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Yifan Jiang paintings Fall and Haircut installed in the gallery
Installation view of Yifan Jiang's A bouquet of senses featuring four oil on canvas paintings
Yifan Jiang paintings Haircut and Midsummer installed in the gallery
Yifan Jiang paintings Midsummer and Edinburgh
Installation view of Yifan Jiang's 2 channel video installation Neighbors, showing a single screen and the painting Late Afternoon
Installation view of Yifan Jiang's 2 channel video installation Neighbors, showing a single screen
Installation view of Yifan Jiang's 2 channel video installation Neighbors, showing a single screen
Yifan Jiang
Yifan Jiang, Pool, 2022
Yifan Jiang, Pool, 2022
Yifan Jiang, Fall, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Fall, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Haircut, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Haircut, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Midsummer, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Midsummer, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Edinburgh, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Edinburgh, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Throw, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Throw, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Late Afternoon, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Late Afternoon, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Neighbors, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Sleep, 2023
Yifan Jiang, Sleep, 2023

Press Release

Meliksetian | Briggs is pleased to present A bouquet of senses, new work by Yifan Jiang. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, April 19th at our Dallas location at 150 Manufacturing Street, Dallas Design District, featuring Jiang’s imaginative paintings and an installation of her latest video animation. Jiang’s work finds the strange, uncanny and magical in the quotidian world.

 

 “A bouquet of senses contains my most personal works to date. Constructed by probing the inner walls of my psyche, it is a reflection as well as a confession. As my memories settle and move further away from the present, certain moments start to surface. These particular flashes of time stick not only to my brain but also to my eyes, ears, tongue, and palms. Multiple kinds of perceptions add up to form my sense of “having been there.” As the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it: “A difficult relation to conceive— since one eye, one hand, are capable of vision, of touch, and since what has to be comprehended is that these visions, these touches, these little subjectivities, these ‘consciousnesses of … ,’ could be assembled like flowers into a bouquet….” (Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible p.141). Tiny pieces of sensations, sounds, tastes, temperatures, and pulls of gravity clustered to form past versions of myself, reflecting past versions of the world. These body memories take me back to sitting in a tree with a lover on a balmy summer night (Midsummer). Talking to a friend for hours until I feel transparent (Late afternoon). Getting a haircut in a pond at the tip of northern Scotland (Haircut). Dancing after midnight at the foot of a castle (Edinburgh). Feeling the gravitational pull of the gigantic desert sky (Throw, Fall). At one point, these sensations were real and felt by the bones, yet as they slip into the past, these specific instances seem unlikely to have happened at all. The paintings are detailed records of a dozen ephemeral feelings captured before they migrate to a remote corner of my mind.

 

During my past year of living in the New Mexico desert, prolonged isolation got me to ask one question: “Who is the one listening when I am speaking to myself?” Who is the “I” that listens to the words spoken by the inner voice? Who owns the inner eye that delights in the pink elephants of daydreams? Do they share a name with the dreamer, or are they just strangers living in the same skull?

Neighbors is a two-channel video installation that grapples with one’s relationship with oneself. Played simultaneously, one video is a view of an apartment seen through the window with its inhabitant going about their life. The other video is of the voyeur who inhabits the apartment across the street; crouched in the darkness, they watch and judge their neighbor’s every move. Using the installation as a metaphor, Neighbors delves into the paradoxical structure of one’s inner world. Of course, answering big metaphysical questions are beyond me, but my best efforts include an honest report and a confession”.

                                                                                                                                                               ~ Yifan Jiang, 2023

 

Yifan Jiang (b. 1994, Tianjin, China) is a Chinese-Canadian artist currently based between New York City and Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, New York, and a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada.  Recent solo exhibitions include Zero-sum game, Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2022); a two-part exhibition Medium-sized dry goods / Names for airy nothings, Meliksetian | Briggs, Los Angeles (2021) and a video animation installation at Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Dallas (2022, two-person exhibition with James Mercer). In addition, she has participated in group exhibitions at The Roswell Museum, Roswell, NM (2022); David Zwirner’s Platform online gallery space (2022); the Jewish Museum, New York (2021); London International Animation Festival, London, UK (2020); and the New York Public Art Fund, New York (2020) among others. In 2023, her video animation work will be featured in a group exhibition at the Today Art Museum in Beijing, China and was shown at the International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Holland. She is currently participating in the Core Residency program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX and her exhibition as part of the program runs until April 21st.

Video

Yifan Jiang

Neighbors, 2023

Two channel high definition video with sound

Dimensions variable Duration: 6'35"

1 of 3 + 2 APs

YJ051

Trailer: 31"