November 24, 2015
Ling Jian’s Nature Chain
I love Ling Jian for his suave, sultry and visually tricked-out paintings of impossibly waif vixens and freaky deaky shark porn. Yep, the Chinese painter and provocateur makes insanely killer compositions of great whites fornicating, alchemical canvases that teem with scantily clad sexpots and sassy symbology that will make your taste filters bristle.
In his latest exhibit, at the always kickass Klein Sun Gallery in Chelsea, you see Ling riffing on art history and philosophy, referencing things like surrealism, Taoism, feminism, and even evolutionary biology; all replete with metaphysical heft, subtle cheekiness, and an inventive combo of chaos and control. Titled Nature Chain, Ling unloads visual zings of shattered skulls, loamy hungers of the flesh and portraits of pretty PLA soldier girls. Mashing up critical theory, feminism and a touch of fetishism, we see racy renderings of the female figure, alabaster skin beauty queens in skimpy undies, rail thin bods and blissed out dispositions.
Ling’s whirling-dervish depictions of copulating sea creatures and their alien-like genitalia reveals his fixation with the aquatic life and sexual symbolism, weaving together subplots that may be semi-psychotic but nevertheless intriguing and enlightening (in a Nat Geo Wild kind of way). Ling’s art is expertly infused with intense hues, hyper-real texture, haptic qualities and bucketloads of zest. The exhibit allows you to grasp how he integrates a multitude of schools and tools—neo-Dada, Confucian classics, proprietary techniques, and hybrid aesthetics—to arrive at a number of gnarly niches and exquisite optics while commenting on China’s ongoing artistic and socio-economic upheavals.
launch gallery
Check out the paint-slinger’s sizzling works at Klein Sun Gallery — 525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011 T: 212-255-4388. On Now through December 23, 2015 kleinsungallery.com/artists/
Images courtesy of Klein Sun Gallery + Ling Jian
Special thanks to Vera Lee, Eli Klein + Casey Burry
text by: Cody Ross
Email
No comments:
Post a Comment