A Kind of Life (2019 - 2020)

A curtain with floral patters. Randomly arranged potted plants. Bird-shaped rebar. Dying weeds in front of a brick wall. The scenes I depict in my paintings are commonplace in suburban neighborhoods from Taiwan, to China, to the United States. There are two elements appear repeatedly in my work: nature, and man-made residential structures or objects. These elements never live alone- they are intermingled and interdependent. Plants that are contained, ignored, or defiantly springing up through concrete share the frame of the painting with vestiges of previous eras of modernity and signs of domestic comfort. In some paintings, plants are relegated to a depiction of bamboo on a curtained window, in others gnarled vines cover a decaying tiled wall, domination the picture plane. In my work, I ask, what is the place of nature in our contemporary life?