This past month I headed to the West Loop off the Green Line Pulaski stop to see the work of an old friend and admired artist, James Kao. Domestics at Ads Donna, featured his new drawings and paintings, partly filling an entire wall like a grid with unique gems of distinct personality. When I first became acquainted with James, he depicted interior meditative scenes of oranges precariously and inconsequently positioned on tables from various perspectives. I saw the subject matter morph into formal qualities, retaining sparks of their interior influence and mainly falling in the mid tone and greyscale with hints of warm and cool natural color. He uses color honestly, purposefully and poignantly, chosen for emphasis together.
In Domestics I was charmed by the many small format drawings and works on paper still calling reference to Kao's studio setting and intimate reflections on ephemera surrounding him. The language of identifying object and space breaks down and creates new symbolism, much like his oranges falling off their circular table. He suggests plants, and life within each, including new ways of presenting an environment or home in flux with time.
His work, like his language to describe it, is simple and deep in its lack of complication. It presents things as we pass them, with suggestions familiar enough to suggest identity by a gesture and tonal depth. We see the fragments of plants, a window, and the suggestion of being confined within a space or a as a fragment of vast expanse. He draws each with the attention of being present and lingering on the passage of his context of observation. He plays with the object he is translating as well as the negative space the form falls into on paper. As he concisely describes in his artist statement from October 2013,
There is a line, even if unmarked, between natural and unnatural, between built and un-built, between world and earth; and I revel where this line erupts.
Lava turns to stone that lines a Chicago garden.
Domestics runs from Feb 16th through March 23rd, 2014 at Ads Donna, located at 4223 W. Lake St., Chicago, IL 60624. The gallery is open Sundays from 1 to 4 pm and by appointment. Please visit http://www.jameskao.org/index.html to see more work by James Kao.