PR - The Space Between: Color Collage Moments ft. Malu Tan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - MAY 26, 2021
311 Gallery
311 West Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 675-1602
www.311artgallery.com
311 Gallery is pleased to announce The Space Between: Color Collage Moments, an exhibition featuring paintings by Malu Tan, an artist from Charlotte NC. The show will open June 4th with a reception for the artist from 6 - 8 pm, and will be on display through June 26th.
Tan’s Color Collages are acrylic paintings that represent the imaginary places she created and internalized after having difficulty with moving away from her identified home. With feelings of desolation and dysphoria, the artist explored abstract spaces to find refuge, where reality is what she sees in her mind. In these ‘made-up’ sightings, she is able to move forward and discover moments of joy.
The works are not actual collages: the term ‘collage’ is a metaphor for her method of layering and patching of paint colors. The pieces are unplanned drawings and paintings where a graphite scribble or brushstroke suggests what is to come, an open-ended improvisatory vision akin to the working methods of Abstract Expressionists. The modest scale of her paintings in the series make them intimate and fresh, like impromptu visions caught in an inspired artist’s sketchbook. The impressions of air and light, as well as sky, water, and verdure, is a testimony to the artist’s deep identification with nature.
The show will feature a selection of over 20 colorful abstract paintings on canvas and cradled panel. On view will be “A Fairy Tale in a Forest”, a diptych/two-panel painting which is her interpretation of ancient Asian scroll paintings, where continuous pictures develop in space and time. To lose yourself in her work, the carefully orchestrated color blooms that seem to be anchored to scaffolds, with grids of thinned-paint runnels and areas of faux-antique craquelure (age cracking), is to gain a bit of respite and renewal.
311 Gallery is a dynamic gallery in the Research Triangle area. Established in 2007, the exhibition hall changes each month with an Opening Reception on first Friday evenings from 6 - 9 pm. The shows alternate between invited regional artists and national juried shows. Gallery hours are Thursdays through Saturday, 12 - 4 pm.
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