J.A. Feng: Creature Cravings
12.26 is pleased to present Creature Cravings, featuring new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist J.A Feng. Feng skillfully weaves a series of interrelated narratives featuring simulated landscapes replete with food, flora and fauna. These characters, searching for sustenance, comfort, and camaraderie, occupy these pseudo-landscapes, each longing for greener pastures. Feng harnesses an array of imagery, including observation, memory, pastorals, and seascapes from Eastern and Western art history and popular culture.
Feng portrays cycles of creation, decay, and regeneration, peppered with tenderness, humor, and vulnerability, in her self-contained worlds within worlds. For instance, in Skee-ball, we witness the Earth in the form of a skee-ball, tossed into the top left "eye" of an emoji-like game board for 100 points. Toasted Sub shows the fiery destruction of a fated meatball sub at sea, with the ensuing smoke transforming into a salivating tongue, observing from above. In Stormcake, we zoom out from an impending shipwreck to reveal a tranquil blue night sky and disembodied hands delicately savoring a bite of the salty disaster. Snowglobe follows the progression of a flurry of Lay's potato chips swirling out of their bag, illuminated, until they come to rest at the bottom, with chanterelle mushrooms sprouting around one grounded chip, signaling imminent decay.
The artist commences her paintings with basic sketches or visual cues, imbued with an openness to the resolved image, allowing herself the flexibility to determine the content and the unique inner logic of each painting. In her exploration, she uncovers and illustrates literal and metaphorical parallels between seemingly unrelated subject matter. Employing an additive process that involves building and adjusting color and imagery in layers of paint, the final surface and physicality of her paintings embody the time and energy spent in this pursuit. The finished images oscillate between specificity and open-endedness, such that what initially appears to be one thing may, on closer inspection, reveal itself to be something entirely different. Smoking Cell, for example, may be viewed as a literal chain of islands or as a diagram of a biological cell with its constituents on full display. Similarly, Infinite Pool might be interpreted as an image of three different roses at different stages of blooming, or as a representation of the passage of time for a single bloom. In Period Painting 2, we might wonder if the framing device is curtains for a stage or a skirt. Perhaps it is both simultaneously? Feng prefers to leave her works open to interpretation, allowing the medium of paint to speak to the viewer's deepest desires.
J.A Feng (b. 1982, Champaign, IL) received her MFA from Boston University in 2015 and completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles (2022) and 12.26, Dallas, TX (2020). Recent group exhibitions include DC Moore, New York (2023), Nathalie Karg, New York (2022), Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (2022), Harkawik, New York (2022), Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN (2022) and North Loop, Williamstown, MA (2022). Feng recently completed a residency at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2021) in New York. Feng has also received fellowships from NYSCA/NYFA (2021), Shandaken Paint School (2020) and NARS Foundation (2017). This is Feng’s second exhibition with 12.26.
Feng portrays cycles of creation, decay, and regeneration, peppered with tenderness, humor, and vulnerability, in her self-contained worlds within worlds. For instance, in Skee-ball, we witness the Earth in the form of a skee-ball, tossed into the top left "eye" of an emoji-like game board for 100 points. Toasted Sub shows the fiery destruction of a fated meatball sub at sea, with the ensuing smoke transforming into a salivating tongue, observing from above. In Stormcake, we zoom out from an impending shipwreck to reveal a tranquil blue night sky and disembodied hands delicately savoring a bite of the salty disaster. Snowglobe follows the progression of a flurry of Lay's potato chips swirling out of their bag, illuminated, until they come to rest at the bottom, with chanterelle mushrooms sprouting around one grounded chip, signaling imminent decay.
The artist commences her paintings with basic sketches or visual cues, imbued with an openness to the resolved image, allowing herself the flexibility to determine the content and the unique inner logic of each painting. In her exploration, she uncovers and illustrates literal and metaphorical parallels between seemingly unrelated subject matter. Employing an additive process that involves building and adjusting color and imagery in layers of paint, the final surface and physicality of her paintings embody the time and energy spent in this pursuit. The finished images oscillate between specificity and open-endedness, such that what initially appears to be one thing may, on closer inspection, reveal itself to be something entirely different. Smoking Cell, for example, may be viewed as a literal chain of islands or as a diagram of a biological cell with its constituents on full display. Similarly, Infinite Pool might be interpreted as an image of three different roses at different stages of blooming, or as a representation of the passage of time for a single bloom. In Period Painting 2, we might wonder if the framing device is curtains for a stage or a skirt. Perhaps it is both simultaneously? Feng prefers to leave her works open to interpretation, allowing the medium of paint to speak to the viewer's deepest desires.
J.A Feng (b. 1982, Champaign, IL) received her MFA from Boston University in 2015 and completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles (2022) and 12.26, Dallas, TX (2020). Recent group exhibitions include DC Moore, New York (2023), Nathalie Karg, New York (2022), Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (2022), Harkawik, New York (2022), Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN (2022) and North Loop, Williamstown, MA (2022). Feng recently completed a residency at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2021) in New York. Feng has also received fellowships from NYSCA/NYFA (2021), Shandaken Paint School (2020) and NARS Foundation (2017). This is Feng’s second exhibition with 12.26.