Amy Yun-Ping Chen and Jodi Lightner received their MFAs in painting in 2010 from Wichita State University. They will visit Chico to install Interpreting Structures for four days before the show opens June 7, 2012.
Both artists pull heavily from the drawing tradition but take different approaches to address either cultural or personal interpretation within structural forms. Chen uses traditions of culture to dissect how Eastern architectural influences have entered into our daily lives. Lightner’s work draws from a psychological expression of architectures; she uses the experience of place as a way to discuss whether the fabricated structures we find ourselves surrounded by are more real than the encounters happening within them.
For Interpreting Structures, Chen and Lightner focus on the role of architecture in understanding our relationship to structure and culture. They are looking at the boundary lines that confine us as well as the objects that dictate our movement or inform our cultural understanding. Using materials that are common to creating these interferences, they are proposing that despite cultural differences, we all have similar responses to structured confinement and the fences that keep us contained. The ideas of fencing off and fencing in ourselves are present in the work and imagery.
Amy Yun-Ping Chen: untitled
Amy Yun-Ping Chen: untitled
Jodi Lightner: untitled
Jodi Lightner: Amend (mixed media on mylar, 42" x 30", 2011)