Dream Waves, 2019

Downey Projects, Downey, California

Description:

Downey Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by California-based artist Alan Chin. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and the most comprehensive exhibition of his work since 2010, showcasing the multiple facets of Chin’s studio practice and time while living in the greater Los Angeles area.

In his psychologically charged objects and paintings, Chin portrays cultural modes against intangible circumstances. Whether depicting family history, gender, spirituality, mainstream culture, nature, or complex cosmic questions, his work attempts to navigate the continuous abundance of information through visual language in contemporary life. By integrating elements of painting, ceramics, architecture, installation, performance, and film, he investigates the value we place on objects, color, and form, and explores how we create meaning within the vocabulary of life. Using everyday materials, ranging from found objects, nature, and humanity, he notes sculpture and painting as evidence of behavior. By using the process of experimentation, his work seems to hover in a transitional state of paradox, as if caught between life and death. His work becomes a self-perpetuating system, seemingly capable of a goal, decay, and rebirth.  Like scientific instruments of measurement, his sculpture attempts to quantify and organize the universe through a fragile, personal system of order within the seemingly chaotic world. His work investigates culture’s obscure undercurrents within our structured society by exploring the power of the human capacity.