Winston Wächter Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of “CloudMistTree,” featuring new work by Emily Cheng.

Cheng’s lush, vibrant canvases have always concerned themselves with the spiritual and emotive content of forms. Her paintings fuse the quiet energy of an Eastern calligraphic line with the sumptuous, insistently three-dimensional world of Western painting. In neither case, however, are the original sources for Cheng’s forms meant to be decoded. Rather, she has filtered and abstracted them beyond recognition, distilled them to their essence, and intertwined them, either with other abstracted forms, or against nebulous backgrounds infused with color. Whether distilled from a dizzying array of art historical sources or lifted from a North African textile design, Cheng’s paintings ultimately provide the viewer with an intricately constructed field of exploration. What is found there is different for every viewer; for some, Cheng provides space for spiritual contemplation, for others, a familiar and intriguing image of form and color.

In Cheng’s new work, her formerly large-scale paintings have been made more intimate and portrait-like. In keeping with this smaller scale, her focus has narrowed as well. Using Chinese and European religious painting as her starting point, Cheng often extracts the background elements and motifs, making them the subject of her works. She believes that these temple details, lotus flowers and clouds can be worked to retain the aura of devotion and expression more commonly associated with the now absent deities.

For further information please contact Amanda Snyder at [212] 327 2526