PAPER PERFECTIONISM Opening in Larchmont January 3, 2018

Milai Liang’s latest exhibit titled PAPER PERFECTIONISM, opens in the Oresman Gallery at the Larchmont Public Library on January 3, and will continue to be on view through January 30. Additionally, there will be a reception honoring the artist on Saturday, January 6, from 2:00 to 4:00pm in the Gallery. Everyone is invited.

Paper Perfectionism features artwork derived from traditional Chinese paper-cutting techniques integrating drawing and cut patterns into pictorial collages. These artworks depict figurative representations, mostly through portraits of women and children in intimate and frozen moments, addressing femininity and childhood memory. Selected images are printed on porcelain plates, which serves to translate iconic motifs into decorative installations.

As a young artist, Milai Liang embraced the tradition of art, resolving to make her artworks unconventional. Growing up in a family of folk artists, her family has had significant influence on her artistic characters. Her works feature paper-cutting patterns integrated with portrait drawings to create collages, and this combination becomes her stylistic mark. Traditional Chinese paper-cutting is the inspiration for her art. Liang reimagines this old technique reinterpreting it in a new way with contemporary influences. Through observation and comprehension, she works to portray women and children in intimate moments. She recognizes the harmonious beauty of placing paper cutting and drawings together. Her paper cutting art is boldly monochrome, flat, and vigorously geometric, the cut paper serving as the part of the objects being worn by or associated with the person. Paper cutting highlights the presence of the person and further enhances their elegance. In Liang’s portrait drawing, she focuses on depicting facial expression; especially the eyes. Her meticulous and articulate brushwork pays tribute to the classic craftsmanship of art. By drawing people in a neoclassical style, she optimizes their physical presentation as neoclassic perfectionism. Inspired by printmaking, she also works on sublimation printing on porcelain plates using a selection of her collages, which extends her iconic motifs to decorative installations.