Vista Flux: Ye Cheng

LATITUDE Gallery is pleased to present Vista Flux, Ye Cheng’s third exhibition with the gallery and her first solo show, curated by Leo Yuan.

Vista Flux presents the most recent body of work that the artist made for her ongoing series Angoisse La Redousse, began in 2020. They are the pictorial records of a staunch experimentation with material (acrylic, oil, pastel, canvas, linen) and technique (lineation, massing).

The series’ title—“l’angoisse” (anguish) and “la redousse” (redoubt)—captures the contrast between two kinds of feelings: a sense of anguish and anxiety when faced with the harsh environment of the outside world, and a sense of security and comfort when protected by the strong walls of a fortress. The terms are inspired by the writings of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard and reference his 1958 seminal book on the phenomenology of space.

This dialectical approach expressed in the name of the series is echoed by other pairs of oppositions. Pictorially, they are manifested as line vs color, natural vs geometric forms, and translucency vs opacity. They also take on larger, symbolic meanings: the mountains become a vehicle for associations with nature, sensibility, and a nebulous state of wandering beyond, whereas the floating, rectangular screens signal the Western tradition of linear perspective and rationality. These opposing forces are synthesized and combined to create a vista in flux, a Daoism-inspired arcadia, where one can knowingly get lost in colorful excursions.