Goldfinch
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Flatfiles
  • Publications
  • Art Fairs
  • Press
  • Contact
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Menu

James Kao: something about grinding down, something about glittering

Past exhibition
September 10 - October 22, 2022
  • Overview
  • Works
  • Installation Views
James Kao Barker Dam, 2022 Oil on linen over board 14 x 20 inches 35.6 x 50.8 cm
James Kao
Barker Dam, 2022
Oil on linen over board
14 x 20 inches
35.6 x 50.8 cm
View works
Like partial composites of landscapes the artist has visited, Kao’s paintings could be thought of as microclimates, containing their own weather, terrain, vegetation, and light.

In Gallery II, Goldfinch is pleased to present “something about grinding down, something about glittering,” a solo exhibition of new paintings by James Kao. The exhibition is on view from September 10 to October 22.

 

In many ways, James Kao’s painting practice begins in places outside the studio—in forests, near lakes and rivers, in mountains, and, more specifically as it relates to the new paintings on view, in the deserts and landscapes of the American West where Kao has spent extensive time in recent months. The exhibition title, taken from a poem by Sarah Bitter, a Seattle-based writer and the artist’s good friend, refers to sand and its effects on surfaces over time. Though miniscule when isolated, sand also behaves like water, wearing away very slowly at rocks and migrating incrementally across the landscape. In reference to the deserts and arid landscapes of the West, Kao muses that “things don’t disappear so easily.” Instead, the sun often preserves, and the open landscape reveals things left behind. In those landscapes, “there’s a chance you might come across something very old,” Kao explains. “You might find land art or shards of pottery, or petroglyphs carved in the rocks.”

 

While the abstracted landscapes of Kao’s paintings contain the specificity of place, they are not direct observations of a single location. Like partial composites of landscapes the artist has visited, Kao’s paintings could be thought of as microclimates, containing their own weather, terrain, vegetation, and light. Their color palettes often suggest the light you might find in a particular environment, like the glow of a forest in the evening when greens are their brightest or the coppery cast of the sun in the high desert. Yet in Kao’s paintings, these places become combined memories of life in different landscapes, and of what we begin to observe when we’ve stayed somewhere long enough.

 

Over the past year, the artist experienced a particularly acute state of grief. Indeed, many of Kao’s paintings take forms that could be said to mirror the grieving process itself, in that they are layered, disorienting, and can reveal themselves anew even after time has passed. In some, floating orbs which could be suns or moons, along with tree-like forms, jagged clouds, and other slightly-familiar-yet-unknown shapes appear to collapse or be pulled apart from one another. Sometimes Kao may scrape away an entire day’s work on a painting if he feels unsatisfied with the results, but even then, he allows some residual marks to linger on the surface, however faint and hidden they may at first seem.

 

Artist Bio

James Kao is a Chicago-based artist who makes paintings and drawings. Selected one-person exhibitions include Do it cuz you love it, China Projects, San Francisco, CA; Possible Worlds, Toomey Tourell Fine Art, San Francisco, CA; Domestics, Adds Donna, Chicago, IL; Starlight, boundary, Chicago, IL; and Quarry, Sears Peyton Gallery, New York, NY. He has attended various artist residencies including: Marina Abramovic Institute-West, San Francisco, CA; White Mountain National Forest Artist in Residence, Center Sandwich, NH; Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, CA; The Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, Lehon, France; Trélex Residency, Trélex, Switzerland; and Montello Foundation, Montello, NV. 

 

Later You Tell Me Your Favorite Work of His Was a Sleeping Taxidermied Rooster, Eyes Shut, Mechanically Breathing
 
 We meet in a place of sand. 
Sand knows something about grinding down, 
something about glittering. 
 
I’m so sorry—is true and vast and empty,
like this sky here with the way it hits my eyes, hard.
 
The house is peaceful this morning---I look around
and there are prints on the walls, branches and flowers,
that have, you say, a nice touch
 
and I wonder about that word touch, which ends 
with a soft exhale but which began by meaning to strike, as in a bell
 
and about that other word, grief,
which ends with a fricative f, a weight of teeth.
 
For an artist, is there anything worse
than being interrupted? I can answer that
 
because you are moving around the kitchen and
I’ve lost my train of thought and the sand, 
it gets everywhere. 
 
In botany, the term interrupted means made discontinuous,
Interrupted by bareness or branching.
 
The bushes on this high plateau are wide apart---
this must be something about water. And 
what I’m saying is lack. 
 
I didn’t ask then what your friend’s work was like
and you didn’t say, instead telling me what he was like
 
and telling me about a bonsai that he once offered you
even though he was broke and probably using it.
 
You wondered about what it is to rework a poem
explaining that when you rework a painting you must decide 
what to erase, what you are going to lose. 
 
I told you I don’t have to lose anything, it’s all digital, I can get it back. 
Of course, that isn’t true. I watched the sky redden this morning, once. 
 
In the clay soils of this basin, when water takes away
the salt, the ground becomes something else, unstable. 
 
From someone else’s poem I learn that sand dunes have 
a slip face and a slack. I want to tell you about this.
I want to make it mean everything. 
In Memoriam Gregory Bae
--Sarah Bitter
  • Artist Website
Share
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Back to exhibitions

Goldfinch • 319 N. Albany  Ave • Chicago, IL • 60612 • 708-714-0937. Gallery hours are Fri/Sat, 12-4pm, when exhibitions are on view.

We partner with Art Money.

10 payments. 10 months. No Interest.

 

Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
Send an email
View on Google Maps
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2023 GOLDFINCH GALLERY
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences
Close

Join our mailing list

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.