Equinox Gallery presents Angela Teng: Colourwork, a solo exhibition of paintings for the Pacific Gallery at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.
Teng (b. 1979) has been acknowledged nationwide for her experimentation with the medium of paint, particularly her works made by crocheting paint strings. After squeezing and drying lengths of different coloured paints into thin strips that approximate yarn, Teng uses a single hook to crochet the paint into rectangular and square compositions. Her works elicit a broad range of references, from the colourful, commonplace Afghan throw to the geometric abstraction of high modernism, all while implicating the artistic labour of women that has typically earned the distinction of "craft" rather than "art".
Angela Teng’s work reconsiders what is traditionally required to make a painting, and then suggests otherwise by renegotiating how a picture can be made. Her painting practice utilizes a laboured dedication to the process of craft through abstraction and studio-based exploration of materials. Her crocheted acrylic ‘paint-paintings’ manipulate ways of paint handling, while her works on hand-made crocheted cotton/linen surfaces celebrate the application of thick oil paint with a brush. Her patterns generate an optical buzz created from the marbling of paint, wobbly form, and through experimenting and observing the optical interaction of colours one upon another.