Qin Tan: The Garden

EVENT DESCRIPTION

JPS Gallery is pleased to present The Garden, a solo exhibition by Qin Tan, on view at the gallery’s location in Hong Kong.This exhibition marks the artist’s first solo show with JPS, presenting a new series of paintings that exemplify her minimalistic figurations coupled with hidden symbolism, exploring the human psyche and states of being.

This series of new paintings transports viewers back to primordial times through a contemporary lens. Tan took inspiration from the story of Adam and Eve, depicting transformation of the human psyche from a state of innocence to that of consciousness. Using her signature stick-like figures, the new series epitomises the most fundamental form of the human being. Featuring only the silhouette of their limbs, head, and nondescript body, Tan’s figures do not represent the first man and woman.They are ambiguously genderless, race-less and consciously undefined, manifesting their status as a “universal man”, one we can all identify as.

By adopting the pivotal moment of the first man and woman consuming the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, the artist illuminates the intrinsic flaws of human nature and details the emergence of consciousness as we know it.Tan’s depiction of Eden is a world filled with vibrant landscapes and earthly delights. Using ancient mythological symbols and narratives, she creates a fictional prehistoric space that is embedded in visual languages of the present. She fabricates a physical reality abstracted into dreamlike forms of familial landscapes with cues taken from the internet and virtual worlds of the modern era.

Through this new series of paintings Tan envisions a universal man. She captures the shared imperfections, experiences, and destinies of what it means to be human in a retrospective lens. She transports the audience to her constructed milieu of the past and present.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Qin Tan (b.1993, Beijing, China) is a painter and video artist based in New Jersey, USA. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has since exhibited work regionally and internationally. Tan’s pieces explore the symbiotic nature of science and mythology—the intersection of natural and virtual phenomena. Though she is trained as a traditional painter, her explorations have bloomed into different methods of expression, including experimental video narratives, sculptures and installations. These works reflect her introspective and contemplative ideas regarding the human condition since modernity, like notes left from an observer that has witnessed the development of scientific tools and the creation of virtual landscapes.