Karen Jiang

About

Karen Jiang is an American visual artist. She holds a MA degree in Painting from The Royal College of Art (London, UK) and a BFA degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, USA).

How can we approach viewing and thinking about things we do not understand? In her practice, she delves into a timescale beyond the human. She is interested in the elements that have existed before and will continue to exist after human existence. In her practice, the line becomes the unification and periphery of two opposing forces, inside of which more lines—first literally then metaphorically—divide and unify the space repeatedly towards a suggestion of the infinite. 

Mark making emerging in the canvas vibrate in the space constructed by vertical lines. This vibration has a rhythmic quality that differs: when marks are made by an additive placement of pigment on canvas, forms are suggested through implied positions (the dimension of the rock is sculpted by the perspective lines upon which it sits); when marks are made through a subtractive process of pigment on canvas, fluid forms resound to the surface of the canvas like shafts of sunlight. The subtle shifts that occur across forms created through this additive and subtractive process attempts to examine “[a] time of living with a ‘minus’ way of thinking along with our ‘plus’… by simultaneously considering to make something and to dissipate something” as described by Lee Ufan.

Each phenomenon within linear space is distinctive and irreproducible—highlighting the relative rather than the absolute. The paintings are between stillness and motion, whole and divided, painted and bare, but never either. Line and form are not arbitrarily placed, nor do they depict land or sea. The ubiquitous nature of this encounter is reflected in the seemingly monochromatic palette of each painting. This internal directionality of questioning opens a dimension where the possibility and impossibility of knowing and being outside of the human condition exists.

Her work has been selected to exhibit at BBC Television Centre, London, UK (2024) and GEISAI #21, Tokyo, Japan (2022).

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