ZABTUZE / Eixir / Galleria

Su-en Wong / Good Girls
Deitch Projects 76 Grand Street NYC New York, NY 10013 Through March 30
"Warm Comfort", "Icy Moon Drops"; courtesy of Tom Powel Imaging, Inc.

Linda Levit - Perspective D'Art

The exploration of self from childhood innocence to adult sexuality permeates the work of Su-en Wong. The artist’s depicts her own face on all the figures in her paintings from groups of girl scouts playing cards to a group of shy girls in uniform. When her figures reach adulthood they appear naked abandoning inhibitions, taking on different roles from rock stars in high heels, to kneeling young women reminiscent of the famous statue of the mermaid in Copenhagen, to nudes sitting around a swimming pool. Each painting consists of multiple images of the same figure. The way the groups of figures in Ms. Wongs work cluster together and are interconnected brings to mind the outsider artist, Henry Darger, whose work has been shown at the American Folk Art Museum. His Vivian Girls, as they are known, are always together acting out different dramas. Ms. Wong has brought this degree of role-playing to her female figures as well, where their simply depicted forms displayed against candied –colored fields evokes pop art from the sixties. As one enters the next room and encounters Ms. Wong’s wallpaper filled with female nudes, memories of Andy Warhol’s wallpaper of cows from the sixties comes to mind. Wong takes this piece of history and makes it her own as she casts herself as the main character. There are also a number of smaller paintings with similar themes in this room. Humor is pervasive in these works where the titles are taken from paint swatches: Perky Peach, Lime Sorbet, Tulsa Twilight, Bunny Nose Pink, Baby Chick, Mellow Yellow/American Cheese and Icy Drops. Casting herself front and center stage, Ms. Wong carries on the tradition of such women artists as Hannah Wilke and Cindy Sherman where the artists becomes their own subject matter. The concerns of minimalist artists, in particular Robert Ryman, on how to attach a painting to the wall do not escape her keen observation either. She has attached her large-scale paintings on paper with metal clips to wood, and then attached them to the wall. Performer that she is, Ms. Wong turned her opening into a bit of a happening, with several young attractive women dressed in rubber dresses with hearts on them, standing near a large pink cake - shaped like a half moon - decorated with her kneeling female figures. The cake was large enough to serve quite a number of the large crowd that attended her opening. With humor, strength and originality, Ms. Wong is part of a new generation of women artists, whose ambition and self-esteem brims over in their work. Her journey ahead should be exciting.