BY ANNABEL KEENAN
In Julia Chiang’s work, the minutiae of organic forms speak to grander narratives of the human experience. Drawing inspiration from medical scans, blood vessels, and internal cavities, the Brooklyn-based abstract artist invites viewers to embark on an intimate journey into the body in paintings and ceramics with repetitive patterns and vibrant color palettes. Chiang’s process is deliberate and intuitive; a harmonious blend where organic shapes seem to emerge and proliferate across the composition. Colors and patterns vie for space and dominance, as if the lines and dots dance in a slow, constant motion. While using the language of abstraction, Chiang’s practice is deeply rooted in the physicality of the human body, and her visually rich work serves as introspective allegories of the corporeal and the psychological. The complexity of her work mirrors the complexity of her subjects as she captures the physical and the intangible of the human body—the emotions, the fleeting sensations, the essence of our existence that is so difficult to define.
“I think as humans we are giant containers of endlessness, holding physically and emotionally and oozing and leaking and overflowing while constantly taking more in,” Chiang tells Avenue. “Imagine a vessel that gets so full it’s about to burst but releases enough to survive and then expands again and repeats the cycle. There are both imagined and physically real boundaries between our bodies and everything beyond what I’m constantly thinking about in what I make. Thinking about personal history and healing and regeneration and how these invisible bits that fill us up and escape us, connect us all.”
Connectivity and the tension between internal strife and external pressures of the body are at the heart of Chiang’s practice. In some pieces, fields of small, green lines billow across the composition, recalling grass blowing in the wind or microscopic views of sinewy muscles. In others, rich red hues flush the surface like blood coursing through a vein, perhaps a sign of lust. Throughout her work, Chiang uses richly varied color palettes, combining and layering vivid hues sprinkled with her signature repetitive patterns. “As varied as they are, I don’t think I’ve ever used a color that I haven’t seen or found existed already in nature,” she says. Chiang usually starts by focusing on a color she feels is closely connected to our bodies. “It’s amazing how many colors exist and the stories they tell,” she says. “Colors as protection, as warning, as survival. I’m drawn to brilliant colors from medical scans, poisonous snakes and frogs, birds, plants, mainly colors that offer themselves as a signal of some sort.”
This summer, the Parrish Art Museum is staging the artist’s first museum solo show, one of four exhibitions that will fill the halls of the storied Hamptons institution, including a concurrent survey of paintings and sculptures by Chiang’s husband, Brian Donnelly, the artist known as KAWS. Chiang’s show features large-scale paintings and ceramics that create a cohesive narrative of the body that is both visual and conceptual.
All but one painting were made specifically for the show, and the ceramic works include a mix of old and new, offering a glimpse of Chiang’s practice in recent years. Throughout the exhibition, the artist invites introspection. “Julia’s work is layered in both the material aspects and in her thought process while making,” says Brianna L. Hernández, assistant curator at the Parrish. “Once visitors experience the meditative qualities of the paintings and ceramics in person, I hope they’ll take away a deeper sense of curiosity and wonder for the connections Chiang imbues into the finished pieces.”
In preparing for the exhibition, Chiang took inspiration from her own experience in the natural environment of the Hamptons. “Every time I visit out east the main priority is getting to the water,” she says. “I love the power of the ocean. The vulnerable feeling of being out there and how you are swallowed by the forces of nature. I’m focusing on that energy and all the feelings that are connected to that and my experiences of color, senses, and weight into the new work.”
Each composition seems to hold the capacity for both strength and fragility, inspiring different sensations in the viewer as they work through the layers. While Chiang draws inspiration from many sources, her references are fluid and boundless, as are the responses each piece can evoke. A work that resembles a vast universe filled with pulsating stars to one viewer might recall a deep ocean or a microscopic view of a cell to another. For Chiang, she hopes the show offers an opportunity to pause or find a personal connection: “Maybe it would be from their past or maybe the connection would happen later, but that the time given to looking potentially becomes part of their memory and their story.” Ultimately, what the visitor does take from her work is up to them, a beautiful open-endedness that is a testament to the power of wonder.
