Warehouse Gallery to present Cui Fei

On Thursday, Sept. 16, the Warehouse Gallery will present “Cui Fei,” an exhibition of eight works consisting of pigment prints (Tracing the Origin VI), drawings using thorns (Manuscript of Nature VIII) and twigs, and two installations using salt (as a reference to the history of Syracuse) and a healing piece made of sand, referring to the rich tradition of sand drawing by Native Americans, Tibetan monks, Indians, Australian Aborigines and Latin Americans. A public reception will be held from 5–8 p.m., featuring a Q-and-A between Anja Chávez, curator of contemporary art, and the artist, Cui, at 7:30 p.m. at The Warehouse Gallery, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse.

The exhibition, which runs until Nov. 6, is intended for audiences of all ages. All events are free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, Oct.12 at 6:30 p.m., the Warehouse Gallery will host a lecture by Cui. The artist will discuss her new site-specific works at The Warehouse Gallery, in partnership with the program of Chinese Studies and the Department of Art at Syracuse University.

With the assistance of SU students, Chinese-born Cui created her two installations and wall drawing on site, thus turning The Warehouse Gallery again into a form of laboratory. Cui is a rising artist based in New York City whose nature imagery draw upon the vulnerability of life, tradition and painful events in Chinese history.

Nature is a recurring theme in Cui’s drawings, prints, photographs and installations that evoke Chinese calligraphy through the use of twigs and thorns. For The Warehouse Gallery, Cui has collected 9,000 thorns for her drawing Manuscript of Nature VIII, and she has created new site-specific wall drawings and installations—one consists of salt, as a reference to Syracuse’s history, and another is a healing piece using sand as a reference to the tradition of sand painting in the arts. Her work comments on the central role of nature, and her Chinese origins, as well as Eastern and Western art practices. This is her first solo museum exhibition.

A gallery guide accompanies the exhibition with an essay by Chávez. The catalog will be available at the gallery and online beginning Sept.25.

Additional support for the lecture by Cui is provided by the program of Chinese Studies and the Department of Art.

Cui, born in Jinan, China, received her B.F.A. degree in painting from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, P.R. China (now China National Academy of Fine Arts) in 1993, and her M.F.A. degree from Indiana University, Pa., in 2001. She is a recipient of numerous fellowships, such as the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2009); the Artist’s Fellowship–New York Foundation for the Art (2007); the Emerge Program, Aljira & Creative Capital, Newark (2005); the AIM at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001); and the Excellence in Arts Award, Bronx Council on the Arts (2001).

Cui has shown widely, including at the Museum of Chinese in America, N.Y.; the Queens Museum of Art, Queens, N.Y.; the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Conn.; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn.; and the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Dresden, Germany. Cui’s work is included in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum; The Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University; and the China National Academy of Fine Arts.