Angela Wei’s Newest Solo Show Took Me Back
During a parent-teacher conference in middle school, my art teacher said I needed to move away from “teen art.” My drawings consisted of Sailor Moon figures, stylized flowers, words like ‘love’ or ‘bitch’ in graffiti bubble style text, and excerpts from Bikini Kill lyrics. I thought to myself, but I am a teenager? Angela Wei’s solo show at The Gallery reminded me of these adolescent drawings. Of course, her paintings are skillfully executed and the subject matter and references are more wide-ranging. But, they capture something naive and sincere about adolescence; living in the things surrounding you.
The busy paintings merge details from decorative arts and Japanese manga, or its precedent woodcuts with Victorian literature, renaissance architecture, biblical references with floral motifs like those seen on antique tea sets and are populated by child characters falling, flying, and running. Each of Wei’s paintings could be a snapshot from a dream, or, in Jungian terms, a mash-up from the collective unconscious. Jung believed that the self was the point of departure, unlike Freud who was preoccupied by the ego, sexuality, and how forgotten and repressed memories impacted the self. In Jungian theory, dreams are the windows to the self and our collective consciousness—for instance, Jung believed that the stuff of myths and legends generated from this inherited interconnected repository.
Whether or not you adhere to Jung’s theories, viewing Wei’s body of work through this lens scaffolds and brings further meaning to her use of disparate motifs. Mere nostalgia is too simple of an approach—hers is deeply rooted in loose but tenable connections to psychoanalysis.
In Navigator, a siren masters the seas, a red-headed woman rides in a shell above crashing waves and small wooden row boats scatter—red starfish cover her nipples and crotch. The image is reminiscent of a Hokusai landscape and a Disney, Pre-Raphaelite, or Art Deco figure. Of course, each of these styles influenced the next. The piece that is the most heady, bringing together not only form but also ideas, is Garden of Eden where the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland sits in a corner and two children, perhaps Hansel and Gretel (who nearly met their downfall from munching on the forbidden—like Eve and Adam), and various anthropomorphic plants. It is clear, as the press release lists, that Wei has studied Hieronymus Bosch’s work and Garden of Eden is her take on the Garden of Earthly Delights. But Victorian leaning, more subtle.
Wei was born in Chengdu but grew up in Ottawa and has lived in New York for many years where she after being included in several group shows curated by Lucy Liu, one at Rachel Uffner earlier this summer, has become known on the painting scene. Cementing her reputation as a promising young artist, Wei’s work has captured the attention of critics and sold to collectors both nationally and internationally and two of her works sold at Christie’s.
Rather than her own experience, the works depict the universal emotions of adolescence. Descent from Babel shows an angel falling from grace. How often did we not feel like we were falling from grace in our teens? My answer is a lot. For all my talk about Jung, archetypes in imagery, and dreams, Wei has not merely cut and paste references haphazardly from her dreams. Instead, with great intention, she weaves visual markers together to create a narrative that stems from her deep knowledge of culture that enlivens rather than investigates Jungian psychology—a tableau that calls for the viewer to decode it, in true art historical fashion.
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