Argument

2013 - Painting (Painting)

Firenze Lai


Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds. These portraits explore the relationship between the psyche and contemporary social environments, focusing on isolation, identity, and distress. The two characters in Argument interact in an ambiguous gesture of conflict or embrace as the world around them pulsates in agitated waves. In each of the portraits, Lai explores how individuals adapt to their environments and the ways in which bodies communicate emotions for which there are no adequate words.


Firenze Lai is a Hong Kong painter known for her atmospheric portraits that explore the ways in which contemporary life causes people to adjust to their surrounding conditions in disturbing ways. She paints by immersing herself in the state of mind and situation of each character. Her work was exhibited at the New Museums 2015 Triennial and the Shanghai Biennale (2014).


Colors:



Related works featuring themes of: » Architecture's Effects, » Contemporary Faux Naïf, » Figurative Art, » Gestural

Justice
© » KADIST

Zai Kuning

2014

Justice (2014) presents viewers with a curious assemblage: a wooden gallows with slightly curved spindles protruding from the topmost plank, which in turn is covered with rudimentary netting, the threads slackly dangling like a loose spider’s web or an rib cage that’s been cracked open...

Map (from Uncertain Pilgrimage), 2006-2009
© » KADIST

Gareth Moore

2006

Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...

Office Voodoo
© » KADIST

Haegue Yang

2010

In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...

They Were Here
© » KADIST

Elisheva Biernoff

2009

In her recent work, Biernoff is interested in investigating fictions and fantasies embedded in the remnants of consumer culture (for example magazines) or through ephemera such as postcards and old photographs...

Knotty Spell in Windy Drapes
© » KADIST

Haegue Yang

2016

A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work...

Long Long Live
© » KADIST

Yao Jui-Chung

2013

Long Long Live (2013) takes the viewer to the setting of the Oasis Villa on Green Island, once a reform and re-education prison to house political prisoners during Taiwan’s martial law period...

Island
© » KADIST

Kan Xuan

2006

In Kan Xuan’s four-channel video Island , a series of objects like nail clippers, hairbrush, toothpaste, and house decorations are shot in close-ups...

Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost)
© » KADIST

Alicia McCarthy

2010

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost) are representative of McCarthy’s work...

Converting
© » KADIST

Zai Kuning

2014

Converting is a piece about the Orang Laut, often called Sea Nomads, that inhabited the Riau archipelago...

New Fall Lineup
© » KADIST

Conrad Ruiz

2009

It may take a minute to recognize the background of New Fall Lineup – the colors are tweaked into a world of cartoon and candy, and it is covered by leaping energetic figures and flying squirrels...

Back to mother
© » KADIST

Zai Kuning

2014

Concerned with the early history of Singapore, Zai Kuning spent many years living with and researching the history of the Riau peoples who were the first inhabitants of Singapore...

Untitled (The way in is the way out)
© » KADIST

Alicia McCarthy

2010

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (the way in is the way out) is representative of McCarthy’s work...

I Want You
© » KADIST

Tony Labat

2008

Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and riffing on the “I Want You” army recruitment campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s, Labat asked Bay Area residents to interpret the slogan and make their own demands of the public in a series of live performance auditions...

Stamp -X, Stamp -Y
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

John Houck’s multi-layered photographic compositions immortalize nostalgic objects from the artist’s childhood, manipulated in the studio and in post-production into unreal still-life arrangements...

Tapitapultas
© » KADIST

Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker

2012

In Tapitapultas (2012), Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker comment on mass consumerism and pollution by way of a game they invented...

Borrando la Frontera
© » KADIST

Ana Teresa Fernández

2011

The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...

The Illusion of Everything
© » KADIST

Daniel Crooks

2014

The Illusion of Everything (2014) follows an unseen pedestrian as he navigates the Australian city of Melbourne’s dense and intricate network of laneways...

Untitled #242, 104, 975 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 18 colors
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...