Untitled

Joyful and gestural, Yuan Chen’s Untitled blends several abstract painting styles into one cohesive whole. The blocks of competing colors are reminiscent of Mark Rothko. The swirling and gestural brushstrokes, thin, black calligraphic swingles, washes of light pigment, and drips of thick impasto bring to mind the loosely painted and expressive paintings of Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jackson Pollack. The tonal variation is surprisingly harmonious for such disparate colors. The dark rich burgundy square in the painting's upper left is starkly different than the shades of light blue and purple that surround it. Part of a pattern found throughout the picture, these contrasting colors work together because of the passage of deep burgundy in the center. Chen constructs a tonal patchwork that balances an assembly of colors that would otherwise descend into discordant chaos.

Daring piece