Chambers Fine Art (522 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA), Jan 8–Feb 28, 2015
In looking at these works by Shi Jing and Wu Didi, one might be loosely reminded of the Butterfly Effect. Wu Didi looks closely at insects and plants—at times softly, at others effecting collisions in which bamboo stems split and fuse painfully together (“Not in Contradiction”, 2014)—but always delicately and in detail. Shi Jing’s paintings rely on twists of the brush and changes in the angle of the stroke to conjure phantom-like shapes—mainly mountainous landscapes (“Painting the Lu Mountain with Luck”, 2014). Without these subtle movements, the canvases would be flat white.
Neither series can be called forceful; they are more inclined to be decorative. Both artists present their compositions in a self-contained manner, without context. Nonetheless, each succeeds in delivering traditional subjects in a contemporary manner through a degree of either abstraction, or aggression.