19 June 2008 to 12 July 2008
11-6 Tuesday-Saturday
Opening: 6-8pm June 19, 2008
798 Avant Gallery
511 W 25th St
Suite 502
10001
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 212.216.9018
m: 646.460.5136
f: 212.807.8268
w: www.798avantgallery.com
Banana Plant 290, 2008 Oil paint on bicycle seating-pad 11 x 8 x 8cm
798 Avant Gallery is proud to showcase Cai Jin – 2008, a solo exhibition by the renowned Chinese artist Cai Jin. This will be the artist’s debut exhibition with 798 Avant Gallery. Cai Jin – 2008 continues to explore the Banana Leaf imagery that has had such a tremendous impact on her artistic trajectory.
Cai Jin was born in Tunxi, Anhui Province, in 1965. She trained at the Normal University in Wuhu, Anhui Province, and in the late eighties studied oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In Beijing she was exposed to western masters such as Vincent van Gogh and Albrecht Durer, who had a significant impact on her work. Yet it was in recollection of her childhood days spent in Tunxi where she spent hours transfixed by the melody of rain drops on her roof and the spreading patterns of mould on the walls that emerged as the predominant influence on her work.
Cai Jin began her banana Leaf series in 1991 after a fortuitous encounter with a discarded bunch of bananas at a roadside. She was immediately drawn to the rotting fruit seeing in its withering veins a beauty that was all too familiar. Painting the banana leaf in a rich impasto style with a range of high-keyed reds imbues the familiar image with a charge of desire and sexuality. She says that she does not choose the color, when she sits to paint the color chooses her. Regardless of her intention the brush strokes come alive with passion, even more so when the delicate lace of subtle greens and blacks enter the field of color.
In the 1990s Cai Jin rose to prominence as the preeminent feminist artist in a field, and nation, dominated by her male colleagues. After a two year hiatus at the turn of the century where she concentrated on motherhood, birthing her first child, she returned to the canvas with a fresh sense of vitality. This new work is a continued exploration of the visual theme that has dominated her career, an expansion on the visual language to be discovered in the banana leaf.
