Puffy, Prickly, Poured

Anya Tish Gallery is thrilled to announce Puffy, Prickly, Poured, an exhibition featuring new and recent paintings, sculpture, and installation by three U.S. based, female artists representing diverse cultural backgrounds. Opening Reception: Friday, July 15th, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm. On View: July 15th to August 13th.

Featuring new and recent work by U.S. based, international born artists Claire Ashley, Xuan Chen, and Dan Lam.

Claire Ashley of Edinburgh, Scotland, currently based in Chicago, creates a conjunction of abstract painting and monumental sculpture by sewing together expansive swaths of canvas tarpaulin and spray-painting the wilted pile before inflating it into it’s ultimately bulbous form.

Existing in two states, flaccid material and taut volume, Ashley’s sculptures mimic the hug-able shapes of stuffed animals or giant pillows, while paralleling relationships of the human body: inhalation and exhalation, wrinkled skin versus taut, the evolution of a pregnant woman’s stomach.

Claire Ashley received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, and has since exhibited extensively throughout the United States in such institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York; YoungWorld, Detroit, Michigan.

Prior to studying Studio Art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Xuan Chen, a native of Qingyang, China, received a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Inspired by traditional Chinese ink brush paintings and informed by her scientific and mathematical background, Chen innovated her own process of painting by first pouring thick, drip-like shapes of paint onto plastic, individually peeling each from it’s base, and reconfiguring them onto a wooden panel. By physically handling these dried, amoebic forms to create a composition, the paint is transformed into an object to be sculpted rather than brushed.

Xuan Chen received the Dorothy Yeck Award for Young Painters in 2014, and has exhibited her work in numerous exhibitions across North America in such venues as the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; LaGrange Art Museum, LaGrange, Georgia; Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

Dallas-based artist Dan Lam, born in Manila, Philippines, has amassed a series of free-formed globular sculptures that resemble enticing yet hazardous organic matter from a different universe.

Drawing from the curvaceous anatomical geometries of the human body, Lam sculpts each piece from polyurethane foam, allowing the material to be guided and shaped by gravity as if the appendages are stretching deeply, oozing off of the edge of the surface they grew from. Each sculpture is encased in a skin of vivid spikes, gradating in color and size, inciting a paradoxical sensation that both repels the viewer, and begs them to come closer.

Since receiving an MFA in Drawing and Painting from Arizona State University in 2014, Dan Lam has shown her work in exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including ArtVenice Biennale 3, Venice, Italy; Art Foundry Centre, St. Charles, Missouri; 500X Gallery, Dallas, Texas.

Pictured above: a work by Claire Ashley.

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