Arlan Huang "Most Violet : Paintings 2003 - 2008"
Walter Randel Gallery
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Walter Randel Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of paintings by Arlan Huang, a five-year survey of the artist’s work. Arlan Huang is an accomplished and expressive colorist. Through the vigorous examination of tint underlying the very tracks of his brushwork, he envisions the act of painting as a lyrical, harmonious and whole moment within an exceptional, mindful zone.
Mr. Huang is a painter and a glass artist. His permanent public commissions in glass in New York City include Suddenly Laughter: Reflections from Within a Zen Rock Garden at the Jacobi Medical Center, American Origins at P.S. 152, and Wall of Honor for the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (in progress). If these works in glass demonstrate the artist’s cooperative and collegial spirit, the distinctive paintings presented in this exhibition afford a privileged view of the more personal side of his creative focus.
Huang describes a “humm” that flows through him and envelopes his senses when he paints. “If I am lucky, it is the song that gives clear and luminous meaning to my passion for art.” What is commonly called Qi — life force and energy— for Huang translates more specifically as “breath,” the vital tool he has mastered and refined through his glass-blowing, and the force that informs all his creative efforts.
In his painted oeuvre, Huang’s brush becomes an extension of his very breath. He skillfully “breathes” boundless energy into his interlacing lines and colors to produce a visual account of the struggle, profundity and fluidity central to his spirit. His painted surfaces alternate rhythmically between dense opacity and near transparency; passages dominated by thick impasto, at times glistening with a metallic sheen, contrast markedly with areas of subtle, atmospheric washes of color. These paintings distill a visceral, tender spirituality. The work, abstracted from and elevated above culture or the continuity of any specific national tradition, is in essence a painterly Esperanto.
Media
Schedule
from October 30, 2008 to December 06, 2008
Opening Reception on 2008-10-30 from 18:00 to 20:00
Artist(s)
Reviews
Arlan Huang's paintings are a fantasy of color as are his glass works. I really felt the dramatic energy of his work in the large canvases as well as the deeply personal message in the glass works installation on the floor. A beautiful show all together.