Untitled

A compelling contrast with Zeng’s Landscape of the same period, this work offers no overt suggestion of receding space. The foil, pigments, and ink present an abstract pattern that, though faintly geometric, avoids any fixed grid. Still, viewers may visualize landscape forms as their eyes fix on the surface textures of this exquisite work. After leaving China to settle in Honolulu, Zeng Youhe developed a distinctive technique she called dsui (pinyin zhui, meaning “patch” or “patchwork”) painting, inspired in part by traditional techniques for mounting Chinese works. Like other artists in Asia as well as Europe and America, she used this collage approach to explore surface effects in abstract compositions. Regarding her renderings of colors and textures, she cited as a source the irregular coloration of ancient jades, and guan ware, a ceramic with a crackled pale-bluish-gray glaze.