Whereas making ready her undergraduate thesis exhibition at Parsons Faculty of Design in 2022, Angela Fang Zirbes craved one thing completely different. She was working with conventional brushwork on canvas however was dissatisfied with the method’s capability to attain heightened distinction. By the way, her pet rabbit of 13 years additionally died that autumn.
“She had been with me through some of my most formative years, and her death had a deep impact on me,” Fang Zirbes says. “I began thinking a lot about my upbringing and family history in Iowa, and I started working from a lot of old black-and-white family photographs as well as found imagery from around my hometown.”
Drawing on the monochrome snapshots, Fang Zirbes started to make use of graphite, then later dabbling in airbrush. She says, “The black-and-white style enabled me to reference the aged photographs and learn how to portray light and shadow in a new way.”
The paint clings to the feel of uncooked canvas, making a velvety texture of deep blacks juxtaposed with extremely outlined, masked edges. “It mirrors the content of my work,” the artist says, “where my compositions are sharp with fear and nervousness but the subjects and settings firstly appear strangely friendly.”
Fang Zirbes’s course of revolves round world-building, connecting references in each composition to her private historical past or recurring goals. “I believe this recurrence has a meaning that is rooted in my childhood memories or calls back to my past and how it impacts me today,” she says. “For example, I was always around rabbits and formed a special affection for them, which explains why I find myself painting rabbits over and over again when thinking about my upbringing.”
Home gadgets like Chinese language pickle jars, lamps, couches, or stitching scissors seem inside wallpapered rooms that faucet into the artist’s house or her grandparents’ home in rural Iowa. “They are a combination of influences from both my American family and my Chinese family, as well as the Midwest which has its own unique culture that has had an effect on me,” she says.
Fang Zirbes is working towards a solo exhibition scheduled to open in March at Hashimoto Up to date, which represents within the artist, in New York. “I’m continuing my monochromatic work about my upbringing in Iowa, but I’m introducing a new focus around the supernatural and American theories surrounding ghosts and hauntings. It’s a concept I’ve been researching over this last year and I can’t wait to see it through.”
Discover extra on the artist’s Instagram.
