Tribeca, New York
Leah Ke Yi Zheng
I-Ching / Machine
Mendes Wood DMMendes Wood DM is pleased to present Leah Ke Yi Zheng's second solo exhibition with the gallery, following our representation announcement for the Chinese-born, Chicago-based artist. The exhibition occupies both the ground floor and lower level of our Tribeca gallery and consists of fourteen new paintings, thirteen in acrylic and one in oil, painted on silk stretched over natural wood stretchers. Each painting, to varying degrees, veers away from the orthogonal to achieve an uncanny and irregular shape. Additionally, Zheng debuts an animation video work to accompany the exhibition. The ground floor gallery is dedicated to the representation of I-Ching hexagrams, each painting corresponding to a different aspect of our universe, such as power, limitation, clarity, or balance. The lower-level gallery highlights the artist's ongoing exploration of machine gears and mathematical apparatuses, reflecting a meditation on modern life and the representability of time. For the first time, select pieces unite these themes, with I-Ching hexagrams overlaid onto images of the machines. On the lower level, an example of this new development is exhibited suspended, light passing through the translucent silk, making both recto and verso visible. The exhibition explores an ongoing negotiation between Zheng's early upbringing and education with traditional Chinese landscape painting techniques, and the histories of the western avant-garde she studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. —A.E. Benenson accompanies the exhibition.