Chao Ding

New paintings  on view October 1 – November 3, 2022

My paintings are a diary of things that have happened around me, a preserve of evocative moments and fragments I have experienced. It is the integration of my perception that involves my emotional struggle, vulnerability, and mental fantasies. I
concentrate on revealing unusual beauties and poetic significance from those deserted spaces in my work.

The sense of loneliness brought from my upbringing made me always have a sentimental attachment to trashed and non-functional things. When I came to the US, the sense of displacement made me start to explore the abandoned houses where I can gain an inexplicable feeling of rooted. I am drawn into the odor of mystery and memories they produced. The decayed textural layers and subtle colors left by time passing are really appealing to me. This kind of human absence automatically carries narrative possibilities, in a silent way. The traces are the sediment of “dialogues” which are a new level of perfection for me. As a foreign artist, these specificities also transferred a kind of isolation as an echo for me to “speak with”. Through my works, I am longing to bring the forgotten beauties which people usually missed back to their sight, pursuing a universal impression on psychological representation.

I look for constructive force and harmony from the “chaos” and discover internal order among the visual elements. I am intrigued by the visual formalities and vibes that I encountered in very casual surroundings especially “indecent scenes”, even a pile of trash or traffic cones made me take out the sketchbook. In my compositions, I simplify and structuralize the objects, “suggest” the realities to spectators with my version. I like to excavate the real side of things, like the backside of the stores or some storage
spaces, they usually contrast the gorgeous fronts. But this kind of “negative” side gives me a strong satisfaction of truth, belonging, and beauty.

In contemporary life, things are changing, and moving with super high efficiency, accompanied by less emotion remained. The connection becomes trivial, information becomes like movie trailers. It seems like everything is ephemeral. On the other side, time is silent, soundless, but it always shows up in a brutal way when you realized it. During this flashy period, I would like to collect those remanences that evoke empathy and memory, bring that brevity and vanishing into eternity on my canvas.

Chao Ding is a Beijing native perceptual painter, he learned classical painting from his father during his childhood. Chao originally studied Fashion Design and earned a BA from Beijing University of Technology in 2012. He went to New York to study painting and drawing at SUNY Buffalo State College in 2014 and finished his MFA at Louisiana State University in 2019, after which he moved to Sacramento CA. Chao had solo exhibitions in Buffalo NY, Baton Rouge LA, Visalia CA and Penn, group exhibitions in LA, OH, ME and NY, several virtual exhibitions and publications online. He received a commission from Burden Rural life museum for a series of documentary art, and his work has been permanently collected by the LSU Museum of Art, Parish library, and other public institutes in LA. He had attended several artist residencies including the Golden Foundation program in NY. Chao’s work is represented by Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento CA.