As one who hangs down-bending from the side of a slow-moving boat, upon the breast of a still water, solacing himself with such discoveries as his eye can make beneath him in the bottom of the deep, sees many beauteous sights—weeds, fishes, flowers, grots, pebbles, roots of trees, and fancies more. Yet often is perplexed, and cannot part the shadow from the substance, rocks and sky, mountains and clouds, reflected in the depth of the clear flood, from things which there abide in their true dwelling.
—Prelude Vol.4, William Wordsworth, 1850
After cooperating with two group exhibitions (There in 2020 and Half-open Door in 2022), Studio Gallery is honoured to present artist Yijia Yang's first solo exhibition Solace Upon Water, showcasing paintings realised in the past three years. The show will be on view from August 12 to September 17, 2023.
Yang was born in Zhejiang in 1992 and returned to Shanghai in 2018 after studying in the UK. While addressing a series of questions around the boundary of painting, she uses dreams and landscape perception from travelling experiences as her inspiration. Her variations in the use of materials and brushstrokes seek a poetic space on the canvas between reality of dreaminess.
The show title Solace Upon Water comes from William Wordsworth's poem. What kind of view will you see when you are infinitely close to the water? Is it water as matter, your reflection, or an unknown underwater vortex. [1] The fresh and clear water is an inverted sky, in which the stars gained new life. Water's surface is a junction point of dreams, while painting reflects the real world. Yijia Yang creates canvases to the height of her body, trying to 'push' herself and spectators into a perceptual space constructed by the painting.
Yijia Yang's depiction of nature is not naturalistic. In the last five years of practice, she has gradually discarded photographic reproduction of landscape as her subject. Instead, she attempts to capture the fleeting but suddenly enlightened beauty of being in the nature itself—the moment when clouds are dazed by wind, a gleam of sunlight illuminates a tiny leaf. The happiness comes from the haptic experience of touching the wind, water and land. [2] Although a majority of the works originated from artist's travelling experience, the landscape she paints does direct to a certain place, she hopes the oscillation of colours, lines, forms and brushstrokes will bring up the painting's energy transcendence, enabling the internal space of a canvas turns into a place where landscape generates itself.
[1] Gaston Bachelard, L'Eau et les Rêves: Essai sur l'imagination de la matière, CORTI, 1942
[2] Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia: Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1974
Press release courtesy Studio Gallery.
Changle Road 888, 1F
Jing'An
Shanghai
China
www.studiogallery.cn
(+86) 021 3470 0929
Tues - Sun, 10:30am - 6:00pm