Casual Time: Rodolfo Abularach, Xiaochi Dong, Victoria Gitman, Kim Tschang-Yeul, Alexandre Zhu

Altman Siegel is proud to present Casual Time, an exhibition featuring Rodolfo Abularach, Xiaochi Dong, Victoria Gitman, Kim Tschang-Yeul, and Alexandre Zhu. Using closely cropped, tightly considered compositions, these works showcase the power of precision, in both form and subject, to describe the range of human emotion and experience. Through reduced, distilled, narrative slices, these works conjure an entire universe of feeling - pushing representational painting to its apex.

Incorporating organic forms, either in subject or within the physical makeup of the works themselves, this intergenerational and international group of artists demonstrate unlikely connections between a commitment to material, process, and meaning. Xiaochi Dong and Alexandre Zhu’s use of earth pigments in the form of charcoal or volcanic Akadama soil, respectively, find particular resonance with Rodolfo Abularach’s singular staring eye and Kim Tschang-Yeul’s 3D water droplets. Each work closely examines the tenuous dichotomy between nature and culture, bordering on the surreal.

Abularach devoted the majority of his artistic practice to the rendering of just two shapes: eyeballs and volcanoes. Both were viewed as esoteric portals born from the compulsion to transcend the limitations of space and time by engaging with a reality that exists beyond our empirical world.  

Similarly specific in his scope of interests, Kim Tschang-Yeul dove deep into his exploration of the water droplet as a source of Zen investigation from the early 1970s until his death in 2021. These trompe-l'œil tears paired with Zhu and Abularach’s paintings of eyes form a compelling connection that spans history and place.

Alexandre Zhu has forged meticulous charcoal renderings of timeless imagery in tandem with moments fixed in a distinctly contemporary perspective. Airplane windows and ponytails share a visual universe with the enigmatic waters of the Atlantic Ocean and a mound of shifting soil. These works do not attempt to establish a hierarchy between culture and nature, but rather present them each austerely, and on even terrain.

An avid gardener, Xiaochi Dong has developed a process of painting with volcanic Akadama soil, a means of incorporating landscape into landscape, so-to-say.  Dong’s tertiary palette adds to the subtle sense of quietude that permeates the entire exhibition. These dappled, vaporous compositions embody the temporality endemic to nature as they seem to atomize before our eyes.

Equally restrained, granular, and tactile, Victoria Gittman’s work manifests through laborious beadwork rendered in oil paint. Gitman’s paintings, with their small scale and meticulous detail, invite an intensely close form of looking, an experience akin to touching with the eyes.

In their unique, adaptive, and disciplined approach to art making, these artists enhance and expand upon the link between specificity and universality. This exhibition also marks the first occasion Xiaochi Dong and Alexandre Zhu’s work will be presented in the United States.