Subtropical Romance – Paintings by Crystal W. M. Chan

Tapia Village Cultural Association is honoured to invite Macau artist Crystal W. M. Chan to exhibit a new collection of works that survey her emotional connection with travel, exploring the artist’s fascination with travel as a getaway from daily life.

Curator’s Statement

Subtropical Romance is a literary theme that inspired Crystal Chan’s latest series of new paintings, which could be interpreted as a visual narrative of a novel. The word subtropical does not refer to a particular place, but to a climatic region characterised by warm temperatures and high humidity, prone to sweating, exposed flesh and physical sensuality, while romance can refer to an unexpected amorous event in a foreign land.

The title sets a psychological tone for the paintings. Some paintings depict fragments of exotic yet empty places, suggesting that someone has been there, leaving a mysterious atmosphere charged with an uncanny familiarity. Other paintings convey a more symbolic representation of sensuality through the still life genre. This series depicts a variety of tropical fruits and floral themes, with informal compositions of lemons, bananas and oranges, or a more direct and pungent image with freshly opened fruit (juicy red dragon fruit and peach). Other paintings focus on close-ups of red lilies and palm trees, all reminiscent of human desire and longing for the other.

In terms of painting technique, Crystal shows her impressionist side, with confident brushstrokes that don’t shy away from the unfinished traces of paint and deliberately work on the layering of different overlapping colours. This series of new paintings demonstrates her artistic talent with the medium and shows her ease with the act of painting, making its contemplation a natural connection with the viewer.

-João Ó

About Crystal Wai Man Chan 

Crystal Wai Man Chan is an artist born and raised in Macao whose practice includes painting and sound installation. She has studied and worked in Taiwan, Greece, and New York, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York and her Master of Fine Arts degree at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Affect and atmosphere are two recurrent elements in Chan’s artwork. In her paintings, isolated figures and desolate landscapes are drawn with expressive lines and brushstrokes. In her sound installations, field recordings from nature and urban environments are combined with improvised music played on both traditional and non-traditional instruments to create an otherworldly setting.

Growing up, Chan experienced Macao’s transition from Portuguese to Chinese rule and she has lived in various places herself. This cultural shift and change of identity led her to explore questions of identity and representation, the complexity of identity, as well as the prejudices and expectations it faces in society. Through her artwork, familiar yet blurred elements address the feelings of displacement and estrangement, provoking consideration of the relationship between humans and their environments.

Artist’s Statement 

There is a romance to the tropics. A story tourists tell others about their travels on the return home. They tell of distant beaches, exotic fruit and palm trees. These stories turn into fantasies and fictions we tell ourselves about the good life. Growing up in Macao, I never thought of it as part of that story but now an endless stream of tourists come to town to escape from familiar things and find paradise in an unfamiliar place.

Subtropical Romance is an exhibition of new paintings exploring my personal relationship to this theme of travel and places turned into desires, of climates and atmospheres felt and remembered. These scenes evoke places, people and plants on the move. Like the tropics, they circulate in imaginations both personal and collective.

-Crystal Wai Man Chan 

Organiser

Sponsor 

Cultural Development Fund of the Macao SAR

Art Consultant