News
Mimi Chen Ting in group show at Addison Rowe Gallery in Santa Fe, NM
Hakone, 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 46 x 55 in (116.8 x 139.7 cm)
Transcendental and Beyond: The Essence of Art
works by Brianna Bass, Siri Berg, Janice Biala, Lilly Fenichel, Sonia Gechtoff, Angela Heisch, Sheila Isham, Elaine de Kooning, Rachel MacFarlane, Beatrice Mandelman, Irene Monat Stern, Louise Nevelson, Agnes Pelton, Grace Rosario Perkins, Florence Miller Pierce, Irene Rice-Pereira, Vivian Springford, Joan Thorne, Mimi Chen Ting.
Addison Rowe Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
June 28 - October 31, 2024
from the gallery press release:
This is a powerful exhibition featuring a diverse array of talented visionary women artists; including but not limited to Agnes Pelton, Louise Nevelson, Irene Rice-Pereira, Janice Biala, Beatrice Mandelman, Vivian Springford, Elaine de Kooning, Florence Miller Pierce, Siri Berg, Sonia Gechtoff, Lilly Fenichel, Sheila Isham, Irene Monat Stern, Joan Thorne, Mimi Chen Ting, Grace Rosario Perkins, Rachel MacFarlane, Angela Heisch, and Brianna Bass. This captivating show explores creative interpretations of spiritual and cosmic themes within each of the artists’ unique artistic language and expression. The genesis of this exhibition springs from my deep connection with the Transcendental Painting Group (1938-1945) and my gallery’s recent acquisition of Agnes Pelton's masterpiece, "The Being; A Transcendental Vision." With three decades of experience as a gallery owner in Santa Fe, I've developed a deep appreciation for the significance of landscape and the artists’ ability to capture the essence of the land and the spirit of the earth. Moreover, as a woman in the art world, I am driven to highlight the formidable contributions of female artists whose dynamic and distinctive canvases serve as evocative expressions of both earthly and celestial imagery. This exhibition is a celebration of their power and vision.
Each work bears the unique imprint of its creator, serving as a personal expression of ideas relevant both to our contemporary era and throughout the annals of history. They stand as poignant reminders of the enduring dialogue between the human spirit and the mysteries of existence.
Mimi Chen Ting in Survey Exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, January 27-March 9
Mimi Chen Ting, Divertimento 2, 2009, 25 x 27 inches (63.5. x 68.6 cm)
A Survey Exhibition: Louis Stern Fine Arts Through the Decades
January 27 – March 9, 2024
Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present a survey exhibition celebrating its 30th year in West Hollywood’s Design District. Founded in 1982 as Louis Stern Galleries in Beverly Hills, the gallery is helmed by veteran art dealer Louis Stern. A specialist in Impressionist and Modern artwork and a pillar of the Los Angeles arts community, Stern marks 2024 as his 63rd year in the art business. The works on view illustrate the breadth and significance of the gallery’s storied exhibition program, spanning historical and contemporary Hard Edge painting, sculpture, photography, Hungarian Avant-Garde, and Latin American art.
Since moving to its current location on Melrose Avenue in 1994, Louis Stern Fine Arts has become renowned for its focus on Mid-20th Century West Coast artists, with a special emphasis on those who have been historically underrecognized. Through a robust exhibition program, esteemed publications, and rigorous scholarly research, the gallery has returned to rightful prominence the careers of three of the artists who defined and epitomized the California Hard Edge movement: Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, and Karl Benjamin. The gallery published the digital catalogue raisonné of paintings by Benjamin in 2023. The reputation of the influential but long-overlooked painter and muralist Alfredo Ramos Martínez has also been revived through the gallery’s efforts, which include the compilation of an in-progress catalogue raisonné for this prolific artist.
In addition to paintings by Benjamin, Feitelson, and Lundeberg, the exhibition showcases works by their fellow Hard Edge artists June Harwood and John McLaughlin, as well as selections by influential California artists James Jarvaise, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Samella Lewis, Mimi Chen Ting, and Frederick Wight. In dialogue with these historical works are selections by contemporary artists who work in related geometric abstract modes, including Laurie Fendrich, Mokha Laget, Mark Leonard, James Little, and Richard Wilson. Works by Hunter Color School artists Doug Ohlson and Gabriele Evertz engage the East and West Coasts in a conversation on color and form, and paintings by Michele Toohey and Kymber Holt offer meditations on pattern and scale. The serenity of Harrison McIntosh’s ceramics finds kinetic parallels in the elegant metal sculptures of Knopp Ferro and Jerome Kirk.
The mixed media constructions of Ron Cooper and Heather Hutchison, though produced more than 40 years apart, share a preoccupation with capturing the transient effects of light. Sculptor Cecilia Miguez and assemblage artist George Herms both create found object sculptures with presence and impact greater than the sum of their parts. Works by Jean Charlot, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Anita Payró, and Ramos Martínez highlight Stern’s promotion of and expertise in Latin American art. Hungarian Avant-Garde paintings by Béla Kádár, Hugó Scheiber, and János Mattis Teutsch harken back to the gallery’s landmark 2002 exhibition investigating this artistic movement. They are accompanied by a group of thoughtfully composed photographs by Lucien Clergue, Mark Feldstein, Magali Nougarède, Leonard Nimoy, and Jean-François Spricigo.
Among the works on view in Stern’s office, which has been incorporated as an additional exhibition space, are selections from his personal collection. A 1950 monochrome painting by Leon Polk Smith hangs above a handsome wood cabinet, custom-built in the 1960s by Sam Maloof for architect Edward H. Fickett. Nestled amongst Stern’s extensive collection of art publications are a whimsical Head Cup by Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and group of sculptures from the series Variations on the Theme of Queen Nefertete. Reimagining the iconic Bust of Nefertiti in the styles of various Modern artists, these works were a collaboration between sculptor Bruce Houston and film director Billy Wilder, who was a close friend of Stern’s for many years before his passing. Accumulated over decades in the art business with a knowledgeable and discerning eye, these personal treasures exemplify the connoisseurship, longevity, and dedication to the advancement of artists and their work for which Stern and his gallery are acclaimed.
https://www.louissternfinearts.com/
https://www.instagram.com/louissternfinearts/
Solo Exhibition Opens at Louis Stern Fine Arts
Installation of Mimi Chen Ting: The Sea Within Me at Louis Stern Fine Arts
Mimi Chen Ting: The Sea Within Me
September 16-October 28, 2023 (extended to November 4)
Opening reception: Saturday, September 16, 5-7pm
Louis Stern Fine Arts
9002 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
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Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present “Mimi Chen Ting: The Sea Within Me.” The late-career abstract works of ChineseAmerican artist Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) give material form to the accumulation of memories, images, and complexities which colored her life and experience. A painter, printmaker, and performance artist, Ting’s high-spirited practice integrated a mosaic of Eastern and Western aesthetic influences, producing lyrical works which ardently transcribe the nuances of navigating womanhood, belonging, and personal identity.
Ting was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong, where she was compelled into stillness by a mother who feared she had “too much fire” in her. Her study of ballet, in which she excelled, was suppressed for fear that she might become overly muscular. Memories of her grandmother’s bound feet, the rich colors and reliquary forms of Buddhist temples, and the balance and flow of Chinese calligraphy would make a lasting impression. After immigrating to San Francisco in 1965, Ting forged a diverse artistic career in the Bay Area and in Taos, New Mexico, which spanned five decades. The spectacular vistas of the American Southwest reverberate in the artist’s finely tuned, sometimes unexpected choices of palette and sweeping passages of flat, highly contrasted colors.
When the demands of parenting young children precluded sufficient time to paint, Ting returned to her study of dance through a vibrant performance practice which drew on various influences, including modern dance, Tai Chi, and Butoh. This connection to movement and the body would prove integral to her intuitive, fluid approach to composing the abstract works which would become her focus in the last two decades of her life. Ting allowed their sinuous curves to develop organically, in alternating layers of charcoal and paint, relying on instinct to guide which forms to abandon and which to nurture. Reduced to their most essential components, the paintings serve as extensions of the artist’s internal world with all its concerns and complications, ebbing and flowing between competing passions and responsibilities.
In the words of the artist, “the embodiment of everything, of being alive...life and art are the same to me.”
Works by Mimi Chen Ting have been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including a career survey presented by University Art Gallery, Sonoma State University, on view from September 7–December 10, 2023. She received aNational Endowment for the Arts Grant in 2003 and the Agnes Martin Award for Abstract Painting and Drawing in 2012. Her work can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including the Annie Wong Art Foundation in Hong Kong and the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos.
Major Survey Opens at University Art Gallery, Sonoma, CA
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), “Sleeping Woman,” 1996, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 44 in (121.9 x 111.8 cm) © 2023 Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This Side of Blue: The Art of Mimi Chen Ting
September 7-December 10, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday, September 7, 4-6pm
University Art Gallery at Sonoma State University
Art Building, SSU, 1801 E. Cotati Ave
Rohnert Park, CA
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The University Art Gallery at Sonoma State University is pleased to present This Side of Blue: The Art of Mimi Chen Ting, which will be on view September 7 - December 10, 2023. Guest curated by Holly Shen, the exhibition is a watershed event: it is the most comprehensive survey of Mimi Chen Ting's five-decade career, it marks the first posthumous exhibition after her passing last year, and offers an in-depth assessment of Ting's extraordinary life and work. This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Estate of Mimi Chen Ting and Artist Estate Studio, LLC, and supported in part by Louis Stern Fine Arts. A fully illustrated catalogue with essay by Holly Shen accompanies this exhibition.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) was a painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose life and career offer a view into the Bay Area art scene during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. A Chinese American artist who immigrated to California in 1965, Ting often interwove Eastern and Western aesthetics in her work. Ting can be understood alongside Bay Area artists such as Carlos Villa, Bernice Bing, or Ruth Asawa, as one of the Bay Area's Asian American and Pacific Islander creatives who have explored questions of personal identity and Asian diaspora, from the 1970s forward to today.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Conversation,” 1985-87, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 49 in (154.9 x 124.5 cm) © 2023 Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), “Tangles and Ties 9,” 2007, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 50 in (137 x 127 cm) © 2023 Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Born in Shanghai in 1946 to the concubine of an aspiring businessman, Ting spent much of her childhood in Hong Kong after her family fled communist takeover in China. She immigrated to the Bay Area in 1965 to attend San Francisco Women's College (now USF), eventually transferring to San Jose State University where she received a B.A. in studio art in 1969, followed by an M.A. in painting in 1976. Ting lived and worked in San Jose for the early part of her career, where she married and raised two children, and taught at institutions including San Jose State University, San Jose City College, and the University of California Berkeley Extension. She later moved to Sausalito, and in 1988 established a studio in Taos, New Mexico.
This Side of Blue centers on Ting's paintings, presenting the artist’s exploration of themes of womanhood, immigration, and the relationship between environment and belonging. The exhibition highlights critical shifts in her engagement with a matrix of connected genres and influences, including figurative paintings, abstracted landscapes inspired by the Bay Area and Taos, entirely abstract works, and a rooted inspiration and engagement with movement—from ballet to Butoh to modern dance and performance art.
“From the enclosed courtyard of her family’s compound in Shanghai, where she spent her childhood surrounded by the labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City, to a one-room abode atop a mesa in the high desert of New Mexico,” writes guest curator Holly Shen, “Mimi Chen Ting always had an uncanny discernment of the very real and theoretical boundaries that defined her being in the world, and a proclivity for testing them.”
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), Silicon Landscape, 1984, acrylic on canvas (three parts), overall: 48 x 144 in (121.9 x 365.8 cm) © 2023 Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Habitat,” 1992, acrylic on canvas (three parts), overall: 50 x 80 in (127 x 203.2 cm) © 2023 Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Ting's figurative canvases often feature a lone figure entangled in a slightly surreal setting. Sleeping Woman, 1996, presents a female figure with closed eyes, suspended from a rope within a flat, illusory space. “I ask questions and share stories,” Ting explained in 2002. “Along the way, discoveries and resonance abound. This is a solitary journey where one simply cannot become lost, and where each step promises an adventure.” Ting’s landscape canvases like the large triptych Silicon Landscape (1984), features bright colors and hard-edged geometries to depict the Bay Area's rolling hills. Ting brought her interest in flat space, bright color, cords and ropes to her abstract paintings as well. A series titled Tangles and Ties (2006-2009) is about the many dances in life. Here Ting laid down on canvases pictorial road maps of the tangles and ties of her past experiences, dreams and imaginations.
“I was searching for the source of me,” Ting said in 1991.
This Side of Blue: The Art of Mimi Chen Ting is guest curated for the University Art Gallery by Holly Shen, a writer, curator and cultural producer based in San Jose. Shen is a director for the U.S. office of Lord Cultural Resources, a global consulting practice serving the cultural sector, and she has held senior leadership and program roles at San Jose Museum of Art and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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General Information
Press Contact: Jennifer Bethke, Director, bethke@sonoma.edu (707) 774-5624
Location: University Art Gallery, Art Building, SSU, 1801 E. Cotati Ave, Rohnert Park, CA
Hours: Tuesdays - Fridays 11:00-4:00 / Weekends 12:00-4:00
Admission: Free
Parking: $8 pass in any lot on campus
Telephone: (707) 664-2295
Website: http://artgallery.sonoma.edu/
Email: artgallery@sonoma.edu
Mimi Chen Ting featured in Palm Springs Life
Mimi Chen Ting, "Cornucopia," 2012
by Alex Galbraith
February 8, 2023
Intersect Palm Springs art fair takes over the Palm Springs Convention Center Feb. 9–12, exhibiting art from 50 galleries from near and far and offering a robust schedule of talks, tours, and other programs.
Hometown representation at the fair comes from four local galleries, including Melissa Morgan Fine Art and Hohmann, alongside 13 Los Angeles dealers and others from France (Boccara, which has locations in Paris and New York), a South Korean gallery (the Busan space Lee & Bae), and Art Labor from Shanghai. The remaining exhibitors come from all over North America.
CONNECTIONS WITH NATURE
The gorgeous vistas of the Coachella Valley put everyone in a state of mind to consider our place on Earth. Following that train of thought, several exhibitors are theming their presentations around the natural world.
Manneken Press of Bloomington, Illinois, will show Rupert Deese's Rivers & Mountains series, Judy Ledgerwood's "Field of Flowers,” and Anna Kunz's "Echolocation," among others. L.A.'s Philip Martin Gallery will show new works by Aaron Morse and Daniel Dove.
A FOCUS ON WOMEN
Many of the exhibitors are focusing on work made by women. Brooklyn's Artist Estate Studio will feature work by Siri Berg, Mimi Chen Ting, Judith Dolnick, Hermine Ford, Joan Witek, and others. Kathryn Markel Fine Arts will show work by abstract female artists like Maeve D'Arcy, Joanne Freeman, Conny Goelz Schmitt, and others. Richard Levy Gallery of Albuquerque will show art by Nikesha Breeze and Jennifer Lynch.
In addition to the exhibitions, Intersect will host larger curated spaces focusing on themes ranging from the Mojave Desert ecosystem (Investigations: Zombie Forest) and the surprising parallels between classical art and sports photography (Art, But Make It Sports). Throughout the weekend, spoken word performances and lectures will complement the artistic exhibits. More information about those performances can be found at Intersect's website.
Intersect begins Thursday, Feb. 9, with a preview for VIP ticketholders. The exhibition opens to the general public the following day, starting at 11 a.m. every day through Sunday.
https://www.palmspringslife.com/intersect-palm-springs-returns-to-convention-center/
Mimi Chen Ting at Intersect Palm Springs (Feb 9-12)
Palm Springs Convention Center, Palm Springs
Booth #119
February 9-12, 2023
Click here to view a checklist of available works
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Artist Estate Studio makes its art fair debut!
As an agency tasked to steward the legacy of artists, Artist Estate Studio brings an all-women presentation to Palm Springs.
This installment offers a multi-narrative rethinking of the art historical canon by exhibiting the work of five women artists including: the color-theories-made-personal in the works by Swedish-American painter Siri Berg (1921-2020); the lyrical paintings of Chinese-American painter Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022); the bucolic abstractions of Judith Dolnick (b.1934); the fractured mosaic-like painted panels that capture ancient architecture by Hermine Ford (b.1939); the stark and strictly black and white oil-stick paintings by Joan Witek (b.1943); and the colorful tectonic mixed-media ceramics of Adirondack based sculptor Ali Della Bitta (b.1981). Grounding this selection are important prints by Joan Mitchell and Elizabeth Murray.
Of the artists presented, many have rarely, if ever, exhibited on the West Coast.
Dates and Times:
Opening Night Preview!
Thursday, February 9 | 5 - 8 pm (VIP/All Access Pass only)
General Admission:
Friday, February 10 | 11 am - 6 pm
Saturday, February 11 | 11 am - 5 pm
Sunday, February 12 | 11 am - 3 pm (10 - 11 am VIP hour)
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Been There and Back,” 2015, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 48 in (137.2 x 121.9 cm)
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) was a Chinese-American painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose high-spirited practice fused Eastern and Western aesthetics. She was active in the artist communities of the Bay Area of San Francisco, CA, and Taos, NM. An intense, unpretentious woman with a soft voice and fierce spirit, Ms. Ting was born in Shanghai, China, at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the communist takeover of the mainland.
While her career is book-ended by an interest in the expressive possibilities of abstraction, Ms. Ting’s paintings from the 1980s, 90s and early aughts focused primarily on figurative work that explored notions of womanhood, immigration, and a somatic relationship between landscape and place. Embracing the processes of Abstract Expressionism as well as the Buddhist practice of the beginner’s mind, Ms. Ting regularly approached her canvases without any preconceived ideas, preferring to allow the direct application of paint and the subconscious gesture to dictate her compositions. She often worked thematically and in series.
Mimi Chen Ting received her BA and MA from Cal State San Jose (1969, 1976) and studied dance and performance with Anna Halprin, Sherwood Chen, and Hiroko Tamano. Solo exhibitions include the forthcoming retrospective at Sonoma State University, Sonoma (2023); Norte Maar, Brooklyn (2022); Art Beatus, Hong Kong (2018, 2011) Vedder Price, San Francisco (2018); The Harwood Museum of Art, Tao (2005); Taos Fine Art Gallery, Taos (1993); Stanford University Center for Integrated Studies, Palo Alto (1991); Oakland Museum Collectors Gallery, Oakland (1986); Cal State University, San Jose (1979); Lucien Labaudt Gallery, San Francisco (1970). Group Exhibitions include “Work by Women,” Harwood Museum of Art, Taos (2018); “Face to Face,” Corrales Bosque Gallery, Corrales (2005); “Landscape and Memory,” Sedona Art Center Gallery, Sedona (2002); “Different Voices,” Santa Barbara Women's Center, Santa Barbara (1992); “75th Anniversary Exhibition,” San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose (1987). Public collections include Harwood Museum, Taos, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, among others.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022) “Loves Notes,” 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 54 in (121.9 x 137.2 cm)
Taos Memorial Event: Fri, Jul 8
Mimi Chen Ting in her Taos Studio. Photo: Eric Swanson
Celebrating the life and work of Mimi Chen Ting
Friday, July 8 at 2pm
RSVP: Eventbrite
Taos Center for the Arts, 133 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos, NM
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The Family of Mimi Chen Ting invites friends and family to join them in a celebration of the life and work of the artist. The afternoon will feature a memorial gathering which will begin at 2pm at Taos Center for the Arts (133 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos). Light refreshments will be served.
A message from the Family of Mimi Chen Ting:
Thank you for your messages of condolences about our mother, Mimi. They mean so much to us as we gain more insight into how much she meant to so many people outside of the three of us and our family. To us, she was the matriarchal glue that inspired the tightly bonded family we are today. Please join us in celebrating our mother in Taos, which was a very special place for her emotionally and artistically.
In lieu of flowers consider making a donation to The Living/Dying Project
— Cheryl and Clarence
Exhibition News (Brooklyn, NY): Mimi Chen Ting + Lizzie Scott
Mimi Chen Ting (1942-2022) "Our First Tango," 2015, Acrylic on canvas (diptych), 25 x 56 in (63.5 x 142.2 cm) © Estate of Mimi Chen Ting / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Lizzie Scott "Ray," 2022, flashe on muslin with mixed textiles and wood, 42 x 52 in (106.7 x 132 cm)
Mimi Chen Ting: “Our First Tango” + Lizzie Scott: "Ray"
April 23–June 5, 2022
Opening Reception: Sat, Apr 23, 5-7pm
Hours: Open by appointment only
Directions: Norte Maar, 88 Pine Street, Cypress Hills, Brooklyn
J/Z Train to Brooklyn, Crescent Street Stop
Norte Maar is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings by the late Bay Area artist Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022). On view in the ground floor Pine Street gallery will be four works by Ting demonstrating her embracing of Abstract Expressionism as well as the Buddhist practice of the beginner’s mind. The selection spans many years of Ting’s oeuvre. This is the first East Coast presentation of Ms. Ting’s work. Hanging in conversation with Ting is a single work in flashe on muslin with mixed textiles and wood by Brooklyn-based artist Lizzie Scott entitled "Ray." Lizzie Scott has been working with the intersections of textiles, painting and sculpture for nearly 20 years.
The work of Mimi Chen Ting are presented in collaboration with the Estate of Mimi Chen Ting and Artist Estate Studio, LLC.
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), was a Chinese-American painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose high-spirited practice fused Eastern and Western aesthetics. She was active in the artist communities of the Bay Area of San Francisco, CA, and Taos, NM.
An intense, unpretentious woman with a soft voice and fierce spirit, Ms. Ting was born in Shanghai, China, at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the communist takeover of the mainland. Immigrating to the United States, she first studied psychology then redirected her education to study painting. She received her BA from San Jose State University in 1969 and her MA in painting in 1976.
Beginning what she called her “second migratory arc,” in 1988, Ms. Ting impulsively purchased a one-room house on the mesa in Taos, New Mexico. The desire to see the Santa Fe Opera was the initial impetus for the visit to New Mexico. Initially conceived as a private retreat, Taos evolved into a major workspace for expanded stays. There, she found continuous inspiration from the ever-changing vistas, uncompromising grandeur, and spectacular weather patterns of the high desert.
I am like an irrepressible child, capable of boundless possibilities, when I enter my studio. I thrill at the process of making marks and I relish the meandering that my medium proffers,” she said.
Ms. Ting was actively involved in the planning of what will be the first East Coast presentation of her work. Unfortunately, the artist passed away last month after a long battle with cancer.
Lizzie Scott has been working with the intersections of textiles, painting and sculpture for nearly 20 years. Her interdisciplinary work has been shown throughout the United States and in Europe. Lizzie received her MFA from CalArts, her BA from Brown University, and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. She has had solo exhibitions at John Tevis Gallery (Paris), Galerie Gris (Hudson), The Jersey City Museum, and LMAK Projects (NYC). Her performances, sculptures and paintings have appeared in group shows including at Zurcher Studio (NYC) Rachel Uffner Gallery (NYC), Kate MacGarry Gallery (London), Ohio University Art Gallery (Athens), Bennington College (VT), The Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
From 2009-2016 Lizzie ran The Total Styrene Experience, a roving performance laboratory. Her work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications including Artforum and The New York Times. Lizzie has been a MacDowell Colony fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts sponsored artist. Her work is in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art and the RISD Museum.
Sausalito Memorial + Open Studio Event: Sun, Apr 3
Celebrating the life and work of Mimi Chen Ting
Sunday, April 3 at 1pm
RSVP
ICB Studios, #345B, 480 Gate Five Rd, Sausalito, CA
The Family of Mimi Chen Ting invites friends and family to join them in a memorial celebration of the life and work of the artist. The afternoon will feature a memorial gathering as well as an open studio which will begin at 1pm. Memorial will take place at 2pm in Studio #115. Light refreshments will be served.
A note and invitation from the Family of Mimi Chen Ting:
Thank you for your messages of condolences about our mother, Mimi. They mean so much to us as we gain more insight into how much she meant to so many people outside of the three of us and our family. To us, she was the matriarchal glue that inspired the tightly bonded family we are today.
As we think about how we want to honor Mimi, her life and her work, we want to know what she meant to you. We invite you to share a story, memory, anecdote, or message. We will stitch together these messages and stories that we’ll share at her memorial services (one in Sausalito and one later in the year in Taos) as well as with family and friends who are unable to join us.
Please follow this link to participate
In lieu of flowers consider making a donation to The Living/Dying Project
— Cheryl and Clarence
A letter from the family / call for photographs & video
Dear Family and Friends,
Thank you for your messages of condolences about our mother, Mimi, in the past couple of weeks. They mean so much to us as we gain more insight into how much she meant to so many people outside of the three of us and our family. To us, she was the matriarchal glue that inspired the tightly bonded family we are today.
As we think about how we want to honor Mimi, her life and her work, we want to know what she meant to you. We invite you to share a story, memory, anecdote, or message about/ for Mimi. Clarence will stitch together these messages and stories that we’ll share at her memorial services (one in Sausalito and one later in the year in Taos) as well as with family and friends who are unable to join us.
This should be no longer than a 30-second video or audio clip. You are also welcome to upload photos. Please upload content to the Mimi Tribute GoogleDrive.
Some additional instructions:
Name your uploaded file with your FIRST and LAST name
If you are uploading more than one media file (i.e. audio clip and photos, or selection of photos), create a folder with your FULL NAME, and upload files to that folder
Video recording options
Cellphone
Quicktime on the computer
Zoom (start a meeting, hit record, talk into camera)
All submissions are due Sunday, March 27.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Thank you so much for considering and participating if you are moved to.
With love and gratitude,
— Andrew, Cheryl, and Clarence
Obituary: Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022)
Mimi Chen Ting (1946-2022), a Chinese-American painter, printmaker, and performance artist whose high-spirited practice fused Eastern and Western aesthetics, has died on March 6. The cause was complications due to a long battle with cancer.
She was 75 and was active in the artist communities of the Bay Area of San Francisco, CA, and Taos, NM.
An intense, unpretentious woman with a soft voice and fierce spirit, Ms. Ting was born in Shanghai, China, at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and during the communist takeover of the mainland. As a teenager her father swept floors for the industrialists Song Brothers to support his own family. By the time of Ms. Ting’s birth, he had worked his way up to Bank manager. Her mother was a concubine introduced to her father—16 years her senior when she was just 13. Raised in what Ms. Ting considered feudalistic China, she grew up in a compound with a shared courtyard where she played with other children and waited for the rice popper man to pass by. Memories of her maternal grandmother’s bound feet made a lasting impression–the imagery of which entered into many of her early figurative paintings.
As Ms. Ting’s father rose through the ranks of the banking industry, he relocated the family to Hong Kong. There Ms. Ting spent her childhood attending a convent school, where she was regularly charged by the nuns to make festive cards and headed the annual Christmas decorating. As she began to excel in ballet, her mother withdrew her from studying for fear that she would become “too muscular.” Ms. Ting rebelled, defiantly refusing to attend her piano lessons. This introduction to dance made a lasting impression, later informing her foray into contemporary performance art.
In middle school, she studied calligraphy. “Everybody had to take calligraphy,” she said. “I never really understood it until I was much older.” Attending Buddhist temples with her grandmother exposed her to rich colors, ancient wisdom, and reliquary forms, and trips with her father to see the Beijing Opera introduced her to theatrical costumes and dramatic movements. These events constituted her early influences, “without really realizing that’s what it was.”
In 1965, and with the contingency that she enroll in an all-girl’s Catholic school, Ms. Ting left Hong Kong for San Francisco to attend the San Francisco College of Women (now part of the University of San Francisco). There she pursued dual degrees in sociology and English literature. Though conditioned to perceive art as an indulgence, she signed up for an extra class every semester to do art. “It made me so happy to do it, to draw and paint.”
Realizing that “being a social worker was very different from just having good intentions,” Ms. Ting switched her major during her third year at college to art and transferred to California State University in San Jose (now known as San Jose State University). There, she was introduced to the art of Giotto and Piero Della Francesca. “I liked the simplified forms, the flatness against each other. The dynamics between the forms,” she reflected.
At San Jose State, one instructor, Eric Oback, made a powerful impression on Ms. Ting. He urged her to find her own way of painting, and most importantly to “let the how follow the what.”
During these years, and being so close to Berkeley, Ms. Ting participated in the free speech movement, countless Vietnam protests, and attended the last rally for Robert Kennedy before his assassination in 1968. She supported herself working at a liquor store and as a hostess at a local restaurant. Ms. Ting received her BA in Art from San Jose State University in 1969, and she immediately began pursuing a graduate degree,
This was a challenging time for Ms.Ting as she tried to strike the balance between her personal and professional life. Shortly after graduating, she married her college boyfriend,Andrew Ting in 1969. Their first child, Cheryl, was born in 1970, and their second child, Clarence, was born in 1972.
As she found her footing as a wife and mother, Ms. Ting remained dogged in pursuit of her art. Her first solo exhibition took place at Lucien Labaudt Gallery in San Francisco in 1970. The show consisted of paintings on paper, some made while “working in the corner of my bedroom lined with newspaper, while my infant daughter slept and played among pillows in our bed,” she recalled. The work on view was inspired by a trip to the Grand Canyon, where she harnessed the shapes and the sense of land, “but the palette was all my own.” This debut earned her an encouraging review by senior art critic Thomas Albright in the San Francisco Chronicle. Landscape, and moreover, the psychological connection to it, would forever be a recurring theme in her work.
Like many women of her generation, gaining a footing in the gallery scene was a constant struggle. She told the story of approaching Smith-Andersen Gallery in Palo Alto early in her career, to show her work. “That was where Sam Francis was showing and I thought I’d really like to show with him. I didn't know there were several ways to approach a gallery,” she recalled. “I remember having my baby on one hip, a piece of work in my other arm and a copy of my review in hand as I walked into the gallery. I just walked in thinking, ‘Oh well, they'll be so impressed.’” They told her to come back in a few years; she did.
“Unfinished Woman,” 1986, Acrylic on canvas, 57 x 41 in (144.8 x 1045 cm)
“Devotion,” 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 53 x 48 in (134.6 x 122 cm)
In the years that followed, balancing her responsibilities as a mother, Ms. Ting maintained time in the studio becoming an accomplished printmaker. She completed her MA in painting in 1976 and began teaching drawing and design at the college level.
As her children were of an age where their needs made it difficult to find time for focused studio work, she returned to the study of dance—gravitating to modern techniques but embracing the pace and philosophy of Butoh. Ms. Ting explored performance work integrating both static and kinetic elements. In 1981, Ms. Ting became one of four founding members of a modern dance company often performing in abandoned sites across the Bay Area. “I love the kinesthetic,” she said, “I love feeling movement through my body. And I find that a very natural form of expression for me.” Ms. Ting’s paintings from his period are primarily figurative, often biographical in their referencing of ancestral identity within a gestural-dreamlike space.
Beginning what she called her “second migratory arc,” in 1988, Ms. Ting impulsively purchased a one-room house on the mesa in Taos, New Mexico. The desire to see the Santa Fe Opera was the initial impetus for the visit to New Mexico. Initially conceived as a private retreat, Taos evolved into a major workspace for expanded stays. There, she found continuous inspiration from the ever-changing vistas, uncompromising grandeur, and spectacular weather patterns of the high desert. These forces and images are invoked in her work through her choice of palette, heightened contrasts, and sinuous contours. It was during one of her drives back from Taos that she would take a four-day movement workshop from the legendary choreographer and dancer Anna Halprin. Sherwood Chen and Hiroko Tamano were other dance artists with whom Ms. Ting had studied. Movement, much like her approach to painting, was an embrace of the ephemeral. “Always a response to the moment,” she said.
From 2000, Ms. Ting divided her time between the studio in Taos and Marin County. The Bay Area provided a connection to family—including her children and grandchildren in Oakland—and a travel base from which she could fly to Hong Kong to visit her mother, which she did twice a year until her passing.
While her career is book-ended by an interest in the expressive possibilities of abstraction, Ms. Ting’s paintings from the 1980s, 90s and early aughts focused primarily on figurative work that explored notions of womanhood, immigration, and a somatic relationship between landscape and place. Embracing the processes of Abstract Expressionism as well as the Buddhist practice of the beginner’s mind, Ms. Ting regularly approached her canvases without any preconceived ideas, preferring to allow the direct application of paint and the subconscious gesture to dictate her compositions. She often worked thematically and in series.
“I am like an irrepressible child, capable of boundless possibilities, when I enter my studio. I thrill at the process of making marks and I relish the meandering that my medium proffers,” she said.
"The work of Mimi Chen Ting melds art and life like no other artist I know,” explains curator Jason Andrew, who had the honor of working with Ms. Tiing over the course of her final year, “Though working strictly within an abstract vein, I see a keen and perceptive understanding of beauty and its translation through a very personal and emotional language. There is so much more to see and learn through her art and performances."
Ms. Ting held teaching positions at San Jose Metropolitan Adult Education, San Jose State University, San Jose City College, University of California at Berkeley Extension, and more recently at Taos Institute of Art. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 2003 for her performance “How to Make a Book and Eat It Too” at the Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM. In 2012, she was awarded the Agnes Martin Award for Abstract Painting and Drawing from Fall Arts, based in Taos, in 2012.
Her work can be found in public collections including the Harwood Art Museum, Taos.
Aside from being a noted artist, Ms. Ting was a self-described “opera, NPR and chamber music addict.” She loved gardening and science fiction, practiced yoga and tai chi, and thought hard about the world’s most pressing geopolitical and environmental concerns. She is survived by her husband, two children, and four grandchildren.
“There are no fixed horizons,” Ms. Ting said, and so her spirit lives on through her art.
Open Studios at ICB: Dec 4 + Dec 5
ICB Winter Open Studios featuring over 80 artists studios.
Photo: James Hall
ICB Winter Open Studios
Sat, Dec 4, 11a-5p
Sun, Dec 5, 11a-5p
*Mask required in building*
Mimi Chen Ting Studio will be open from 1-5p. Studio: 345B
ICB
480 Gate Five Road
Sausalito, CA
Exhibition News: Eleven at Chimayo Trading
The ELEVEN show is a kaleidoscope of creativity. Each person has a distinct point of view, recognizable and divergent. This show will anoint the expanded space at Chimayo Trading with the energy of newness, a frisson created by showing a body of work that has truly never been seen or felt before.
The ELEVEN show is a kaleidoscope of creativity. Each person has a distinct point of view, recognizable and divergent. This show will anoint the expanded space at Chimayo Trading with the energy of newness, a frisson created by showing a body of work that has truly never been seen or felt before.
Expanding our gallery with a large extension into two new spaces, we have invited eleven esteemed contemporary Taos artists to contribute to an exciting show opening Fall Arts weekend.
You may very well recognize the names, you may think you know the work, but you will be surprised by the sheer force created by juxtaposing these ELEVEN artists:
The eleven artists featured in our upcoming exhibition have lived in Taos for a total of centuries! We asked each of them how Taos became home and how it affected their art work and creative lives.
These are their responses:
Mimi Chen Ting – free floating abstractions.
Taos gives me clarity and simplicity of vision. Everywhere I look, I see changing relations of shapes, forms, and colors, how the most gentle sigh of the moving air turns dramatic in the blink of an eye, and I only exist in this continuous narrative like a stitch in a tapestry. Taos gives me perspective. It gives me permission to be silent, and just listen without fear of interruption. It called to me, and I answered. I do not think art can save us all, but it can console and inspire, bring light to the darker shadows, and ease, if not enhance, our human experiences. We, who are fortunate to be given the gifts of expression and the opportunities to share them, are privileged fools. I am humbled and grateful to be among the legion.
The evocative marble sculpture of TJ Mabrey and the ethereal drawings of Christine Taylor Patton will be shown, along with the dreamlike landscapes of Ann Huston and precise color palette that characterizes the painting of Gretchen Ewert. Pieces from Nicki Marx’s mesmerizing Argus Feather series “Eilee” will share the wall with the clean edges and clear vision of Mimi Chen Ting. Sandra Lerner and Margaret Nes along with Ginger Mongiello are contributing their freshly divergent perspectives in paintings that vibrate beyond the picture plane. Paula Verona brings something almost austere, while Annell Livingston’s paintings pulse with the rhythm of color.
For 18 years, we have been a platform for historic and contemplative art at our Chimayo Trading gallery. With the acquisition of this historic building, its courtyards and charming adobe interiors, we have opened the door to a fresh perspective that becomes a platform for the high quality of contemporary art of today and tomorrow.
Enjoy exploring the far flung and vast ranging sensibilities of the exciting artists invited for the show: ELEVEN.
The doors open to the newly restored and expanded gallery with a celebration from 4:00 to 7:00 on Saturday, September 25, in conjunction with Southside Arts.
Annual Winter Open Studios at the ICB
Every year, on the first weekend of December, the historical Industrial Center Building in north Sausalito, beside Richardson Bay, the beloved creative home to over 100 artists, gets spiffed up for the greatest party of the year! This is one of the few times of the year when participating artists’ studios on all three floors are open. Visitors are invited to wander and linger, browse and converse, and get their inquisitive and acquisitive juices flowing.
Every year, on the first weekend of December, the historical Industrial Center Building in north Sausalito, beside Richardson Bay, the beloved creative home to over 100 artists, gets spiffed up for the greatest party of the year! This is one of the few times of the year when participating artists’ studios on all three floors are open. Visitors are invited to wander and linger, browse and converse, and get their inquisitive and acquisitive juices flowing.
Come celebrate with those of us who work there, experience what we do, find out how we do it, and why… come, and make your own creative connections!
Industrial Center Building
Dec. 6-8, 2019, Friday-Sunday 11 to 6p
Exhibition News: Willing to Fly at Jen Tough Gallery
“Willing to Fly” is the title of Mimi Chen Ting’s one-person exhibition at the recently opened (since April 2017) Jen Tough Gallery in Vallejo, California. The phrase is taken from her statement in which she ascribes the impetus of her finding imagination to be a trusted ally and a source of comfort at a very young age, while growing up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The selection of the works for the show was instigated by a dream:
Jen Tough Gallery
336 Georgia St, Vallejo, CA 94590
September 8 - October 8, 2017
“Willing to Fly” is the title of Mimi Chen Ting’s one-person exhibition at the recently opened (since April 2017) Jen Tough Gallery in Vallejo, California. The phrase is taken from her statement in which she ascribes the impetus of her finding imagination to be a trusted ally and a source of comfort at a very young age, while growing up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The selection of the works for the show was instigated by a dream:
I was attending a friend’s opening reception. As is habitual in Taos, I decided to step outside to watch the sunset. As I exited the gallery, the sun was already close to the horizon, and everything was drenched in a golden orange light. I was very surprised to see my grandmother standing there, dressed in her customary black silk pantsuit and tottering on her 3″ bound feet. She looked just the way she had the day I left home to come to the US for college. I said, “Ah Po, how did you get here?”
Grandmother said, “Well, Charlie (Strong) said he was going to take a few days off from working, wanted to come out, and he brought me here.”
At this point, I woke up… happy, and the sun was just peeking behind the mountain. On the day before, I had unrolled the painting “Icarus, So Close to the Sun 1”, the first of a series of three I did in 2013, each to commemorate the passing of a friend, Charlie, Jeane, and Steve, who had left in rapid succession during that summer. So I took out all three canvases from their storage tubes, stretched them, sent them off to Vallejo and they became the vortex of my new show.
Artist Profile: Mimi Chen Ting by Stephanie Grilli
Originally Published 2017
Standing expectantly before a primed canvas, Mimi Chen Ting makes her first mark. She draws a line on a pristine surface with a stick of charcoal and feels the congruent responsiveness of her hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder. From this kinetic energy, Ting pushes off into a sequence of arcs, curves, geometric and biomorphic shapes, which serve as the foundation of her painting. The traces of her actions suggest such a euphoric release that it is little wonder the artist says succinctly, “I love beginnings.
Originally Published: Art Cover Magazine, Issue No. 2, 2017
Standing expectantly before a primed canvas, Mimi Chen Ting makes her first mark. She draws a line on a pristine surface with a stick of charcoal and feels the congruent responsiveness of her hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder. From this kinetic energy, Ting pushes off into a sequence of arcs, curves, geometric and biomorphic shapes, which serve as the foundation of her painting. The traces of her actions suggest such a euphoric release that it is little wonder the artist says succinctly, “I love beginnings.” Starting with that initial contact and building to more complex, ever-increasing interaction, Ting performs a painterly dance of emerging and being in the world.Having studied both art forms in tandem, Ting brings the somatic sensibility of a dancer to her painting. Since the late nineteenth century, visual artists have turned to dance and dancers as subjects, due to the expressive possibilities of the body in motion: the way in which the human figure is subsumed into a dynamic composition or formalist construction paralleled the modern artist’s daring new enterprise. Yet aside from Mondrian’s ballroom dancing, artists drew upon dance as observers, emulators, and collaborators. Rather than approximate dance, Ting’s artworks emerge from her understanding of movement, position, direction, and attitude as communication.Growing up in Hong Kong, Ting studied ballet as a young girl and loved going to the Chinese opera. This flamboyant centuries-old musical theater is known for colorful symbolic costumes, masks, and makeup of performers acting out elaborate tales with intricate gestures. Within a culture that favors repetition and refinement, Ting was equally fascinated watching similarly ritualized actions of her grandmother’s foot-washing and -binding. Settling in California’s Bay Area to attend college, Ting was liberated from her restrictive upbringing; but as she studied painting and took all the dancing classes she could, she eventually found a fecund outlet in performance art anchored in traditional practices as personally experienced. Through iteration and deliberateness, she had learned to value attentiveness and restraint.
In earlier work, her embodied awareness translated into stylized yet emphatically physical figures that convey states of mind or being. Distortions or exaggerations accentuate sensing, feeling, and knowing through the body, with emphasized hands and feet denoting a capacity for extension and for inhabiting space. After Ting stopped dancing, she let go of these surrogates and developed nonobjective imagery and a one-on-one relationship with her canvases. Guided by experimentation in collage-inspired monotypes, she created rhythmic contours, cutout-like forms, and indeterminate, fluctuating spaces. In these animated configurations, color puts everything in motion, as hues and values come forth, recede, jostle, or resist.
Before long, Ting was highlighting the contingent and unstable qualities within the interplay of forms. Rather than fanciful scenarios, she created patterns of curving, undulating planes and bands of color that appear to unfold in an ongoing cycle or continuous flow. In Chinese opera, nuances of movement are based on the principle of roundness in which angles and straight lines are avoided; this quality now permeates her graceful curvilinear paths and resulting shapes —not movement in space but movement as space. Enhancing the interrelational, Ting creates dynamic systems that seem to behave and organize according to the generative mechanisms of our physical universe and of living organisms, of big bangs and flocking birds. The viewer empathically feels expansion within the welcoming void well beyond the rectangular dimensions of the painting.
In the late 80s, Ting established a residence in Taos, New Mexico. Having lived in high-density urban areas, this town situated between the Rio Grande Rift and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains came as a revelation, one she describes as “an out-of-body experience.” At home in the sweeping landscape bathed in a piercing, ever-shifting light, she awakened to the clarity of lines and shapes within seemingly boundless vistas. Already tending toward a minimalist aesthetic, Ting increasingly distilled her compositions to be sparer and more hard-edged. Having worked with mottled backgrounds, she transitioned to unified flatness that accommodates various permutations between positive and negative space, depth and surface, in what philosopher Suzanne Langer might have called “the familiar illusive pattern of sentience.”
Lithesome and tensile lines would simply skitter across the picture plane but for the artist’s considered selection of hue and value. Color is the ingredient that adds dimensional complexity and disequilibrium, as the viewer seeks coherence and harmony from the counterbalancing tonal weights and temperatures. Laying in paint, Ting changes her original design to become more mutable and open-ended. Rather than provide fixed parameters, firm contours concentrate and intensify each color and its effect. Ting adroitly determines the proportion and acrylic pigment of each component to activate a constant visual reshuffling, such that one reading supersedes the next. Chromatic interactions create the illusion of overlay and translucence, but individual color forms can also be seen as opaque, and the swing from one to the other — along with the bounce to and from positive and negative space — engenders a feeling of perpetual motion or passage from one set of conditions to another.
To achieve this pictorial range of motion, Ting accesses her advanced understanding of theory, but the fullness of color in her paintings exceeds any exercise in situation and correlation.
Informed by her transcultural perspective, she has a captivating palette from which she devises striking combinations and arrangements, coaxing unexpected results from a frugal number of carefully prepared pigments. Ting’s astute choices come not solely from their position on the color wheel, and her inspired teaming of shades sets off the sumptuousness and vibrancy of each — as if seen for the first time. No hue plays a secondary or supportive role, which encourages the visual flux. Rather than look upon gray as neutral or drab, Ting prizes the hue for its resonance with the entire spectrum and lets it holds its own next to maroon or crimson. Often her imagination masquerades as logic, and the viewer accepts a vibrant pink seemingly produced by yellow and mint green transecting bands. Relying on the pure sensation of color rather than association, she imparts poetic feeling into her inexhaustible compositions. The reciprocity of plotting precision and delicious arbitrariness melds measure and intuition, bringing order to our entanglement with the world.
Interview: A Certain Quietness
Originally Published March 17, 2011
"Clarity" is what Mimi Chen Ting says you may notice most about her work, now on view in a vibrant group show called "Mostly Taos-Spring Show" at Hulse/ Warman Gallery, 222 Paseo del Pueblo Sur. The show runs through April 30 and includes work by Petro Hul, William Stewart, David Zimmerman, Michio Takayama, Beatrice Mandelman and Charles Strong.
Originally Published by Taos News Tempo Magazine March 17, 2011 pages 24, 25
Mimi Chen Ting is among artists featured in ‘Mostly Taos' show at Hulse/Warman
By Cara Fox
"Clarity" is what Mimi Chen Ting says you may notice most about her work, now on view in a vibrant group show called "Mostly Taos-Spring Show" at Hulse/ Warman Gallery, 222 Paseo del Pueblo Sur. The show runs through April 30 and includes work by Petro Hul, William Stewart, David Zimmerman, Michio Takayama, Beatrice Mandelman and Charles Strong. Three of Ting's paintings, "Refractions," "Divertimento 2" and "Divertimento 4" greet gallery-goers in a long, narrow room up front at Hulse/ Warman, paired with two metalframed works by Brian Coffin. The effect of this combination is something like precision versus precision –two distinct paths.
Originally from China, Ting and her husband came to Taos by way of California, where they still spend some months during the year in Sausalito. Escaping the frenetic energy of the West Coast, Ting considers Taos her "storm shelter."
Newcomers to her work will most likely be struck by its soothing smoothness. "There is a certain quietness about my work," Ting said. Staying true is also noticeable in her paintings. "I don't think of myself as a veering person," said Ting. "I put one foot in front of the other. My work now is where I am supposed to be," she said.
Jerry Warman of Hulse/Warman Gallery agrees. "We appreciate the consistency of Mimi's work –a focused concept translated on canvas. We are drawn to artists who take a concept and work it through over time." This consistency can be clearly seen in two of Ting's paintings that hang side-byside at the exhibition and feature blood vessel-like curves that wind up, across and away from the canvas. "I have a very un- Western view –I see up, down, left, right ... in positive and negative," said Ting. She cites calligraphy as a key influence on the way in which she uses space.
Of her approach to creating art, Ting writes in her blog: "My path is smoothest when I am willing to fall." Every turn promises an adventure, according to Ting, who places great emphasis on discovery, resonance and inquisitiveness in her process. "I came from a culture that discouraged one from talking too much. I'd be sent to my room for asking too many questions," offered Ting.
"I finally can ask all the questions I want now, without being sent to my room," she said. "I am already in my room."
Review: Tangles and Ties: Mimi Chen Ting
Originally Published November 8, 2008
The Tangles and Ties of Human Relations: Mimi Chen Ting is a native of Shanghai, China, who received her graduate degree from San Jose State University. She was a resident of San Jose, and showed her work in the Bay Area until the early nineties, when she moved to Taos, New Mexico. Since that time she has shown extensively throughout the West and in the Southwest. The latest among her forays to international sites is her Fall 2008 exhibition at the Gallery Art Beatus, in Hong Kong.
Originally Published: www.artshiftsanjose.com, November 8, 2008
by Erin Goodwin-Guerrero
The Tangles and Ties of Human Relations: Mimi Chen Ting is a native of Shanghai, China, who received her graduate degree from San Jose State University. She was a resident of San Jose, and showed her work in the Bay Area until the early nineties, when she moved to Taos, New Mexico. Since that time she has shown extensively throughout the West and in the Southwest. The latest among her forays to international sites is her Fall 2008 exhibition at the Gallery Art Beatus, in Hong Kong.
Tangles and Ties is a selection of crisply painted and graphically interpreted narratives of human adventure, based initially on Ting’s observation of the lives of her friends. Our expectations, unexpected obstacles and turns of fortune, our social, psychological and physiological challenges are laid out like a road-map that lacks the logic of topographical causality. There are clogged arteries, detours and misleading shortcuts, and paths that overlap but never intersect. The figure-ground relationship is one of foreground-background, suggesting that we rarely achieve a fully integrated status with the landscape we attempt to navigate.
In some cases, Ting gives a clue as to what that terrain may be through the colors and large shapes that loom behind our trajectory. Some situations seem cold, almost hostile and impenetrable, yet others are warm and earthy. The pathways she paints are pretty smooth, graceful and unmarred by real scarring. In the end, Ting may believe we (her friends) are privileged creatures that, for all our blindness and foolishness, sail off-course frequently but rarely founder completely. She clearly believes in human resilience. Would that this be so for all humanity on earth. It would be nice to see us become one with our ecosystem, heal the earth and our human relations before it is too late.
Review: Mimi Chen Ting at Art Beatus
Originally Published 2008
Mimi Chen Ting at Art Beatus: How to express one’s experience in life, as well as those of others around one, on canvas is a constant challenge for any artist. Whether or not one is working in the figurative or the abstract, the problems relating experience and controlling its expression so that the viewer is touched by it requires that the artist is a keen observer. This means possessing a close understanding not only of one’s external world and relationships but also one’s interior world and how both sides collide to become one within the painting.
Originally Published: Asian Art News, November/December Issue, 2008
by Ian Findlay
Mimi Chen Ting at Art Beatus: How to express one’s experience in life, as well as those of others around one, on canvas is a constant challenge for any artist. Whether or not one is working in the figurative or the abstract, the problems relating experience and controlling its expression so that the viewer is touched by it requires that the artist is a keen observer. This means possessing a close understanding not only of one’s external world and relationships but also one’s interior world and how both sides collide to become one within the painting. Mimi Chen Ting clearly understands these things and has put them to good use.
There is both a subtle energy and a deep sense of longing in the recent acrylic works that make up her compact exhibition entitled Tangles and Ties. The energy of a good many of her abstract works resides in her flowing, intersecting lines that remind one of the lyrical qualities found within the last works of Willem de Kooning. The energy of Chen Ting’s figurative painting, from a decade ago, is suggested by the lugubrious movement of the body in space and the almost pastel quality of her colors.
At first glance, the lines appear to be random, as if the artist is playing with the long thin forms of the line, trying to work out how they should play across the surface of the painting until they trail off the edges of the picture plane. But as one continues to look at the rhythm the artist has created, one realizes that there is nothing random here, that the artist has in fact taken control of the lines as she has with her emotions.
The control is seemingly effortless but he thickness of her lines and the colors that she employs in her Tangles and Ties series (2006), for example, emphasizes a studied and careful geometry. Lines and space meet harmoniously within the mostly monochromatic backgrounds also help to emphasize space and suggest the kind of emptiness that one feels in a time of emotional turmoil.
In Chen Ting’s recent Confetto series (2008), the line has given way to blocks and layers of bright color. In the layering there is a sense of organic forms moving together in search of unity, yet never quite achieving it. Still there is a sense of pleasure, even joy, in such work. The empty space that was defined by the line in Tangles and Ties is now filled with the energy of activity, and a feeling that passion has won over sadness.
Review: Mimi Chen Ting “Southern Comfort”
Originally Published October 15, 2005
Fall Arts Top 10: 3. Mimi Chen Ting: “Southern Comfort”: A female figure transfixed in a doorway; a pyramidal structure—house or cliff; dashes of green suggesting a landscape; a swirl of claret-color rising upward. There was a startling amount of white space in Chen Ting’s crisp mixed-media piece.
Originally Published: The Horse Fly, October 15, 2005
by Dory Hulburt
Fall Arts Top 10: 3. Mimi Chen Ting: “Southern Comfort”: A female figure transfixed in a doorway; a pyramidal structure—house or cliff; dashes of green suggesting a landscape; a swirl of claret-color rising upward. There was a startling amount of white space in Chen Ting’s crisp mixed-media piece. She provided barely enough cues to trigger the imagination—she left her sky white; she didn’t detail the terrain unifying those green smudges; she didn’t provide a context for the claret ribbon curlicuing into the sky; and she relied solely on form, not expression to suggest the woman’s astonishment. Too little information leaves viewers adrift in meaninglessness. There are canvases everywhere replete with details that sedate the mind. “Southern Comfort” teetered on the brink of too little—breathtakingly. (Invitational)