images as they clicked and made sense in my memory chamber.
Painting as an act of muting, or painting the space between two thoughts like the way music happens between the musical notes.
*I added some footnotes on my works here, since images resonate different things in each cultural traditions.
