Jess Xiaoyi Han, Implosion (2023), all image photography by Cooper Dodds via Ross+Kramer Gallery
Currently exhibiting at Ross+Kramer Gallery’s Chelsea location is Chinese artist Jess Xiaoyi Han’s debut solo show Implosion, a series of her most recent paintings which explore abstract articulations of internal fluctuation and transformation. This new body of work, painted with alkyd on canvas, reflects an evolution in the young artist’s meticulously controlled and expressionistic style —the compositions are increasingly crowded with frenetic arrangements while still maintaining a cohesive and meditative fluency. Han’s luminous canvases, saturated with a vibrant, candy-colored palette, burst with streams of fluid brushstrokes, emanating a sense of dynamic movement through illusionistic space.
Jess Xiaoyi Han, Effervescence #1 and #2 (2022), via Ross+Kramer Gallery
Elements of mysticism permeate Han’s visual vocabulary. Embedded in the dense, disembodied strokes that collectively form ethereal landscapes and swirling environments, a multitude of outlined forms appear just on the periphery of recognition. These vaguely recognizable objects of nature – pearls, planets, tendrils, and spiraling twines – all coalesce in their own dreamlike microcosm. While each color and line remain distinctly defined, the presentation as a whole communicates forms that tumble between muddled, undulating layers, evoking a delicate visual balance between harmony and spontaneous chaos.
Jess Xiaoyi Han, Entropy #1 and #2 (2022), via Ross+Kramer Gallery
Often citing specific moments and psychological experiences as direct references to her practice, fragmented scenes extracted from the artist’s own imagination and memories, Han described one of her most transformative works Dreams of Xihu (2020) to Art Observed in narrative form— imagining herself leaping into the waters of the Xihu river, gazing up at the moon and stars while lying in a blanket of floating seaweed. Han recognizes her artistic influences for the series: the works of painter Agnes Pelton (1881-1961) and the sculptures of Sarah Sze, both of whom detailed the gestural characteristics of nature and the ever-shifting relationship between microscopic and macroscopic perceptions of the natural world turned within. Drawing from these inspirational forces, Han’s canvases are imbued with vivid ripples of energy, color-drenched to the brim, reflecting an internal universe fabricated through swimming veils of light.
Jess Xiaoyi Han (b. 1997 in Dalian, China) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
The exhibition closes on April 15.
Jess Xiaoyi Han, Implosion (exhibition view), via Ross+Kramer Gallery
–H. Zhang
including references of an interview by A. Wang
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Jess Xiaoyi Han at Ross+Kramer Gallery [Exhibition Link]
