Dwellings of Immortals on a Cloudy River
(24 June - 8 August, 2008)
Amy Kao

Venetia Kapernekas Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Amy Kao, titled “Dwellings of Immortals on a Cloudy River,” (24 June – 8 August). For her first exhibition with the gallery, the artist has created an suite of ink on paper 30" x 22" drawings.

Four drawings will be hung vertically on one wall of the gallery and a single drawing will hang on an adjacent wall. While some of the detail of the grouped drawings, placed highly on the wall, will be lost to the viewer, the isolated drawing will be entirely legible, making note of what Kao sees as “the shifting relationship between the visible and imagined.” Each elaborate drawing depicts a distinct landscape composed of hybrid motifs, which Kao created by dissecting and overlapping fragments of historic and contemporary iconography. Common to all the drawings is the ambiguity of foreground and background, inspired by Chinese scroll paintings of the Sung and Yung dynasty in which blank or negative space presides.

Kao’s previous work has similarly involved the re-creation of motifs, most often meaning the transformation of two-dimensional universal or contemporary non-decorative patterns, such as camouflage and graffiti, into three-dimensional reliefs, formed and placed site-specifically. These applied surfaces, connecting moments in a landscape, serve to question the association of collective and personal memory.

Born in 1974 in Taipei, Taiwan, Amy Kao, received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has exhibited her work internationally at museums and galleries, including: Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai and Beijing, China (2008); Chinese Biennial 2008 Beijing, Beijing, China, (2008); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY (2007); Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2006); Asian American Arts Centre, New York, NY (2004); and APEXART, New York, NY (2004).