A review by Anthony Le of the Wonder Women exhibit at Jeffrey Deitch, curated by Kathy Huang | May 2022

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Let me tell you about an art exhibit that I never expected to see. For those new to my own work, I love painting. I love figurative paintings that force you to respond to another’s presence. I love paintings that break with traditional western art history, mostly painted by white men, and avoid old ass tropes.

For these reasons, I will always remember the Wonder Women exhibit at Jeffrey Deitch, curated by Kathy Huang. The show features the work of 30 female and non-binary painters of Asian descent.

Jeffrey Deitch also has a solo by Sasha Gordon running concurrently and had a solo in 2021 for Dominique Fung. The gallery is showcasing in my opinion some of the best Asian painting in the country, and this group show was no exception.

First off, it was packed, like any minute they were going to shut off the gallery lights, hand out glow sticks and turn it into a pre-pandemic warehouse party.

I follow many of these artists on IG, so this show was my first time to see their work in the flesh.

Art Rule 1: Always see the work in the flesh.

Here’s what stood out to me as I moved through the space.

I actually found out about this exhibit from watching an IG Live with Livien Yin. You know that I love golden hour lighting, and the lightness of the color palette felt like a breath of fresh air from across the room. I’m jealous of how parts of the painting like the clothes seem to use only two tones so effectively. I think that’s why it feels so airy to me. The skin tones were also thick with I think molding paste that added an unusual quality highlight.

I’ve read and listened to a lot of Susan Chen’s interviews like this one from the Talk Art podcast. I really respect her method of zooming with folks and painting while talking with them. Chen seems to honor those she paints by spending this time with them. I sometimes feel too intimidated to do that. The paint is applied very thickly like icing on a giant birthday cake. It’s visually arresting. I’m not sure I like it, but I’ve learned that if I have an adverse feeling about an artwork, I should sit with it and explore why I don’t like it. In this roundabout sadistic way, I like that I don’t like it.

Art Rule 2: Art that you find unusual or unappealing may unlock hidden truths if you explore why it makes you feel this way.

I enjoy the full contrast skin tones and found these circular marks very relaxing up close in Lily Wong’s painting. The hair also pops in its literal sharp contrast. I might steal that one day. I also respect any comic-like composition of multiple scenes on piece because it adds a layer of narrative that I can fill in with my imagination.

Shout out to my Vietnamese artists like Tammy Nguyen. I’m reading a book about the Trung Sisters and am considering modern interpretations in a future work, so I immediately recognized them. Here they are depicted in a more traditional depiction although in this almost inverse coloration, surrounded by more modern images of American history. I find this inverse-negative-invisible coloration interesting but found the other vignettes a bit overwhelming, but that might also be my aversion to depictions of the American flag.

Jiab Prachakul’s painting has one feature that really gives me anxiety and that’s bookcases. I respect the precision needed to depict books also found in Kerry James Marshall’s work, but I just don’t have the patience. The precision of the books in the painting does provide a contrast to the abstraction in the figure though, and I do love me some abstract figuration. It’s almost like the painter had to stretch out a small tube of oil paint, and I imagine the hair flashing glimpses of these hues in the right light.

I love Dominique Fung’s work on a conceptual level. Fung’s works stare back at you and provide interesting takes on objectification and fetishization. I love her usual palette and how the water has this eerie glow. I love how briefly the faces are rendered and am jealous of these severed heads. Here’s a great talk she did with Brooklyn Rail of her 2021 solo show.

Amanda Ba’s painting also stood out to me. I was able to notice how well it was painted after seeing it up close. There’s a close sense of sisterhood in an otherwise quiet backstage moment, accentuated by the shared watermellow. The red and yellow toned figures visually came together in harmony for me in this piece.

I watched The Here and There Collective’s walkthrough of Tidawhitney Lek’s recent solo in LA and fell in love with her paintings. It’s another interpretation of golden hour lighting, and I really like how Lek uses magenta purple. There’s a surrealism in Lek’s painting where she compiles multiple scenes into a piece like Lily Wong. Lek says that there’s “a little something off” to the reality of her paintings, and I like the strangeness of her use of hands reaching from unexpected places.