C.C. Ann Chen: UNGROUND
Wavily cut or torn pieces of paper in varying shapes and sizes, cartographic in nature and topological in reference, some glued, others sutured by tiny blue painter’s tape form collaged layers in flux. All of which float as if broken off from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities that at a distance look like flattened but flimsy objects, hinting at discrete places made familiar by adjacent skies and bordering seas.
C. C. Ann Chen is a landscapist who interrogates what the ground- whether static or mutable-means as space, location and image. For her, the idea of terrain that speaks of earth, rock, and dirt also includes water and air. Her practice then emphasizes the connection of these elements which comprise the totality of our surroundings through a formal if not conceptual process embracing the gestural and even the performative as abstraction.
And what you see not only points to the outer world but also its idealized interiority as the artist strategically inserts paint swatch sample chips to equate commercial notions of a cool design sensibility romanticizing its visuals while acknowledging the tactile much like spinning a globe to feel its bas-relief.
So as concept or from experience, C. C. Ann Chen asks the viewer to reconsider their perception of and relationship to this romantic tradition.