Upcoming Exhibition
Bouie Choi, Chu Chu, Jia Sung: Hybrid Nature
09 Jan - 01 Mar | 2025
Choi, BouieChu ChuSung, Jia Opening Reception | 9 January 2025, Thursday, 6pm-8pm | New York
Introduction
Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to present Hybrid Nature, an exhibition featuring artists Bouie Choi, Chu Chu, and Jia Sung. Although the three artists’ artworks and processes differ, they all explore forms of hybridity, both in the themes at play within them and the mediums they use. Hong Kong-based Bouie Choi is known for her use of reclaimed wood as a material, manipulating and then painting on the surface to create object-like works. Chu Chu takes the natural world as her subject in her photography-calligraphy works, increasingly blending the two practices in her various bodies of work. Jia Sung frequently incorporates embroidered elements into her paintings; interestingly, hybrid figures, part-human and part-animal, often populate her works as she delves into folkloric traditions and tropes.
In her new series of work for this exhibition, Bouie Choi decided to take a more intuitive, expansive approach to her artwork process. Rather than relying on pre-determined subject matter (often plucked from daily news and personal experiences in Hong Kong), she instead focused on trees – in particular palm trees – portraying them as ‘witnesses and the ‘threads’ that connect us all under global challenges’. In contrast to the widely planted hybrid palms used in plantations, the starting point for this series was an article that described how the seeds of the extinct Judean Palm tree—2,000-year-old date palm seeds—were uncovered and revived. The ‘new’ tree was named Methuselah by Dr. Elaine Solowey, after the biblical character known for his longevity, and the idea of this history-defying living being appealed to Choi as a natural, hidden observer.
The artist states: “I see wood as an organism, not merely a plane carrying the energy flow and visualization of artistic intuition. It is more than a material; it is intimately connected to mankind. Wood carries the weight of mythical moments, intertwining with our lives in ways that are sentimental, political, climatic, and spiritual. It is also my witness of how I synchronized into the flow of collective consciousness locally and globally in recent years.” As a result, Choi’s imagery in this new body of work includes imagery from both local and global sources. The Heavy Lightness depicts a vast underwater scene with a diver descending toward a whale; a shoreline with trees appears behind floating bubbles, as if submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Intimate and at times disorienting, her work draws the viewer into a world in flux, where the ever-present trees stand as silent witnesses.
Trees and other natural flora are also common themes in the work of Chu Chu. Inspired by Chinese philosophy, classical literature and Chinese solar terms, her works combine photography, calligraphy and painting. This exhibition includes works that span Chu’s career to date, from her earlies series of tree branches with subtle calligraphy in the shadows, to her latest photography works laden with colored script. Also included are several diptychs from her ongoing series 72 Climates, which represents the subtle change of weather according to the movements of the solar system. The paired photographs and paintings highlight the dialogue between the artist’s two creative practices.
City-Twelve Months Ritual Letter is a work from Chu Chu’s Invisible cities series, where she takes text from both Chinese and Western literature and writes them in her flowing calligraphic script. The text used for this piece, called 'Calligraphy of Month Ritual Letter', is a work by the calligrapher Suo Jing of the Western Jin Dynasty, from one of the most famous running script model books; it describes changing sentiments during various months of the year. In this piece Chu adds island-like forms that float above the surface of her calligraphy; through this addition of poetic interpretation, she creates a space where the real and virtual simultaneously alternate and converge.
In contrast, Jia Sung’s works are figurative, and draw from the Chinese zhiguai (‘strange tales’) tradition. Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, she uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert conventional archetypes of femininity, queerness, and otherness. According to the artist,
“The genre of ‘strange tales’ cannot be translated directly through the lens of horror — the supernatural, the monstrous, the spiritual, seep into the tidy confines of ordinary existence, often humorous, arbitrary, smearing at the boundaries of our reality and then slinking away just as rapidly… Hybrid figures, part-human, part-animal, playact domestic and social roles with each other, make halfhearted attempts at assimilation, reverse roles and swap parts (both anatomy and persona-wise.) They go to school, pose together, fight, court, pray, eat at table and each other.”
The animal/human hybrids in Jia Sung’s work speak to the performative nature of selfhood, and often in her case, of femininity. Tiger Rider depicts two human/tiger hybrids set against embroidered clouds; the scene looks as if it were plucked from an ancient folk tale. Underlying the playfulness of the work is the notion of control and power that humans exert over animalia and nature. In this series of works, “our imagined dynamic of subjugation with nature and nonhuman is reflected, dissolved, mis/redirected.”
In her new series of work for this exhibition, Bouie Choi decided to take a more intuitive, expansive approach to her artwork process. Rather than relying on pre-determined subject matter (often plucked from daily news and personal experiences in Hong Kong), she instead focused on trees – in particular palm trees – portraying them as ‘witnesses and the ‘threads’ that connect us all under global challenges’. In contrast to the widely planted hybrid palms used in plantations, the starting point for this series was an article that described how the seeds of the extinct Judean Palm tree—2,000-year-old date palm seeds—were uncovered and revived. The ‘new’ tree was named Methuselah by Dr. Elaine Solowey, after the biblical character known for his longevity, and the idea of this history-defying living being appealed to Choi as a natural, hidden observer.
The artist states: “I see wood as an organism, not merely a plane carrying the energy flow and visualization of artistic intuition. It is more than a material; it is intimately connected to mankind. Wood carries the weight of mythical moments, intertwining with our lives in ways that are sentimental, political, climatic, and spiritual. It is also my witness of how I synchronized into the flow of collective consciousness locally and globally in recent years.” As a result, Choi’s imagery in this new body of work includes imagery from both local and global sources. The Heavy Lightness depicts a vast underwater scene with a diver descending toward a whale; a shoreline with trees appears behind floating bubbles, as if submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Intimate and at times disorienting, her work draws the viewer into a world in flux, where the ever-present trees stand as silent witnesses.
Trees and other natural flora are also common themes in the work of Chu Chu. Inspired by Chinese philosophy, classical literature and Chinese solar terms, her works combine photography, calligraphy and painting. This exhibition includes works that span Chu’s career to date, from her earlies series of tree branches with subtle calligraphy in the shadows, to her latest photography works laden with colored script. Also included are several diptychs from her ongoing series 72 Climates, which represents the subtle change of weather according to the movements of the solar system. The paired photographs and paintings highlight the dialogue between the artist’s two creative practices.
City-Twelve Months Ritual Letter is a work from Chu Chu’s Invisible cities series, where she takes text from both Chinese and Western literature and writes them in her flowing calligraphic script. The text used for this piece, called 'Calligraphy of Month Ritual Letter', is a work by the calligrapher Suo Jing of the Western Jin Dynasty, from one of the most famous running script model books; it describes changing sentiments during various months of the year. In this piece Chu adds island-like forms that float above the surface of her calligraphy; through this addition of poetic interpretation, she creates a space where the real and virtual simultaneously alternate and converge.
In contrast, Jia Sung’s works are figurative, and draw from the Chinese zhiguai (‘strange tales’) tradition. Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, she uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert conventional archetypes of femininity, queerness, and otherness. According to the artist,
“The genre of ‘strange tales’ cannot be translated directly through the lens of horror — the supernatural, the monstrous, the spiritual, seep into the tidy confines of ordinary existence, often humorous, arbitrary, smearing at the boundaries of our reality and then slinking away just as rapidly… Hybrid figures, part-human, part-animal, playact domestic and social roles with each other, make halfhearted attempts at assimilation, reverse roles and swap parts (both anatomy and persona-wise.) They go to school, pose together, fight, court, pray, eat at table and each other.”
The animal/human hybrids in Jia Sung’s work speak to the performative nature of selfhood, and often in her case, of femininity. Tiger Rider depicts two human/tiger hybrids set against embroidered clouds; the scene looks as if it were plucked from an ancient folk tale. Underlying the playfulness of the work is the notion of control and power that humans exert over animalia and nature. In this series of works, “our imagined dynamic of subjugation with nature and nonhuman is reflected, dissolved, mis/redirected.”