artists

Nice & Fit is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Dana Chang in Berlin. She will present new paintings as well as a site-specific mural that will be on view only for the duration of the show.
A pencil is sinking in what appears to be water against the background of a cracked surface- who knows if it will be rescued from a watching hand or whether it will disappear in this pool of light blue: “Not an Exit”, “suffocated”, “$333,700”, “provocative”, “the smell of blue”, “no love”, reads some of the text scattered amidst the traces of blue lines in ‘Sinking’ (2004).
In “Ray” (2004), the dramatic black background which the artist often uses in some of her most mysterious paintings evokes the French/Indonesian chic of a “Leonard” print dress. At the same time nothing could be less decorative than the world Dana creates: a map of the dark universe where living things like flora coexist with eternal symbols of antithesis and wholesomeness (ying/yang).
“Detective X” (2004), tests the collective memory of this global culture: a happy Sherlock, complete with pipe, floating along peacock feathers, swirls, bizarre sexual shapes and areas of pure color. Her practice - of getting unwillingly inspired by television culture, recalls Picasso watching fanatically TV episodes of the “Three Musqueteers” and then painting them.
The work of Dana Chang looks really alive, without her resorting to glossy surface, gigantic size or bizarre subject-matter. If it could be compared to music it would be a minuet, or a Rossiniesque prelude. The works are layered and profound, full of her whimsical, delicate intelligence and unexpected breadth of feelings. If some of her paintings recall the sophisticated playfulness of early modernism, as embodied in certain Kandinskys produced circa 1912, it is without any preemptive thoughts about “painting” in general. They are both about grace, craft, finish as well as casualness, spontaneity, incompleteness. There is a sense of continuous movement which is conferred with unnerving simplicity.