Ying Li: Alterity

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pamelasalisburygallery.com

Ying Li

ALTERITY



Ying Li ALTERITY

JUNE 27 – JULY 26, 2020 PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY 362½ Warren Street

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Hudson, New York 12534

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518.828.5907

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pamelasalisburygallery.com


To the Secret Garden 2018, oil/linen, 20 x 16 inches


Ying Li’s Alterity The opportunity to open a gallery in Hudson recently presented itself and I jumped. One of my first calls was to Ying Li. We met at her studio on 28th Street to look at new paintings, but first there was lunch. Ying set a little table by the window, and prepared a meal that, like her paintings, revealed complex pairings: spicy and sweet, hot and cold, familiar but new. Ying looks like she’s throwing things together, but she knows exactly what she’s doing. Her culinary and artistic control is extraordinary. Ying works from perception, almost always on site. Her mark making is fast then slow, gentle, furious, insistent here, quiet there. Her use of color describes the world around us, its fragrance and shape, the weight of the air or light on a leaf. Holding it all together is a rigor that speaks to decades of painting, and a discipline that goes back to her academic training in Communist China following the Cultural Revolution. After years in a village labor camp, then at University, Ying spent entire semesters (in between mandatory military training) working on one drawing from one plaster cast…with a 6H pencil. Ying emigrated to the United States in the early 1980’s and completed her graduate degree (MFA) at Parsons School of Design. She has held the post of Professor of Fine Arts and Department Chair at Haverford College since 1997. Residencies take Ying around the globe and she has painted mountaintops from Telluride to the Sierras of Almeria Province. I have so much admiration for Ying Li. Her spirit is alternately funny and fierce, and the very air around her vibrates with life. To spend time with one of her paintings is to spend time with Ying, and to be reminded of all the things we’d like to be: curious, courageous, direct. When I opened the Gallery, I hurled myself into the great unknown. Ying’s paintings—their beauty and importance—tether me to the task at hand. This is what it’s all about.

—Pamela Salisbury, June 2020


There is a pathway that enables the artist to travel across time and space. This form of travel empowers an artist to create in the moment, to see with an alternative perspective, observe, and obtain insight from another dimension. This liberates and allows the retrieval of spiritual energy and connections associated with each place, with an inner reflection captured spontaneously on the canvas. The paint becomes a living and breathing entity between earth and sky, heaven and earth.

—Ying Li

Rosendale Trestle 2019, oil/linen, 24 x 30 inches



Chautauqua Belle #23 2017, oil/linen, 20 x 24 inches


Bee Keeper’s Farm, Castro Marim #4 2020, oil/linen, 18 x 22 inches


Writing the City #3 2020, oil/linen, 74 x 58 inches



Bee Keeper’s Farm, Castro Marim #2 2020, oil/linen, 18 x 24 inches


Bee Keeper’s Farm, Castro Marim #3 2020, oil/linen, 18 x 24 inches


Christmas Everyday 2020, oil/linen, 74 x 58 inches




Left to right:

Telluride, Valley of the Hanging Water #2 2019, oil/canvas, 24 x 24 inches

Telluride, Valley of the Hanging Water #3 2019, oil/canvas, 24 x 24 inches

Telluride, Valley of the Hanging Water #4 2019, oil/canvas, 24 x 24 inches


Roma #4 2018, oil/linen, 16 x 24 inches



Telluride, Valley of the Hanging Water, #5 2019, oil/linen, 16 x 20 inches


Ying Li, the Phlyssa Koshland Professor in Fine Arts, has taught at Haverford since 1997. Born in Beijing, China, Ying Li studied painting at Anhui Teachers University (1974–77) where she taught 1977–83. She immigrated to the United States in 1983 and received an MFA from Parsons School of Design, NY in 1987. Ying’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including internationally at Centro Incontri Umani Ascona (Swizterland), ISA Gallery (Italy), Enterprise Gallery (Ireland) and Museum of Rochefort-en-Terre (France); and in New York City at Lohin Geduld Gallery, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, The National Academy Museum and The American Academy of Arts and Letters; as well as at Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia), Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College (Haverford, PA), James Michener Museum (Doylestown, PA) and Hood Museum at Dartmouth College (New Hampshire). Her awards include: The Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for Painting and Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, both from The National Academy Museum; Donald Jay Gordon Visiting Artist and Lecturer, Swarthmore College; Artist-in-Residence, Dartmouth College; McMillan Stewart Visiting Critic, Maryland Institute College of Art; Ruth Mayo Distinguished Visiting Artist, The University of Tulsa; and Visiting Artist, American Academy in Rome. She is the recipient of various Residential Fellowships in Switzerland, Spain, Ireland, Canada and France. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post.


This catalog was published to accompany the exhibition:

Ying Li: Alterity June 27—July 26, 2020 Images © Ying Li Photography & design: John Goodrich Printing: Blurb

On front cover:

Rosendale Trestle (detail) 2019, oil/linen, 24 x 30 inches

PAMELA SALISBURY GALLERY 362½ Warren Street

|

Hudson, New York 12534

|

518.828.5907

|

pamelasalisburygallery.com



Ying Li pamelasalisburygallery.com


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