About this Event
Join us for an enchanting evening with artist Jau Wing Hei. Experience a collection defined by childhood reverie, soft hues, and ethereal, cotton-like textures.
Please RSVP to enjoy a complimentary glass of Champagne upon arrival.
About the artist:
Jau Wing Hei(b. 1995, British Columbia, Canada) is a queer multidisciplinary artist. She is currently based in Northern California and has exhibited artwork in various galleries around the bay. She studied in Canada and has worked as a professional artist internationally, her work has been published and credited in various notable productions and feature projects in the past 10 years.
Email: [email protected]
Website: jauwinghei.com
What the artist has to say:
"In my current body of work, I have been producing large scale oil paintings using a whimsical visual language and my animation background to elevate moments and feelings from everyday life and relationships. Each painting in my current series starts from a moment shared with a loved one. I compose a scene based on a memory or a feeling and translate it visually in a style informed by the media and popular culture that shaped my upbringing and career. Prior to painting and exhibiting in galleries and art spaces, I worked for over 10 years in the film industry as a pre-production artist. I am heavily influenced by the saturated palettes of East-Asian contemporary art, and Post-Impressionism’s focus on textured portraits of domesticity. I’m largely interested and inspired by the mundane, and I choose to use a visual language that might be deemed as more cute and feminine. Cuddly. My hope is to invite viewers to let their guard down, to feel at ease and warm, and to soften in a hard edged world. As I received more public engagement with my work, I began to pay attention to the way that a viewer could see themselves in these scenes. Early paintings started from pulling from my own specific life; later paintings, I began to think about the language of character shapes in the world I was building, how other individuals, couples, and families could see themselves in my vignettes. The characters became broader avatars for the roles we play in relationships, archetypes of people in relational dynamics like the caretaker, the playmate, the mother, the baby and so on. How could I arrange these shapes to create new scenes? How does putting one with another make us feel? These are the themes I continue to explore and play with as I further develop this world. My focus medium is oil paints. I am completely self taught in oil painting and the paintings you see in this show are of the last 2 years. Transitioning as an artist from a fast paced world of digital art and screens, to painting by hand in what feels a glacial speed in comparison has been incredibly interesting and illuminating to me. Just like building relationships, painting requires a level of trust and slowing down, and I feel as though through my process- I have taken an intimate moment in time and stretched it. As I experiment with scaling up, a moment that might have felt small or fleeting in my life - through the act of painting, suddenly takes up space and time, and develops a sort of permanence because I can now hold it in my hands. Hung on a wall, you can look at it like a window, into a moment of intimacy, softness, and love. Through these windows that I keep painting, I hope to bring people into contact with the parts of themselves that love and that need love. To invite some playfulness too. And given all the ways the world today devalues and polices our ways of connecting with each other, I hope spending time in this world will encourage them to reconnect with their inner children and their needs for connection."
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
795 Valencia St, 795 Valencia Street, San Francisco, United States
USD 0.00
