Clint Jukkala

Cosmic Trigger

2013

Victor Wang's highly textured paintings involve thick layers of paint over collaged images from the Tang Dynasty. In "Let Her Go", the foreground shows a modern female figure sitting upon the side of a boat which gives the impression she is wearing wings and about to take flight. Upon closer look, there are various scenes taking place around her in the water - warriors with knives drawn, a jeep in pursuit of some unseen enemy, a cauldron boiling over. Influence by the Renaissance Masters, Titian and Rembrandt for their glazing and layering techniques respectively, the artist builds the surface using heavy paint, swirling and mixing the color on the canvas. The end result is a poetic and emotionally powerful representation of the human form. Victor Wang Let Her Go oil on canvas 48h x 60w in 121.92h x 152.40w cm VWG011 My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences - worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure - which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences. I grew up amongst the sunflower fields in northern China. In my childhood years, I played under the bright, yellow sunflowers with my brothers everyday. China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage. My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China. Although I often gain great pleasure from the process of painting, it is most important to unfold expressively those feelings within myself. Wang belongs to a generation of immigrant painters from China, whose artistic background was defined by socialist realism but took advantage of their skills and broke away from that tradition to create new subjects in the U.S. “When I was a student during Cultural Revolution, Soviet realism art was among the dominant source of influence and it grabbed us like lightening...

Oil and gold leaf on canvas For centuries, artisans and artists have turned to gold leaf as a way to make their creations shimmer and shine. Also many contemporary artists continue ...

Artodyssey "Julita Malinowska's paintings belong to those, which once seen - are never forgotten. The open spaces, sometimes cool and bright, at other times heavily saturated with contrasting light, create a landscape in which, like a counterpoint, we come across a figure – sometimes one, perhaps two or more. The synthetic construction of form, clean contours, and strong divisions are elements which at first sight are the defining characteristics of the artist's style. It is impossible to pass one by and remain indifferent to the subdued harmony flooding these spaces which not totally defined. The drawings, however, are somewhat different. Although they contain the same motifs, at times even the same compositions – the value strategems employed by Julita create a sense of foreboding in a world already balancing on the edge. The painterly and graphic form constructed by the artist is itself thought- provoking . The heightened tones, the light which at times goes off the scale and the almost classic contours lead us to look at Malinowska's work through the prism of classicism and the great art theories of the 17th century. Such references are quite rare in the painting of today and beyond – in art. The search for a language allowing the artist to deal with universal issues and fundamental questions in order to understand the sense of not only art, but also life, has not been too popular a phenomenom in art over the last century. The artist has, however, for the last few years quite consciously defined the sphere of her search. It could first be seen in the diploma cycle of paintings, the summary of her years of study. “The role of the painting defined then and the concious selection of formal sources became the starting point for further artistic exploration, which I have been following carefully ever since.” Julita Malinowska Born in Otwock in 1979. Studied in the Art Department of the University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska in Lublin from 1999-2000, and then from 2000-2005 in the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Received a Sokrates/Erasmus scholarship in 2003 for Wolverhampton University in the UK. Graduated (MA degree) from the Painting Department in 2005 with distinction. From 2008 till 2011 was making Doctoral studies (PhD degree) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In December 2012 defended PhD degree. In 2005 won Second Prize at The Samsung Art...

Dominika Krechowicz is a professor at the Gdansk GUT Institute Works from the series Alians Of Signs were created from 2010 to 2020. The works consist of 20 parts. The composition s...

Artist about his work: BLOBS. THE CHARM OF DRIPPING PAINT Flowing peacefully in the slow current of a narrow trickle between the feeling of senselessness and some deeply hidden ho...

Artist about his work: BLOBS. THE CHARM OF DRIPPING PAINT Flowing peacefully in the slow current of a narrow trickle between the feeling of senselessness and some deeply hidden ho...