For
Immediate Release
Strands
Paintings by Mimi Chen Ting
April 11 – June 6, 2014
Opening Reception | Fri, April 11,
3 - 6pm
Meet the Artist | Mimi Chen Ting
will be in attendance
We are pleased to present a
selection of paintings by artist and
dancer Mimi Chen Ting in her
first solo exhibition in Vancouver at
Art Beatus. The title of this
exhibition, Strands, refers to
“elements that form part of a complex
whole.” According to Ting, these
elements are various eclectic sources of
inspiration for her paintings:
…the Marin
Headlands which jut courageously west
looking toward the Pacific Ocean
sunsets; the unabated mountain fire
visible just outside my bedroom
window, its smoke obscuring the
clarity that I have always counted on
in the New Mexico high desert; shadows
that become broken when the first
leaves of spring reach out for the
sun.
Although Ting’s paintings
emanate a meditative quietness and
serenity, they also possess a warm
whimsy, like a child (or an artist) at
play who lives for the rush of delight
in discovery. Ting describes her
creative process as:
Feeling my
way between alternating layers of new
marks while selectively hiding old
ones, I mine the incidental
intersections, overlaps, and spaces in
between for clues and
revelations. When emerging
contours and colours resonate, they
become the bedrock for expansion and
elaboration…it excites me when dynamic
interactions between colours and forms
come to life.
Ting’s work also has a sense of
movement, full of kinetic and potential
energy, such as the ribbons in Currents
(2011) that bend and curl
capriciously while there are bubbling
organic forms in Winter 1
(2012). One imagines that as these
forms move, colours change as they
overlap or intersect with each other, or
maybe even spontaneously reproduce new
“strands”.
Currently
based in New Mexico and California, Mimi
Chen Ting was born in Shanghai, China
and moved to Hong Kong as a young child
with her family. She relocated to
California to pursue her studies and
completed a Bachelor’s degree in Art
from San Jose University in 1969 and a
Master’s degree in Art from California
State University in 1976. Ting has
been exhibiting her work for over 40
years and her work is part of numerous
private, public and corporate
collections.
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