Tanya Leighton introduces us to a new sense of ordering with Mr. Andrew Kuo’s TMI opening. The desire to represent a vivid palette admixed with cerebral musings characteristically portrays New York Fine Arts in the best light. Without being too clever, Mr. Kuo is able to achieve a level of difficulty in needing to balance beauty without snark in his fragmentation of colors in his canvases.

Andrew Kuo
‘Double Time (7/14/22)’, 2022.
Acrylic and carbon transfer on linen
190.5×241.3 cm
75×95 in. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton. Photography by Dan Finlayson.

‘Andrew Kuo And Other Stories #1 6/16/22’, 2022
Acrylic and carbon transfer on linen
165.1×203.2 cm
65×80 in. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton. Photography by Dan Finlayson.

The colors themselves eclectically range from exquisite structuring detail with his Double Time series, to the more sporadic foray of Mr. Kuo’s water lilies treatments. This comfort in dexterity when playing with the idea of order and change is represented by such fastidiousness in the organizing of the paints in their own right – with the exactitude of spatial coordination of not simply color, but reflectance, weight, and a sublime idea of rectilinearity with his kaleidoscopic page-turners. It is indeed the notion of change in the completion of a printed book which invokes the necessary perspective of rotary motion – profoundly endless in duration, and therefore beautiful to realize at a distance.

‘Andrew Kuo
Double Time (7/7/22)’, 2022
Acrylic and carbon transfer on linen
190.5×241.3 cm
75×95 in. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton. Photography by Dan Finlayson.

It is this provocation of never-ending change which is utterly devoid of fear or dread when contemplating such a delicious flavor-wheel which is imbued with further positive ideas of mirth as we return to the conscientious patterning of certain colors with certain, not emotional states, but modes of being. Though while we may think of such metaphysical strain as severe in contemplation, it is again in this vivacity that erases in the mind’s eye of any dose of anxiety and antagonism. This poetical feat is a tasteful blend for those seeking such a reminder with an aire of confidence in treating the most serious of matters – time – with levity.

‘Water Lilies (Blue) 6/26/22’, 2022
Acrylic and carbon transfer on linen
165.1×203.2 cm
65×80 in
Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton. Photography by Dan Finlayson.

On the other hand, Mr. Kuo’s water lilies reduction demonstration of the Dionysian counterpoint of the aforementioned Apollonian gestures nevertheless retains an idea of grace in the gentle abstractions of a favorite subject matter in the fine arts (see Claude Monet). His own arbitrary determination of each water lilies “pose” on the canvas – measured by how long Mr. Kuo lets the paint drip-and-drop toward a wet completeness – imposes its own sense of order in the gradient of soft color tones which breathe a warranted originality when juxtaposed with Mr. Monet’s gentle desiccation of reality.

‘Andrew Kuo
Big Day (5/22/22)’, 2022
Acrylic and carbon transfer on linen
83.8×61 cm
33×24 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton. Photography by Dan Finlayson.

We see in the latter a proud aim at abstracting the natural forms, towards a reduction of the object itself into a smattering of blues, greens, and reds. The artist’s task here is to successfully order with consistency the paint droppings into the novelty of his swirls. It is in the idea of order re-introduced to us with less manufactured, i.e. artificial, concepts which helps us arrive at the consideration of a reductionist dripping which constructs a colorful parallelism; perhaps the core idea of symmetry that is made available to our senses when appreciating the beauty of lilies?

In final, what do we speak to then of the overall aim at synthesizing the cerebral with the sensual? How can we affirm this as progressing the fine art form? It is in the idea of taste as moving beyond the sensual, physical world, toward what the ancients coined noumenal – That which is self-contained in the Logos of man. In the danger of distracting the subject from the visual beauty of the artistic object, there is instead an added dimension or interstitial non-sensible space that is being formed by the artist with such a contextual enchantment. This novelty of added space, again, may be vacuous and bloated, but not so with this consistently hard-to-strike inner dialogue which never does not verge on neurosis in its gambits.

For more information please contact the gallery:

Tanya Leighton Los Angeles
4654 W Washington Blvd
LA 90016 CA

General Inquiries:
Tel: +49 (0)30 21972220
info@tanyaleighton.com

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