Art Salon Chinatown Presents
The Nearness of You:
Reflections on Nature
November 9, 2019 – January 11, 2020
Opening Reception: Saturday November 9, 2019, 5 – 7 pm
Art Salon Chinatown is proud to present The Nearness of You: Reflections on Nature featuring artists, Carole Kim, Cathy Lu, and Victoria Tao.
Stop and smell the roses, or any other flower for that matter. While you’re at it check out the sea lions, the sea gulls or the children playing joyfully. Spend some time in the garden. Take a walk around the pretty parts of your neighborhood if there isn’t a garden nearby! Out at the grocery store? Spend a minute looking, really looking at the fruits. Just pick one and stare at it as if you were studying it. Do any of these acts long enough to get lost in thought, and when you come to, remember the beauty around us. The beauty of all things natural. And from then on, every time you see anything of nature, remember how you felt last time and how there is only one way to keep that feeling alive!
The artists in this exhibit recorded a collection of ‘moments’ as they spent time with nature. Victoria Tao looked at the creatures around her and sketched them over and over, each one a moment in time that she did not and does not take for granted. Carole spent endless nights and days amongst trees and plants and insects and collected images that are sometimes literal and sometimes imagined. She then lets these impressions flow through her only to form new patterns and shapes and colors flowing back through her projections, prints and mixed media creations. Cathy Lu. As she finds herself amongst a sea of images from thousands of years of deprived existence, she takes command of the history and creates her version of what is missing in life according to the past generations. She playfully assumes the responsibility for all the little girls who were bound by ancient traditions and brings them front and center in a way that they can not be ignored while staying little girls. Her work brings it all around back to human nature and shows us that we are the only creatures in nature who really need to evolve and change into something that can be admired as much as the little flower we neglect to look at as we pass by it every day.
Art Salon Chinatown is dedicated to presenting Asian American artists, as they remain underrepresented in the Los Angeles arts community, and drawing attention to the history of New Chinatown (established 1938).