Let Legibility in Artwork Be Damned

The second time I noticed the exhibition Leah Ke Yi Zheng at David Lewis gallery, I introduced the poet Laura Mullen, who was visiting briefly from out of city. I used to be certain she can be intrigued by the work, and I used to be not incorrect, as we talked concerning the relationship between legibility and illegibility — one thing that’s central to the artist’s work. Zheng works in acrylic, ink, and pigments (combined in a single case with ox-bone glue) on silk, which she wraps round deep stretchers fabricated from mahogany, cherry wooden, purpleheart wooden, and blackwood. The 12 work vary in measurement from seven by eight to 108 by 85 inches (one in all two large-scale works). One portray displayed within the window, with silk stretched on either side, grew to become a shallow field you would each see and never see into, making the inside a form of secure area. 

I first grew to become conscious of Zheng’s selections concerning the wooden after I thought-about the eye she pays to the depth of the stretcher. In lots of instances, the silk capabilities like a semi-transparent veil over a deep field. By various the viscosity of the paint, which ranges from skinny washes to dense layers, she is ready to articulate a floor we each see and see into. Numerous the stretchers are indirect rectangles, which makes them into planes that appear to shift or twist in area. That notion is sophisticated by the semi-transparent silk assist and the ghostly pictures, because the portray’s bodily type doesn’t utterly align with the paint’s spectral types. It was as if they might not sit nonetheless on the wall. 

The slippage between legibility and illegibility in Zheng’s work pushes again in opposition to the long-held assumption {that a} portray should acknowledge its two-dimensional floor. That slippage allows the artist to boost questions concerning the relationship between legibility and illegibility, whereas pursuing a trajectory that’s all her personal. Every of the exhibition’s work presents a unique degree of legibility, from graphically quick to unattainable to decipher. Seeing this spectrum jogged my memory of how a lot the artwork world is invested in legibility, which is likely one of the unlucky legacies of Pop Artwork. Zheng’s resistance to it’s admirable as a result of, as she mentioned in an interview with Nicky Ni (Sixty Inches from Heart, March 26, 2021): 

[…] the silk work are barely indirect; they exemplify my try to destabilize the infrastructure of a portray, deviating simply sufficient from the norm, however not sufficient to interrupt the steadiness. And this steadiness is an uncanny one; it’s based mostly on irregularities and aporia.

I additionally realized from this interview that Zheng’s information of portray on silk began when she was a toddler rising up in China: 

My childhood artwork trainer skilled me in portray strategies and learn how to research historical Chinese language work. Our relationship was like an apprenticeship that lasted a very long time — I studied along with her from after I was 4 and a half years previous till I left my hometown, Wuyishan, for school. […] it was a steady 13 years of dissecting pictures and constructing my very own aesthetics. My work department off from the lineage of Chinese language conventional work — it’s necessary for me to obtain but in addition transfer past the affect of historical past. I exploit the identical supplies and strategies {that a} Chinese language painter from the 5 Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms interval (907 AD–960 AD) would use, however I flip the scroll portray and its flatness into an object. I’ve inherited a precision in hand motion from my childhood practices. And silk is a seemingly delicate however robust and finicky materials; it looks like pores and skin.

The conundrum of concurrently receiving and shifting on is one in all Zheng’s preoccupations. Is it potential to make work on this medium with out being nostalgic? Is her need to “destabilize the infrastructure of a portray” associated to the historical past of Chinese language silk portray, Western oil portray, residing within the diaspora, or all three? By portray on silk, which absorbs the medium and can’t be modified or scraped, Zheng reminds us that this methodology of working preceded Helen Frankenthaler, who purportedly invented the method referred to as “soak-stain” within the Fifties. Is it potential to make your self seen with out being nostalgic for what you’ve left behind, whereas resisting assimilation right into a society that can at all times see you as “different”? Do the topics of Zheng’s work solid a light-weight on her predicament?

One of many recurring, legible topics in her current portray is a close-up view of toothed gear wheels, which looks as if an unlikely topic for somebody skilled within the follow and historical past of portray on silk. If we’re wanting on the inside a watch, are we to learn it actually, as a portray about time? The size of the biggest one means that this isn’t essentially the case, as its dimensions roughly align with a human’s bodily attain, moderately than one thing worn on the wrist. These work additionally evoke Marcel Duchamp’s “Chocolate Grinder (No. 1)” (1913) and Francis Picabia’s “Voila la Femme” (1915), each of whom used the imagery to discover sexual themes. What does it imply to color a machine on silk, which is produced by an insect? Silkworms stay on mulberry bushes, which was additionally the supply of paper utilized by generations of Asian artists. The deeper you go into Zheng’s work, the extra questions come up. 

And but, as I saved these work, and having many questions come up, I started enthusiastic about the much less legible works within the present, and the way they elude definition and language. If Zheng doesn’t title them, does it imply she feels that she can’t be seen? May this sense of invisibility additionally must do with residing within the diaspora?  

The person’s face in “Untitled (Maradona)” hovers between legibility and illegibility. The {photograph} Zheng utilized in her portray, which measures seven by eight inches, pulling the viewer in shut, was featured in Argentinian newspapers when Diego Maradona — one of many best soccer gamers in historical past — died at 60. Reviewing the circumstances of his loss of life, the Argentinian courts dominated that the eight docs in command of his well being “violated the duties that every one was in command of,” which “led to the deadly end result of the affected person that, in any other case, might have been prevented.” Musing about his proud, defiant face, which is troublesome to discern, I thought of how the emphasis on legibility that pervades most artwork types, with its calls to be accessible and clear, is actually a racialized assemble that denies distinction by asserting readability.

Evaluating the silk she paints on to “pores and skin,” Zheng works in a territory by which the Asian feminine physique is likely one of the topics. Her remedy of this topic is advanced and difficult and doesn’t simply match into the favored narratives by which this difficulty is mentioned. I discover that need for independence, and the way in which it’s offered, admirable. 

Leah Ke Yi Zheng continues at David Lewis (57 Walker Avenue, Tribeca, Manhattan) by way of June 3. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.