Emergent Records: Recent Work by Jianjie Ji
January 16 - April 13, 2004

In this exhibition Jianjie Ji presents works from two recent series of mixed-media paintings: the Ash Series and the Review and Revaluation Culture Series. In his recent Ash Series, Ji explores how humans communicate their feelings to the spirit world. Influenced by his Chinese ancestry, he uses ashes that have been collected from a temple into his paintings, layering them onto the surface. Inset or incorporated into each painting are incense, candles and paper money that have been burned in a controlled fire. The Ash Series explores oppositional relationships between body and mind, life and death, art and everyday life.

In his Review and Revaluation Culture Series, Ji references traditional Chinese paintings and folk art, but presents these traditions in a fragmentary manner to reflect a new language of rediscovery. Chinese culture operates in this framework as a resource that both informs and is transformed by the artist’s making. In his own words, Ji endeavors “to explore and reconceptualize a wide range of environmental, social and behavioral issues within their respective cultural contexts.”

Born in Shanghai, China, in 1957, Ji has lived and worked in Hawai‘i since 1986. He received a BFA degree from Shanghai Light Industry College and an MFA degree in painting from the University of Hawai‘i—Manoa. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the 1995 Artists of Hawai‘i Exhibition Melusine Award for Painting and the 1993 Artists of Hawai‘i Exhibition Reuben Tam Award for Painting.