August 23, 2023 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Three Directions, a solo show of paintings by Nathan Randall Green. The exhibition continues Green’s visual exploration of the cosmos and its extraordinary immensity. The vibrant, geometric paintings are created on organic shapes full of surface texture, and they speak to Green’s desire to measure, map, and chart our physical world with precise geometric lines, creating a sense of both compression and expansion. Green aims to impart a sense of expansive wonder and awe into his work. Nathan Randall Green: Three Directions will be open to the public from September 13 – October 20, 2023, with an opening celebration hosted on September 16th from 4:30-6:30 PM PST.

The exhibition’s title, Three Directions, is a reference to the artist’s conceptual practice of looking out, up, and down. He attempts to look outside of himself with an objective eye, then up to the grandeur of the cosmos, and then finally back down to the earth and his life. This process mirrors artmaking, which requires this constant shift in perspective, culminating in the job of looking down at the artwork in the act of creation. Three Directions also alludes to the trinity of the past, present, and future and their relative relationships when stargazing.

Green’s Three Directions embraces symbolism to consider the scale and length of the universe, beginning with the Big Bang. Green uses radial forms that stand in for the sun — and the trillions of other stars like it. His process is intuitive; he naturally gravitates towards a fixed set of shapes or characters, including solar symbols, crescent shapes, and sunburst patterns, and rearranges them to create alternative views of our universe. Informed by a background in printmaking, particularly woodblock and serigraphy, Green paints in layers. His work often mimics geologic strata and the layers of Earth beneath our feet and frequently attempts to depict the passage of time within the single frame of his painting. 

The artist has long been building his own painting surfaces that he shapes into amorphous, organic forms. He applies a mixture of paper pulp and gesso to the canvas to create an irregular, textured surface onto which he applies flat, graphic diagrammatical imagery. The work builds on his past practice, which has been slowly evolving over 15 years. His paintings are an idiosyncratic act of measuring, mapping, and making sense of our universe and its immensity. In creating the work, Green hopes to imbue in others the same awestruck delight of contemplating the vastness of the world which we inhabit. 

About Nathan Randall Green

Nathan Randall Green (b. in Houston, TX) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin, TX. He is a founding member and partner of Okay Mountain Gallery and Collective in Austin, TX and was a Curator of Education at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. He currently lives and works in The Bronx, NY.

Green has exhibited widely nationally and internationally including exhibitions at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX; The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX; Salisbury University Art Galleries, Salisbury, MD; Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY; New Mexico State University Art Museum, Las Cruces, NM; among many others. His most recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Bale Creek Allen Gallery, Fort Worth, TX; Walter Storms Gallery, Munich, Germany; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas, TX; Art Palace, Houston, TX; Sointula Art Shed, Canada; and more. He exhibited in the 2011 Texas Biennial in Austin, TX and SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, NY in 2020.

Green has participated in artist residencies in Connecticut, New York, Vermont, Illinois, and Texas. He has given several lectures nationally including at Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; Texas A&M University-Commerce, Commerce, TX; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD; University of Montana, Missoula, MT.

August 23, 2023 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Wandering in the City, Waking from a Dream, an exhibition of works by Chinese artist WEN Zhongyan. The artist’s first solo exhibition in North America will feature a series of seven works on paper and two paintings that depict the city of Beijing through what was lost, what remains, and what has changed. WEN combines multiple layers of imagery in an intuitive screen printing process that evokes a feeling of nostalgia but also embracing the city that was and is – on a personal level to the artist, and on a collective cultural scale as well. Wandering in the City, Waking from a Dream will be open to the public from September 13 – October 20, 2023, with an opening celebration hosted on September 16th from 4:30-6:30 PM PST.

Ancient landmark structures throughout Beijing bear witness to its long history over the course of several dynasties. Alongside these fragments, the constantly evolving contemporary cityscape reflects the decades of demolition and development that have occurred since the mid-1960s, when the city wall and significant parts inside the city wall were demolished. Thus, Beijing stands as a unique case study for rapid change and the sense of loss that follows in its wake, as the city underwent many iterations of deconstruction and reconstruction both before and during WEN’s time there. 

The distinctive architecture of the city, as illuminated beneath the strong artificial lights of the night, forms the background for WEN’s screen-printed circuit board diagrams and illustrated map. This first layer of imagery is painted from the artist’s own photographs, taken at night when he lived in Hou Hai, Beijing and wandered its storied streets, the feeling of nostalgia palpable beneath the cover of darkness. Together, the interaction of the layers results in a composite representation of the city over time that WEN describes as the “New Beijing Image,” concrete and yet intangible, and full of contradictions. The artist’s technique itself recreates the collision of industrial culture and ancient civilization it seeks to portray, epitomizing the progress of modernization that comes at the expense of historical and cultural memory. The chaos therein is laid bare, and while WEN’s imagery is specific to Beijing, the plights of industrialization and urban expansion are universally felt. 

Circuit boards—symbols of modern industry—are repeatedly present in all of the selected works. WEN uses the circuit board diagram from the manual of his first TV as the source for this pattern, as well as a historical map of Beijing from 1950, before parts of the old city and the city walls were torn down. After constant layering, the intersecting grids create a psychedelic interference, weaving a colorful web-like network that visibly obscures the cityscape beneath while aesthetically and symbolically elucidating its details. Themes of uncertainty permeate WEN’s visions of Beijing. The dialogue between the layers is described by the artist as a conversation in which each is “perhaps speaking its own language, perhaps speaking in unison, perhaps a cacophony of noises, or perhaps a beautiful harmony,” but above all, “This conversation is of uncertainty.”

WEN Zhongyan: 游观 (Wandering in the City, Waking from a Dream) will introduce the artist’s poignant work to the Silicon Valley community, a place with deep ties to the complicated narrative of technological advancement and change explored in the exhibition. History, as recorded in the built environment, and experienced in the fabric of urban life, is equally central to WEN’s body of work. Audiences are invited to connect with WEN’s unconventional scrapbook of Beijing and to consider the dense networks that underlie their own perceptions of place.

About WEN Zhongyan

WEN Zhongyan (b. 1971 in Yuncheng, China) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1997 and his Master of Arts from Tsinghua University in 2010. Since 1997, he has been teaching at Tsinghua University Department of Painting, where he is a department head, doctoral supervisor, and professor. WEN is also a member of the China Artists Association, vice chairman of the Printmaking Art Committee of the Beijing Artists Association, and more. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China. 

WEN has exhibited widely internationally with a focus in China at National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Today Art Museum, Beijing; National Museum of China, Beijing; The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Tsinghua University Art Museum, Beijing; China Art Museum, Shanghai; Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai; China Woodcut Museum, Shenzhen; Hubei Museum of Art, Hubei; Hubei Institute of Fine Arts, Hubei; CAA Art Museum, Hangzhou; Futian Art Museum, Shenzhen; Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Sichuan; Chongqing Art Museum, Chongqing; Tanggu Museum, Tianjin; among many others and abroad at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Berlin, Germany; Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA.

WEN’s work is in the collections of internationally renowned art museums and institutions National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Today Art Museum, Beijing; National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; China Artists Association; Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai; Shanghai University, Shanghai; Jiangsu Art Museum, Jiangsu; Hubei Art Museum, Hubei; Chongqing Art Museum, Chongqing; Inner Mongolia Museum, Hohhot; Guan Shanyue Art Museum, Shenzhen; Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, Shenzhen; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; among many others.