Art Made in Jogja 2023

The 100 pieces of art in the current exhibition were made during my Fulbright residency (March-July, 2023) at Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. Although my primary responsibility as a Fulbright Senior Scholar is in teaching, I have had spare time producing art after the semester was over. Later, with the invitation from my UNY colleagues, I joined their group exhibition “Rupa Arupa” at Galeri Shah Alam, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in early July. This invitation motivated me to seriously create more pieces with the remaining time left before I conclude my program at the end of July. These works showcase my on-going art-based inquiry on “Seeing from Above.”  
“Landscape” has been observed, defined, interpreted, and created as a type of artistic subject matter in various ways in different times of the history and cultures. I love to look at landscapes in a distinct way: seeing from above. I air travel frequently and prefer to take a window seat so that I can always have aerial views of landscapes. I apply the ideas of Chinese landscape ink painting, which usually requires imagery to come from an artist’s collective visual memories, to create abstract landscapes to document my visual journey.  My art does not represent any real scenery, instead, I contemplate much about my visual memories and “deconstruct” and “reconstruct” elements in imagery of landscapes. Hence, “Aerial Landscape” emerges as a focus of my recent artwork development. I use square format for my art not only to relate to the warp and weft on maps but also to symbolize the natural/visual/organic components and artificial/geometric concepts behind my collective visual memories. The circle format is my new attempt to intentionally break the conventional top-bottom or left-right perspective, my intention to allow viewers a broader way to gaze each piece from different directions. 

SHEI-CHAU WANG
24 July 2023