With roughly 500 studios, performances, and exhibitions, Bushwick Open Studios is a three-day arts and culture festival that celebrates the Brooklyn neighborhood’s vibrant arts community which includes artists originally from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. We’re proud to introduce seven of these artists — Xiaoguang Wei (魏晓光), Xiao Fu (符晓), Zhongsheng Gu (顾忠升), Naormi Meijia Wang (王美佳), Fina Yeung, Eric Jiaju Lee (李家驹), Hai-Hsin Huang (黃海欣) — who bring diversity to Bushwick and have opened their creative workspaces to share their unique perspectives with the public in this year’s event. In this post, we present them alphabetically with their artist statements, studio locations, and a sample of each artist’s work (click on the images for full-size views).
If you plan on attending the city’s largest open studios event this weekend, June 5 – 7, use the map below to guide your meander to these photographers, painters, sculptors and show your support for them and artists of Chinese descent.
Here’s a summary of locations:
44 Stewart Avenue – Xiao Fu, Eric Jiaju Lee, Xiaoguang Wei, and Fina Yeung (the building has a Facebook event page for BOS)
380 Harman Street – Hai-Hsin Huang
56 Bogart Street – Naormi Meijia Wang and Xiaoguang Wei
Rock Street – “Pixel World” outdoor installation by Xiao Fu
330 Ellery Street – Zhongsheng Gu
44 Stewart Avenue, Studio #26 and Rock Street
Xiao Fu is a Chinese artist who is currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from Luxun Academy of Fine Arts (鲁迅美术学院), Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China, and her MFA in Sculpture from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. Her experiences visiting and living in a variety of cultures has given Xiao an appreciation for the unique characteristics and complexities found in diverse communities.
“I create works that are mainly concerned with my personal observations about the urban life experience. Through living in several metropolitan areas I have witnessed many aspects unique to residing in such settings, such as a sense of crowded loneliness and the resulting psychological distance between people in close physical proximity…In my work I minimize the cityscape to simple geometric forms to present how I see the urban environment and the relationship between its people, its spaces, and its structures. My goal in creating art is to allow a viewer the opportunity to observe contemporary social constructs from a distance, providing them with a new perspective.”
She will show her installation “I Have a Dream”. For more photos and updates, check out her Facebook event page.
I Have a Dream Installation (in process) View
In addition to her studio pieces, Xiao’s “Pixel World“ will be shown on Rock Street near L train Morgan Station as part of Bushwick Open Studio outdoor exhibition.
Pixel World Studio View
The Schoolhouse, 330 Ellery Street, #3
Zhongsheng Gu was born in Jilin Province, China and has worked in film and photography.
“As a Chinese man living in New York, I have taken photography as my true native tongue. My work is focused on trying to explore and expand the possibilities of photography as a method of communication. So that this visual language of mine, can be more nuanced, more meaningful, more lyrical.
Hot Pink, C-Print, Size A: 42 x 62 in. / Size B: 32 x 48 in.
The focus of my work goes beyond trying to capture something visually but instead I want to capture something invisible. Perhaps something only I can see, or perhaps something that occurs in our memories.”
Read our coverage of Gradually Fog Up, Zhongsheng’s recent show at Ouchi Gallery.
The Schoolhouse is hosting an opening party on Friday, June 5.
380 Harman Street
My works explore images indicative of contemporary life. Particularly banal everyday life scenes that reveal an ambiguous atmosphere between humor and horror, based on ordinary family photos and regular annual drill practices… I ‘m interested in the ridiculousness and fear in society, the absurdity and the loneliness.
To me, most aspects of life have the potential to be ridiculous, absurd, awkward,funny and meaningless all at once.As part of a generation marked by hedonism, people seem to know more but feel less. Catastrophes become assumptions; we practice suffering and crisis with laughter. I try to highlight the lives of this easy and comfortable generation, and in particular, their lightness of being. I am showing audiences the beauty and uncanniness of single moments, the humor and tragedy that is in us, life’s grandeur as well as frailty of humanity.
The River of Little Happiness 《小確幸之河》, 80 x 192 in., 2015
Learn more about Hai-Hsin in this video profile by Non-Native New York:
44 Stewart Avenue, Studio #5
Eric Jiaju Lee earned his Master of Fine Arts degree at Hunter College and has based his practice in New York City for over the past two decades. Lee’s studio is in the vibrant arts community of Bushwick in Brooklyn where he has been a part of the growth of the area since it’s early beginnings. He also has worked in Beijing, China where he established a studio practice in recent years.
“My work is an intersection of contemporary abstraction and traditional Chinese painting, where both aspire to elucidate the human experience in relationship with nature through an idiosyncratic yet lyrical sensibility. With a quixotic nod to science, science fiction and scientific theories, my organic forms suggest a microscopic to macrocosmic continuum inherent to nature. I incorporate a process that is both deliberate and improvisational by pouring, dripping and brushing paint onto fabric ranging from raw canvas to vibrantly colored silk. With attention to the formal aspects of Modernist painting such as form, color, surface and support, I apply the compositional sensibilities of traditional Chinese painting where images may occur on long vertical and horizontal works, or on circular, fan-shaped and multi-panel formats. The conflation of these elements informs a process where intimations can first be spontaneously expressed, then developed, and finally compellingly arranged.”
Regeneration, Charcoal on paper, 18 x 24 in., 2014
Eric has been profiled by Sinovision English Channel:
Naormi Meijia Wang (王美佳)
56 Bogart Street, Studio #201
Naormi Meiija Wang, a Chinese-born artist based in New York, is deeply interested in Freudian psychology and human nature. She works in various media, most often with the human body, which she distorts, overlaps and ultimately reveals in dream-like states. Her recent work is centered on three areas – photography, moving images and video installation – but she is equally capable when working in other media, such as drawing, painting, print, jewelry design and fashion design.
“The main focus in my work is the human consciousness and its expression throughout the body. I am examining and interested about the genealogical origin of the emotions according to Freud. The elements in mine work are based on what I am record or remember from my deep dreaming and what I am observing around myself every day life. Each movement and frame presented is a signifier of a signified (a la Saussure): a detail originating in unconscious mind.”
LOVE, Acrylic on panel, 18×18 in., 2015
44 Stewart Avenue, Studio #11B and 56 Bogart Street
Wei Xiaoguang is an artist who works with painting, performance and video mediums.
Born 1986 in China, he holds an MFA from CUNY Hunter College, and a BFA from Central Academy of Fine Arts of China. Xiaoguang currently lives and works in New York City.
“I see my works as examples of how self-conscious painting mannerism functions as a critical method in this post “death of painting” period, where both representation and abstraction do not need to hide themselves in contradictions. I understand mannerism as a way to accept decisions in art as finite, and to conceptualize the art making process as a predetermined set of rules and procedures that function as its building elements. Just like the more or less visible pixels (picture elements) used in digital media. Combining familiar methods and pictorial styles has been informing my works in different ways: from retinal to conceptual.”
4 Peppers, Oil on canvas, 16 X 20 in., 2014
In addition to his open studio, two of his important works are on view through Sunday at Fresh Window Gallery, 56 Bogart Street, lower level.
44 Stewart Ave, Studio #46
In the exhibition, Fina Yeung will show her latest installation which combines visual landscape built from painted cardboard, photos and text. It is about four migrant women whose stories of finding their homes in NYC. There will also be a short experimental video about three special characters roaming in a city.
Feminine Lines In A Cage Detailed View
See more of Fina’s work in this video:
Introduction by Andrew Shiue; images courtesy of the artists.