BLACK TEAR

PAINTING

Acrylic and oil on table, framed.

Painted surface 38 x 56 cm (14.96 x 22.05 in ) in a format of 38 x 56 cm (14.96 x 22.05 in)

Year of realization 2021

Signed on the bottom right of the piece.

Unpublished work.  

“The body in crisis is increasingly present in our daily lives,” notes MoMA PS1 curator and associate director Peter Eleey, who headed up the “Greater New York” 2015 curatorial team. “Whether it’s in reference to the refugee situation”—he didn’t specify which one, but there are plenty—“or the way the media is processing Black Lives Matter, abstraction has been comfortable—for us. But it doesn’t give shape to the discomforts and questions that I think a lot of us are grappling with.” Deitch seconds that, adding, “This is not a time when a ponderous Mark Rothko painting about myth is relevant.” He ventures that figurative painting allows for more-diverse cultural content—clothing, skin color, setting—than abstraction ever can.

W - Fan Zhong