“Facing East” marks artist John Chang’s debut as a curator, but you’d never be able to guess it with a look at the exhibition. The show, which features four contemporary Chinese artists, has an almost shocking aesthetic unity at first glance: everything is starkly monochrome but for a few spots of color.

“It’s dramatic, it’s black-and-white, the colors are subtle.” says gallery director Verne Stanford, taking in the freshly hung work. The effect is powerful, and for a moment it’s tempting to rush to conclusions. Is this fascination with positive and negative space rooted in the artists’ cultural ties to the yin and yang? Does the unified world they’ve created react to—or reflect—the personal and political pressures of growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution?

Zhuqing Jiang

“But the ideation is very diverse,” Stanford says, breaking the spell. We take a few steps, and then a few more, toward a series of mixed media nudes by Zhuqing Jiang. A glint of metal catches my eye, and I notice golden veins winding across the back of an inked female torso. “Look at this. What are these gold lines? They can be snakes, they can be entrails, they can be part of a map,” says Stanford.

The same thing happens as you approach—or, in the case of the sculptures, circumnavigate—the rest of the works in the show. That initial facade of rigid unity ruptures and ideas disperse in all sorts of directions. These artists may have similar points of origin, but their subsequent journeys have sent them on wildly different trajectories.

Chang’s process for selecting the “Facing East” artists wasn’t as scientific as it might appear. He started by sorting through his contacts and calling on artist friends and acquaintances whose work commented on Eastern and Western culture. Those conversations solidified his impressions of China’s recent developments.

“China’s economy is booming, so everybody just focuses on the Chinese market.” he explains. “So many collectors just go to China to see art. So why Santa Fe?”

Long-bin Chen

Chang’s friend Long-Bin Chen, whose sculptures of Buddha heads that are carved from stacks of old New York and Hong Kong phone books sit in the center of the space, had been struggling to find support because he’s from Taiwan. Suddenly in 2008, the same year that superstar Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei was breaking into the international public consciousness, interest in Chen’s work exploded.

Chen’s sculptures are both visually arresting, with their dense grey striations and highly defined features, and ripe for almost endless interpretation. The artist, who moved to New York as a young man to get his MFA at the School of Visual Arts, has managed to fit the profane centers of his inherited and adopted cultures into sacred tabletop vessels. They are mundane, discarded objects made spiritual, overwhelming collections of numbers and faceless names that have been directly uploaded into a higher consciousness.

Biying Zhang

Biying Zhang made a similar move from Beijing to Boston, and the cultural leap was jarring to say the least.

“It impacted her a lot. She saw so many homeless here,” Chang says. “We don’t see many homeless people in China.” The experience inspired a series of paintings of white mattresses forlornly floating through stormy cityscapes. Zhang’s pure protagonists become symbols of inner lives exposed to the elements of the outside world, as well as markers of the stark differences between two cultures. The artist questions the promises of America.

Chang says Zhang returned home to find that China had changed. Economic inequality had left more people in the streets, giving her works new relevance there. “She told me, ‘It’s more crazy than here,’” Chang says with a smile. “So the mattress is going back to China. She’s in Beijing showing a larger mattress piece.”

Wenhao Tien

Wen-hao Tien and Zhuqing Jiang have also discovered unexpected ties between the two cultures. Tien moved from Taiwan to the United States at age 23 to study art, apprenticing with renowned calligrapher Bai Qianshen and master painter Ma Qingxiong. Jiang is an art professor at Tsinghua University, but is influenced by Western art in her work.

The interplay between entering a new culture and studying her Chinese roots allowed Tien to fit calligraphy into Western artistic traditions. Chang notes that her explorations of calligraphy can easily slide between the contexts of her strictly traditional homeland of Taiwan and that of Western abstract and expressionist styles. “I think the Chinese paintings already have that abstract form and shape. She uses that form to interpret her works,” he says.

In Jiang’s case, Chang sees parallels between her delicate line drawings and those of Matisse. It’s a fitting comparison that affirms Chang’s newfound curatorial powers. Not only does the analysis hold cyclical resonance, as Matisse himself was influenced by Chinese art, but the revolutionary shift in art that the Frenchman’s generation inspired has a post-postmodern counterpart in the phenomenal work of Tien and her contemporaries.

Keep your eye out, Santa Fe; these artists may be going in many different directions, but they’re all headed up.

If the front of last Friday’s Pasatiempo seems familiar, that’s because you already met the cover models. Debbie Stevens’ gentle cranes from “Red Crown 3” are on the wall at Mill Fine Art through November 17 for Winged Artistry, Debbie’s joint show with Steven DaLuz. In the cover story, Debbie talks about her outdoor adventures in bird tracking:

“I… research the location and time that a particular bird would usually be at that spot and then travel there during that season. Along the way I will get off the beaten path and discover new locations and subjects. Wind direction and speed will tell me what direction the bird will be standing and taking flight from.”

To learn more about Debbie’s artistic process and efforts to save endangered species, her connection with Steven, and Steven’s “Watchers,” pick up a copy of Pasatiempo today!

John Chang’s paintings are an exploration of cultural identity in the sense that they break apart mass media and known symbols until a newer—and more personalized—meaning is created. Chang describes his art as “reconsidering the boundaries between the personal and the political, between ideas of what is “American” and what is “Chinese.”

Please join us at Mill Fine Art for an Oct. 5 exhibit featuring the work of John Chang, Steven DaLuz, and Debbie Stevens. John Chang will also be curating an exhibit called “Facing East: Contemporary Work from Four Chinese Artists in America” beginning Oct. 19.

Chaos 4

As John Chang steps into his solo exhibition at Mill Fine Art, he insists that his work is not political.

“I don’t want to be so focused on that,” he says with a little smile. “People see, I’m doing this because I have experienced it.”

Chang’s paintings tell his life stories—of growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution, of moving to Los Angeles and struggling with an identity constantly yanked between two cultures. These are personal statements, he says, not political ones.

The works in question are white canvases covered in dense thickets of black paint. They pop with the practiced gestalt of a skilled abstract composition, but then their meshed detail opens to the eyes. Do those swoops and splatters form a string of symbols? Perhaps it’s Chinese calligraphy? The more you try to sort it out, the more tangled it gets.

Just like that, John Chang has placed you, quite effectively, into his childhood sneakers. Growing up in Shanghai, he was exposed to torrents of propaganda that he didn’t fully understand.

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“When I was young in Shanghai… you’d see all the big Chinese characters (on the buildings), but you didn’t know what they meant,” he says. “Once you grew up, you understood, those words attacked people.”

But these jumbled symbols are not just simple windows to Chang’s past; they hold their own very immediate allure. Chang planned it that way.

“Once you grow up, you think, ‘Oh, that’s a bad thing. How can I find a positive way to use that language? To see that those languages are so beautiful and abstract?” he says. “I rearrange, I break down, I recompose it.”

The artist stands in a corner between two different groups of paintings, one hand pressed against the wall, as though crowded in by the memories. To his left hangs the latest addition to his oeuvre: mixed media works that show scraps of English-language newspapers caught in black nets of paint. They’re titled “Chaos” and are inspired by more recent developments in the artist’s life.

Chang moved to Pasadena, California in 2001 to get his Bachelor of Fine Arts after Chinese schooling proved unsatisfying.

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“I learned from the traditional Soviet Union style,” he says. “It’s like, 50 people in the classroom, all doing the same thing.”

Despite his high hopes for success, the Art Center College of Design did not encourage his interest in contemporary art.

“They said, ‘You don’t even know about the history of American Pop Art,’” he explains. Chang dropped out and started showing at a small gallery in Laguna Beach. When the gallery owner abruptly vanished, he worked a job at a movie studio for a while and then headed to the Art Institute of Boston for his Master of Fine Arts. That’s where Chinese contemporary art legend Xu Bing took him on as a pupil. The rest is tattered, splotched, elliptical art history.

The years before Chang met Xu Bing were perhaps the most difficult—and therefore formative—of his life. Chang had left one culture, but didn’t feel like he’d fully entered the other.

“When I’m here, people say, ‘You’re a Chinese artist,’” he says. “When you’re back to China, they say, ‘Oh, you’re American-Chinese.’ I’m always between.” It’s an experience Chang describes as “cultural orphanhood.”

This is where Chang’s earlier fortifications against political interpretations of his work start to chip away. The stories he tells are personal, but the arc of his life spectacularly traces the grand political theatre of our times, from one global superpower to the other and back again.

Chaos 1

And so, in the “Chaos” series, the languages of two dominant cultures interact and clash in a futile battle between brush and printing press, a great volley of black ink.

For Chang at least, this internal—and global—tempest is tied to a peculiar sort of serenity. He draws inspiration from Taoist philosopher Chuang-tze, who taught the principle of wu hua. It says that in this world, which we’re desperate to infuse with a confining social order (or luan), chaos can be something positive and beautiful.

“I have both, Western and Eastern.” says Chang. “I’m glad about it now… I’ve learned a lot.” You get the feeling that this might be how the world can come to terms with its own fractures as well.

Please join us for our artist reception at Mill Fine Art on Friday, October 5 from 5-7 pm. Meet our artists John Chang, Steven DaLuz and Debbie Stevens at the reception and see their works or visit their remarkable work October 24, 2012.

In an effort to foster discussion and understanding of contemporary Chinese art, Mill Fine Art is pleased to be introducing the Oct. 19 exhibit, “Facing East: Contemporary Work From Four Chinese Artists in America.” This group show will bring together a unique array of perspectives, visions, and personal narratives as it seeks to explore the multi-cultured experience of Chinese-American artists. As the title suggests, viewers will “face East” as they move through the exhibit—which is at once historical, cultural, political, economic, and personal. Lastly, this collection of work by well-known Chinese artists hopes to engage a dialogue about what it is like to be “in-between” cultures.

Traditional or Expressionist?

Wen-Hao Tien - Right Hand

The third artist whose work will be on display in “Facing East” uses traditional materials to create modern images. Having moved from Taiwan to New England to pursue her graduate studies, Wen-Hao Tien apprenticed with renowned calligrapher, Bai Qianshen, deepening her understanding of Chinese culture. With this background, the aesthetic qualities of her art have both an “essence” of Chinese culture and a Western expressionist style. In the works that will be shown at Mill Fine Art, Tien “used [her] right hand to interpret the essence of words and the beauty of lines…and [her] left hand to channel the precipitated accidents that oftentimes reveal an even deeper dynamic.” This combination of focused intention and spontaneous discovery is a marvelous cross-cultural experiment. In “Right Hand,” one can see traces of calligraphy overtaken by abstraction.

Important Relationships

Zhu-qing Jiang

Zhu-qing Jiang also uses calligraphic symbols in her work, but she is perhaps more fascinated with abstracting mixed media to interpret the human form. In many ways, Zhu-qing epitomizes the current generation of Chinese contemporary artists who have found success, studying at Beijing Central Academy of Arts and Design and continuing on to a professorship at Tsinghua University. With her art, Zhu-qing “hopes to make people think about the important relationship between human beings and the world.” For a 2008 exhibit at the Huan Tie Art Museum, she displayed an abstract painting that used cassette tape ribbon and black hair clips to embroider an elegant human shape. “Here,” she says, “artist use new technology to present art.” This “new technology” gives Zhu-qing’s traditional designs a Western abstract quality.

Please join Mill Fine Art as we welcome four voices of contemporary Chinese art to our gallery this fall. “Facing East” will open Oct. 19 with an artist reception from 5-7 p.m. and will be on display until Nov. 24.

Four Chinese artists will be showing work in Mill Fine Art’s upcoming exhibit, “Facing East,” which will seek to raise awareness of contemporary culture in China, as well as to explore the popularity of Chinese art in America. Examining issues that range from cultural and geographic changes to politics and economic control, “Facing East” will showcase artists who have experienced both Chinese and American culture, and are able to navigate the boundaries between them through the lens of art.

Urban Experience

Two - Bi-Ying Zhang

One of the four artists whose work will be on display lives and works in Boston, though she is originally from Guangzhou, China. Drawing from both cultural experiences, Bi-Ying Zhang confronts the subconscious anxiety of her urban experience by painting white mattresses afloat in dark cityscapes. The images are haunting, perhaps because the mattresses—a symbol of comfort and safety familiar to us all—are set adrift in a gloomy night of steam, rain, and general loneliness. As Zhang explains, “The [mattresses] are fragile and must make their way through a landscape of threatening events and brutal weather as if they were suddenly pulled from a private bedroom and exposed to the freezing night highway.” In these paintings, she has taken something uniquely personal and inundated it with societal influences and dangers—beautifully describing the psychological tension many people feel is the “urban experience.”

Cultural Debris

Rohan - Long-Bin Chen

Like Bi-Ying Zhang, sculptor Long-Bin Chen made the journey from East to West—growing up in Taiwan and attending school in New York. As one of the four artists who will be showing work in “Facing East,” Chen creates intricate carvings of Buddhist figures out of recycled books that make up the “cultural debris of our information society.” To see one of his sculptures is to witness the transformation of discarded mass media into aesthetic objects and spiritual presences. In one series, he collected and carved dozens of old New York phone books into Buddhist statues, perhaps commenting on the risk of human consumption, as well as exploring the cultural dialogue between what is Chinese and what is American.

Please join us at Mill Fine Art in welcoming these two contemporary artists, who both use their dual experience of culture as motivation for artistic expression. “Facing East: Contemporary Work from Four Chinese Artists in America” will be on display from Oct. 19-Nov. 24 with an opening reception Oct. 19 from 5-7 p.m.

Red Crown 7 - Debbie Stevens

When the mid-March chill settled around the chamisa bushes, wildlife painter Debbie Stevens made a journey to the Bosque for her “evening with the cranes.” She had heard one could rent a blind at the Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River, and so eagerly awaited her chance to see a possible 100,000 cranes nesting and sleeping on the river.

Winter’s Migration

The Bosque, a ribbon-like oasis of flood plains only found in the Southwest, is visited each autumn by tens of thousands of birds, including Arctic geese and sandhill cranes, who stay through the winter. The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is perhaps most well-known for its Festival of Cranes, happening each year in November.

Early Light - Debbie Stevens

Debbie Stevens is a frequent visitor to the Bosque, where she has cleared ditches and created viewing windows enabling bird-watchers to enjoy the abundant wildlife. As a donator to or member of various wildlife conservation organizations, Stevens is dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of these beautiful species in their natural environment. Her March journey to the Platte River was a perfect way to step into the world of the cranes and feel the immensity of their presence.

When Stevens arrived at the sanctuary, after diligent days of planning and anticipation, she was surprised to find 23 inches of snow with the temperature dipping to almost zero. The blind was basically a plywood box with no floor located right on the canopied river bank. That March evening, she waited patiently for the predicted sunset arrival of the cranes but went to sleep without seeing one. However, to her utter amazement, as her “frozen fingers cautiously cracked open the window” early in the morning, the river was crowded with thousands of snowy cranes.

A Few Reflective Minutes

Double Splendor - Debbie Stevens

This story may best illustrate Stevens’ artistic identity and her near-photographic paintings of avian life. As the product of countless hours of research and resource photography, the paintings speak to an awareness of the birds in their natural habitat and a deep respect for their iconic beauty. Stevens is not necessarily attracted to the “special meaning” or the statement behind her subjects, but rather is enchanted by the color, reflection, pattern and shape of a crane peering into the water’s edge. She loves the scene “simply because the pink Roseate Spoonbill looks gorgeous against the green spring foliage.”

When you look into a Stevens painting, can you feel the shattering of the water, the soft down of feathers, the regal kindness within the eye of a crane? For Stevens, “it is hard to explain the haunting call of the cranes. But once you have heard it, you will long to hear it again.” Watching the birds go about their normal activities in the early morning chill, one can run the entire gamut of emotions, excitement being one of them. Stevens’ paintings capture a moment—the moment before a bird takes flight, that inimitable second where the majesty of this wild creature encounters your soul. When you spend time with the cranes through the work of Debbie Stevens, she hopes you can “spend a few reflective minutes in this paradise,” and find paradise in the all-too-real reflections within the Bosque rivers.