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Three female artists are exploring the beauty and power of Earth’s elements in two shows on view at Qualia Contemporary Art in downtown Palo Alto.
The artworks are divided into two separate exhibits: “Emergence” by Yulia Pinkusevich and Cathy Lu representing fire and earth in the front of the gallery space with Pinkusevich’s paintings and Lu’s ceramic sculptures and “Tidal Traces” with mixed-media works by Stella Zhang representing water in the back.
Lu’s five large ceramic sculptures full of incense sticks are attention-grabbing, sitting on the floor in front of Pinkusevich’s fire paintings on the wall. In fact, because they are so large one has to be careful not to bump into the sculptures while walking through the gallery looking at the paintings on the wall.
In contrast, Zhang’s mixed-media art in the back of the gallery is a subtler experience, where Zhang has created art pieces inspired by the ocean tides that represent the changes in women’s bodies.
The two exhibitions opened in early March and will be on view through May 2.
“We selected these three artists to exhibit during Women’s History Month as a way to highlight the excellence of women artists in our program,” said Dacia Xu, Qualia Contemporary Art owner and director. She has exhibited Zhang’s art multiple times over the last six years, whereas this is her second exhibit with Pinkusevich and the first one with Lu.
A melding of cultures
Qualia Gallery opened in 2020 and was initially located on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. In 2023, the gallery moved to the old Pace Gallery location on Hamilton Avenue. Since the opening, Xu has featured over 30 contemporary art exhibitions with established and emerging artists in a variety of media.
Xu was born in China, where she received her doctorate in materials science. She worked for seven years in the high-tech industry in the U.S. before shifting her career to the art world.
The three artists all identify as dual-culture individuals, which is represented in their artworks in various ways. Pinkusevich was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and immigrated with her family to the U.S. when she was 9 years old, receiving her art education in the U.S. Lu was born in Miami, Florida, to parents who had immigrated from Taiwan. She also received her art education in the U.S. Zhang was born in Beijing, China, and received her art education in China and Japan but has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years.
Catching fire
According to the exhibition preview, “The title for ‘Emergence’ takes its inspiration from the interplay between the words ‘emergence’ and ‘emergency,’ referencing environmental and spiritual themes through disparate practices that unite around the concept of transformation and the symbology of ritual smoke and cleansing flame.”
Pinkusevich is represented with 15 paintings of different sizes in the exhibit. She used various media in her paintings, such as charcoal, ash, charred paper, mica (a mineral), seeds, dried flowers, and gold flakes in addition to paint.
She explained: “The materials are meant to provide physical aspects in the paintings that link you back to the real world” and to environmental issues. As examples, she mentioned charcoal from actual fires related to environmental degradation or flowers that need fire to open up to release their seeds.
Two large paintings, called “As the World Burns (Fire)” and “Breath of Life” (Air), she created as part of a four-part series of the elements (fire, air, earth, and water) that she called “Four Elemental Portraits.”
With “As the World Burns,” Pinkusevich used a color palette reminiscent of fire, with its red, orange, and pink patterns on a black background of acrylic and ink, and created the look of flames using dry pigment, paper and glitter, as well as the products of fire, such as charcoal, ash and flowers that need high heat to germinate their seeds.
For the “Breath of Life,” Pinkusevich used acrylic, ink, ash, charcoal, glitter, and dry pigment on canvas in white, gray and pinkish tones to resemble a cloud or sky.
Pinkusevich also included six small paintings that she calls “Sacred Flames,” part of her series of paintings that have sacred fires as a theme. They have an arched shape reminiscent of Russian Orthodox church icons. As Pinkusevich noted, “the shape of the canvas is supposed to have a sacred hint to that form.” From the bottom edge of each painting, she has hung by copper chains two or three natural objects, such as bones, shells, or seeds, that Pinkusevich has collected either by herself or with her family over the last 25 years. “They’re meant to be markers of life but also reminders of particular moments.”
“Sacred Flame 6” is painted with ink and acrylic in orange, black and white tones. At the bottom edge of the painting hangs a carved bone, a shell, and a seed. Pinkusevich said that the bone is a horse bone that she found in Iceland during her honeymoon more than 10 years ago, and the seed is from a necklace that was gifted to her by a local when she was 16 years old and living in Argentina.
Three of Lu’s five ceramic sculptures are large peach-shaped vessels encrusted with glazed pits in amber, ochre, tangerine, and jade-green with serrated leaves at their base. Numerous incense sticks extend from tiny pores like exaggerated hairs.
Peaches are a traditional Chinese symbol of longevity and prosperity. The peach is also the state fruit of Georgia, a symbol of the southern United States, and in the online world, the peach emoji has sexual or gendered connotations. Lu notes that she likes that “this one object or fruit can have several meanings depending on which cultural lens you look at it through.”
Another of Lu’s sculptures is a large incense burner, which she made in 2023 after coming back from Taiwan to mark the 100th day of passing for her Ah-gong (grandfather). It references the incense burners that are found in many Buddhist or Taoist temples, where lighting incense or joss sticks is a common practice in Chinese and Taiwanese communities. They are a way to communicate with the afterlife and ancestors, or deities. It is also a way to clear or purify a space. “It’s my family’s practice, as well as part of my studio practice since 2020. I start every studio day with lighting incense,” Lu said.
A final sculpture is called “Nüwa’s Arm with Incense,” which references the arm of the Chinese goddess who is represented as half-woman, half-snake. Lu has created a textured, blue segmented tube curled along the floor with fingers and long, glossy-looking nails at one end and incense sticks poking out from small, yellow pores the length of the arm. In Chinese mythology, Nüwa is the foundational creator goddess, who created humans from yellow clay. Lu fittingly represents Nüwa’s serpentine arm in clay covered with incense sticks.
Making waves
“In ‘Tidal Traces,’ Zhang approaches the tide not as a representative subject but as an embodied condition. The ebb and flow of oceanic systems function as a conceptual framework through which the artist reflects on memory, emotion, and the body’s negotiation with external forces,” according to the exhibition preview.
Zhang’s exhibit includes nine mixed-media artworks. The number nine has special meaning to her because it is the largest single number, “signifying the end of a cycle and the preparation for a new beginning.,” related to tidal and bodily changes. She also explained that nine is considered a lucky number in China.
Zhang used materials closely connected to the body, such as knitted fabric, thread, cloth, and paper, as well as ground pigment in bright and neutral colors. “These soft, fragile, and stretchable materials can be sewn, repaired, layered, and distressed, reflecting the way bodies absorb pressure from time and the environment,” as described in the exhibition preview.
In the reddish-colored “Weariness,” Zhang said that for this piece she used more than 20 layers of fabric which resemble aging skin with wrinkles, as well as the movement of water and tides. A white, sparkly center further looks like a sun against the reddish sky.
In the piece “Sinking,” she used even more layers of fabric and added a found object from the beach that provides additional texture against a dark-reddish background and recalls the theme of ocean tides. “Retreat” also has a found object but protruding from the canvas in black and white nuances, which Zhang described as “very quiet, like oriental philosophy.”
Pinkusevich strongly encourages people to see the exhibit to support artists during a time of recession in the art world. She said, “I hope that people understand that even these small gestures of appreciation really make a big difference for the artists.” She also reflected on the importance of art in today’s world, ”The world is completely crazy and only getting crazier; that’s why art matters more and more because art has a way of speaking truth in nuanced and subtle ways.”
Xu reflected on what she hopes the audience takes away from the exhibits: “I hope audiences can see just how much excellence is being produced by women artists in the Bay Area, and how emotionally powerful, spiritual, and formally sophisticated that the work can be all at once.”
“Emergence” and “Tidal Traces” will be on display through May 2 at Qualia Contemporary Art, 229 Hamilton Ave., Palo Alto. qualiagallery.com/exhibitions
