Peninsula Library System and Avenue 25 Gallery Present Upcoming Solo Exhibition ...
—Six-Year Art Project Makes Portraiture a
Mischievous Treat —
Xia Zou, a local Bay Area artist, unravels many of the ways we would usually expect portrait artists to draw in her upcoming solo exhibition, The Mystery of Being, presented by the Peninsula Library System and Avenue 25 Gallery. Bold, lyrical, and emotively charged, the exhibit includes over twenty portraits on paper, life size or larger, which intertwine abstraction, realism, and improvisation.
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The two-month exhibition opens on July 13, 2012, and runs through September 7, 2012 at Avenue 25 Gallery, 32 West 25th Ave, 2nd Floor, San Mateo, CA 94403. Gallery hours are 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday through Friday. Opening reception is on Friday, July 13, from 6:00 P.M. - 9:00 P.M .
In loving memory of her mother, Shangzhao Yang, who passed away last year from breast cancer, 10% of profit will be donated to Stanford Cancer Center, while an additional 30% of proceeds go toward the Peninsula Library System.
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The culmination of six years of studio work drawing from professional figure models, this will be the first time all but five drawings have ever been shown. The series, mostly faces in charcoal and pastel, looks at our collective humanity, real and constructed.
Exploring themes of identity, power, and social dynamics, the drawings play with traditions from both East and West, and visually deconstruct and explore the many ways we misinterpret, superimpose, or dampen our individualism.
About the Artist:
Xia Zou was born in Wuhan, China, and spent her formative years adapting to life as a serial immigrant living in China, Canada, the US, and in Italy. Her work as a visual artist, most usually portraiture, often plays with notions of identity and process.
Both a poet and improvisational pianist, often her pieces appear more song-like than technical, reflecting an organic process of creation rooted from a deep sense of connection to the moment. Bold and expressive, the images stem from a multidisciplinary approach-- part instinctual: part scholarly with an emphasis on questioning, challenging, and often mischievously bending expectations. She works on paper in a variety of media, most usually: charcoal, pastel, oil bar, and acrylic. She received her B.A. from UCLA.
