Little show at China Cultural Centre in the city

With Mingming and Omer I was at the China Cultural Centre in the city to see a documentary and while waiting for my friends to arrive I took in a little show there with two artists.

Jasper Knight, 'Centennial palms' 152cm x 137cm

One is Jasper Knight, an Australian artist of some notoriety whose enamel, gloss acrylic and gesso studies of blue palm trees were mesmerising in their intensity. This wasn’t the one I spent most time looking at but it shows some of the qualities I appreciated as I sat in the gallery.

Paired with Knight’s work was the work of Adam Chang. These lovely oil paintings are especially interesting on account of the brushwork, which is completely different from what Knight uses for his paintings.

Adam Chang, 'Shan Shui with Panda 21-3' 160cm x 120cm

Chang’s sometimes impasto use of the paint creates an intricate texture on the work’s surface that dazzles the viewer and he also uses thinner or solvent to create drips that add a sort of cloth-like matrix for the image to evolve from in the eyes of the person in the gallery.

Elsewhere in the centre were dozens of children’s paintings and drawings including this delightful watercolour. I was impressed by the marriage in it of east and west, how a European quality like perspective is used in a delicate Chinese way to create beauty.