SHI ZHIYING

In this new series of paintings, Shi continues her still life paintings with stones and gems as the subject matter, in which the “visible” and “invisibility,” the tug of war and integration between the material and the spiritual play essential roles in the inherent logic of her paintings. Compared with her previous works, the artist has incorporated vibrant colors into the overall picture.

With gems and stones of different forms, colors, and textures as the conduit, Shi Zhiying has rendered various figurative, pictorial expressions of the state of material existence. Unlike the scale of the images and objects that the viewer will perceive from these pictures, the prototypes of these precious stones and rocks are initially only tiny, fingertip-like existences in the corner of the artist’s studio window. The painter has to paint these details, which are challenging to see with the naked eye, at an elevated scale, and “translates” the continuous and subtle changes in light, texture, and color brought about over extended periods.

Many of the works in the exhibition appear to have a similar structure at first glance. Still, under the artist’s brushwork, the vaguely different light and darkness, and the differences in texture rendered with painterly gestures and movements, create a very different sense of pictorial volume and breath. Through these paintings, the artist attempts to show the micro-variations of this texture, and to reflect the temporal nature of the creation and dissolution of things in these smooth, rhythmic paintings, capturing the highly gradual but continuous transformations that occur between matter, the picture plane and the state of perception.

Moreover, as the title of this series suggests, Mirror, in one way, indicates the surface on which the object (the gem) of reflection sits: the roundness of the pearl and the coarseness of the stone coexist harmoniously, with the mirror surface serving as a serene lake. In another, the mirror image underscores the artist’s original intention of exploring the external material world and responding to her inner spiritual world through the medium of painting.