PRESS

RELEASES

1999

JIA MIN

"INTERIOR ODYSSEY"

Dec 4, 1999 - Jan 5, 2000

GALLERY X is proud to exhibit the second solo show by Chinese artist JIA MIN. The exhibition will consist of nearly 100 oil and mixed media paintings from his recent work.

These paintings evoke an implied sense of physicality and subtle eroticism. The images are fertile: full of potency, full of promise. Some of the pieces suggest states of illuminated consciousness striving for clarity. These are provocative images which draw us in to ponder their message. Images evoke a euphoric soaring space anchored in configurations of energetic psychic form. They are about the space which engulfs us, surrounding us with a charged field of luminosity.

Some pieces bring to mind the mystery we feel entering a dark but familiar room-we are transfixed as well as comforted but not quite sure of our exact location. The space is charged with depth similar to ocean transparency yet moved by strong subterranean crosscurrents. The surfaces are exquisitely modulated with flowing forces punctuated by scratching, scraping and voluptuous combinations-mixing, pulling apart and recombining tensions.

JIA MIN uses oil mixed with diverse media in various combinations. There is a subtle range of texture, with paint applied with knife or brushed on to create a smooth surface or a turbulent one. In some paintings the colors are layered with glowing, calming surfaces that lead one to contemplate the long inward visions.

JIA MIN, a native of China, graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Shen Yang, China. He taught Chinese and European painting and drawing at the University of Da Lian. He lives and works in New York since 1995.

RIEKO SETO

Nov 8 - Dec 1, 1999

GALLERY X is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculptures and photographs by RIEKO SETO. This will be SETO's first solo New York exhibition.She was born in Hiroshima, Japan and received her BFA at Masashino Art University in Tokyo and her MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

For the past five years SETO has developed a highly personal working method which literally translates the ephemera of her daily rituals; tea bags, strings and staples among other materials, into exquisitely beautiful tapestries, chains and figurative work. These works are seductively attractive, yet also elusive, challenging and remarkably moving testimonials to an artist's life which recognizes no boundary between the studio and the home.

From cast away cardboard she has fashioned elegant and useful furniture,and in "RIEKO'S BOX" she built a traveling container for her own body using layers of corrugated cardboard. Her Tea Bag project is an endlessly expanding skin of paper made of subtly stained paper squares,which reveal themselves to be the unfolded tea bags she brews each day of her life.

SETO even deconstructs her own artwork itself from the disassembled fabric of her linen prints she has reconfigured a series of large diaphanous wall hangings.

ROYA MOVAFEGH

'DISINTEGRATION'

May 30 - June10, 1999

The exhibition, 'Disintegration', by Roya Movafegh, a photography installation artist, addresses the artist's sense of personal loss of a culture, as she once knew it, from a perspective of an Iranian woman.

Incorporating the eastern and western cultures within her, she explores the concepts of women in veils. Movafegh places images of women inside black boxes with an opening for viewing, symbolizing the black veil (chador) worn by women in Iran. The viewer is granted the opportunity of seeing two women under their veils, perhaps unaware of the possibility that these women may look back. By simulating this experience, it allows for a silent communication between the viewer and these women.

Disintegration also draws attention to the influences other cultures have had and continue to have on Persian/Iranian Art as a result of the invasions, conquests and revolutions in its history.