Desire Encapsulated

Andrew Sendor, Catalina Ouyang, Guimi You, Lior Modan, Bambou Gili, Miguel Angel Payano Jr., Joeun Kim Aatchim, Lita Albuquerque, Yuri Yuan, Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Yanyan Huang, Yifan Jiang, Yesiyu Zhao, Ruby Leyi Yang, Chris Oh, Hiba Schahbaz and Claire Colette

The concept of desire is one familiar to every human being and yet is near-impossible to define. Desire was declared by Gautama Buddha to be the source of all suffering, something that must be relinquished. Others, such as the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, saw personal desires as crucial to establishing social harmony. Perhaps the most philosophically dense works concerning desire have been made in the arts. Visual signifiers can best articulate the ambiguity that desire holds within the human conscience. From the ecstatic sculptures of the Italian Baroque to sensuous ukiyo-e prints, all the way to the intimate new media and digital works of our present, art has been used to encapsulate, rather than define, our notions of desire. 

It is in this artistic tradition that Desire Encapsulated follows. The exhibition features 17 artists who create works in which desire is expressed and captured through different media, techniques, and practices. In Desire Encapsulated, as in desire itself, there is a constant push and pull between literalness and metaphor, between dreaming and waking, between figuration and abstraction. This tension is reflected in the flow of the exhibition, which is exhibited throughout Make Room’s new gallery space. 

In the first gallery, traditional narratives of desire are mediated by material, form, and tradition: Hiba Schahbaz and Chris Oh find modern resonance in the confines of historic styles and techniques, while the works of Lior Modan and Sula Bermúdez-Silverman revel in the inherent sensuality and mystery of their materials.

In the second gallery, personal ideas of desire begin to take shape, dissolve, and reform. In Yanyan Huang’s calligraphy-influenced painting, the line between representation and abstraction is rendered meaningless; meanwhile, Yesiyu Zhao and Miguel Angel Payano Jr. create work that investigate the changing natures of identity, belonging, and personal narrative; Andrew Sendor’s meticulous draftsmanship serves to illuminate his ongoing engagement with the interrelation of photorealism and invented narrative structures; Ruby Leyi Yang’s abstraction of the color, plane, and text reaches for what is beyond the meaning of language, beyond the meaningless; and for Joeun Kim Aatchim and Yifang Jiang, forms and boundaries, whether they be of concepts, objects, compositions, or narratives, collapse in on themselves, yielding new aesthetic structures. 

Desire reaches into the unconscious in the final gallery. Lita Albuquerque and Claire Colette’s canvases pair recognizable natural forms and materials with geometric, meditative abstractions that bridge the gap between humanity and the vastness of the universe; Yuri Yuan’s painted dream diaries turn inward, touching on themes of loss, solitude, and deep self-reflection; Bambou Gili’s cerulean figures find themselves at the intersection of art history, daydreams, and social theory. In Guimi You’s latest painting, objects and forms enter the head in a whirl of shape, color, and visual play. The sculptures of Catalina Ouyang play with the idea and form of the human body, using unique–and often humorous–materials to do so. 

The relationship between desire and art permeates not only the final image, but the acts, techniques and materials that constitute creation; Desire runs not only the production of art, but also the contemplation, enjoyment, and consumption of it. With Desire Encapsulated, we seek to investigate the ways in which desire is itself held in thrall by the mechanism of art.