The Hybrid

The Hybrid: Ying-Yueh Chuang and Yi Chen
APRIL 15th –MAY 15th Plum Blossoms Gallery 555 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 T: 212.719.7008 Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30am - 6:30pm Sunday and Monday Closed

Plum Blossoms Gallery (New York) is pleased to introduce two new artists, ceramic sculptor Ying-Yueh Chuang and painter Yi Chen. The two represent a new generation of Chinese artists conversant with multiple cultures, philosophies, and locations. Against the backdrop of a global art market in transformation, they use art to assert their own personal agency and innovation, exploring forms and shapes that do not necessarily fall into orthodox expectations of cultural authenticity.
Currently based in Canada, the Taiwan-born Ying-Yueh Chuang uses clay to study organic form, drawing inspiration from collections of fruits, plants, bones, vegetables, and sea creatures to sustain a viscerally alien vision. Installed in mid-air, her ceramic sculptures are composed of meticulously patterned details and vibrant color undulations that suggest also a process of translocation through which the foreign is understood by sensual intimacy and familiar environments are transformed or invigorated by the inclusion of the unknown.
Ying-Yueh Chuang earned her B.F.A. in visual arts from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada and her M.F.A. in Ceramics, from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada. Still based there, she has been active on the international ceramics circuit, participating in the 2nd and 3rd Cheongju International Craft Biennales (2001, 2003) and the 1st and 2nd World Ceramic Biennials (2001, 2003), both in Korea, while also participating in the 21st Century Ceramics in the United States and Canada invitational exhibition at Canzani Centre Gallery, Columbus, Ohio (2003).

Yi Chen, born in Beijing and now living in New York, investigates an emerging hybrid human race derived from features promoted in fashion media as being particularly desirable or significant. In Asia, the growing popularity of eyelid surgery to produce the coveted double-eyelid that is a predominant feature of non-Asian phenotypes is one example of how cosmetic enhancement has become conflated with the desire to be other, to be unique, or to be exotic, while in other areas of the globe similar phenomena occur. Yi Chen’s paintings, executed with technical precision and in glossy oil colors evocative of magazine spreads, thus begin where such examples end, imaginatively mapping out the complex manifestations of human desire, insecurity, and self-conception through the awkwardly beautiful and subtly distorted poses of his subjects.

Yi Chen received his B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), Halifax, Canada, and his M.F.A. from Purchase College (SUNY), Purchase, New York. Recent exhibitions include 2003’s Local-Global, a solo exhibition organized by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), and Re-figuration, with fellow Chinese artist Zhang Yu at Gallery 456, as part of the second annual Asian Contemporary Art Week, New York City.