DIMIN is excited to reveal a monumental new work by Ye Qin Zhu, A Stage Within a Stage, the central piece of this eponymous exhibition. Measuring 27 feet in width, A Stage Within a Stage is the artist’s largest work to date, and the culmination of over a year of work.
Inspired by his own experiences with art in religious spaces, Zhu is interested in the power of scale to influence the viewer’s body, allowing the artwork to unite the effects of architecture, storytelling and iconography. A Stage Within a Stage fills up the gallery’s main space. On a dark background it appears to be floating, with its illuminated surface filled with motifs of light beams striking through the painting. There is a revelatory or voyeuristic feeling to peering into the darkness—the lights can be read as strobes, spotlights, theater lights, or even alien and divine lights. Experimenting with simulated light effects on the materially dense surfaces of the relief painting, Zhu creates illusion amidst the tactile elements of the painting. By honing in on this trompe-l’œil effect, Zhu uses this technique to highlight the Buddhist concept of Maya, which, translated from Sanskrit, means “illusion” or “magic”. Illusion is a recurring theme throughout religion. It supposes that there is a rift between one’s inner spiritual life and the material world. This tension takes center stage in the work as a driving force in the theater of life.
Using everything within his reach, Zhu adopts a maximalist approach to painting, both materially and technically. Up close, his attention to detail is mesmerizing, combining natural materials such as tree roots and semi-precious stones with mass produced plastics and hardware – all while using acrylic paint and relief sculpting to fuse all the components together. His work spans the history of Western and Eastern art and cultural influences—ranging from Duchamp’s readymade assemblages to Tishan Hsu’s expositions of human nature and technology. His scope combines classical painting techniques with abstraction and Chinese nature paintings, and in doing so, Zhu propels the conversation of contemporary painting toward global interconnectedness. For instance, the disassembled cellphone embedded in the segment Phygital Rally is a tool to connect us globally. Speaking literally, a cellphone’s parts are mined in Asia, Africa, and South America, and are assembled and marketed across the globe.
Zhu draws on a specific memory of experiencing art on a physical and psychic level. Over a decade ago, he visited the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, a monastery founded in 328 AD that has since spawned dormitories where monks still reside in pagodas and Buddhist grottoes. Carved into the mountainsides and walls of The Grand Hall are sprawling, hyper-detailed reliefs depicting Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arhats, and cosmologies of the Buddhist tradition which inspire Zhu’s unique methodology. According to Zhu, his lived experience of these artworks was anything but monastic, which made him consider what it would be like to live with the reliefs and iconography as a constant part of the environment. In his own words, “no matter how much I try to envision this, I still feel like a stranger, a tourist”. Through A Stage Within a Stage, Zhu returns to this feeling of estrangement.
Born in Taishan, China in 1986 to farmers who met in the factories of Shenzhen, Zhu and his family immigrated to New York City in 1990 where he grew up in Sunset Park. Having earned his M.F.A. from Yale in 2020, he was the inaugural Innovation Fellow for Tsai CITY and Yale Schwarzman Center serving as the lead liaison between the two institutions. He created several large-scale public projects including A Universe in Strafford, New Hampshire, and CONSTELLATION on Governors Island, New York (2021). Zhu led community-oriented projects in New Haven, CT, working with the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Yale-New Haven Hospital to create public installations and healing spaces (2020-present). Zhu has exhibited widely between New York and Los Angeles, as well as internationally in France, China, England, and the Netherlands, with his most recent solo exhibition at Harkawik Gallery in New York, NY (2022).
DIMIN is located in Tribeca at 406 Broadway, Fl. 2, New York, NY. DIMIN is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm.
For all inquiries, please contact gallery@dimin.nyc.
