Typically, when I learn about a new artist or exhibition, I spend some time on their website or social media getting a feel for their work before I decide how best to cover the event. In the case of Jenny Chi’s new exhibition, it took me approximately 20 seconds to know I wanted to interview her and see this exhibit.
Chi has been in Central Illinois since 2002, teaching at Eastern Illinois University and working as an independent artist. She moved to Champaign-Urbana in 2017. As I wrote in my recent Five things in arts, which featured her exhibit, Chi describes her work as “reminiscent of the old masters, conducting a personal, sometimes rather sly dialogue with the Italian Renaissance in particular.”
Chi told me her current exhibition at the Illini Union Art Gallery is “an introduction to classical art with an emphasis on maturity and traditionalism in skills and knowledge.” The title, Ars Longa, Vita Brevis is Latin, meaning “Skillfulness (art) takes time and life is short. It is an exhibition that celebrates the Arts.”
This show was my first time to the Illini Union Art Gallery which is on the first floor of the Union, near the hotel check-in desk and Pine Lounge. I arrived early Sunday morning and was fortunate to have the gallery to myself. The gallery is a large open space, with overhead gallery lighting and white walls featuring detailed and elaborate decorative moldings. It’s truly an ideal space to exhibit Chi’s classical and stunning paintings.
The exhibit features a wide range of Chi’s works: oversized paintings on linen, miniature paintings on copper, as well as some sketches. Her large pieces are all portraits, often featuring scenes from classical literature or mythology. For instance, she has a painting of a shirtless Zeus with unruly blonde hair, shown against a patterned square gold background. Her work Paolo and Francesca, a large square painting with a circular vignette highlighting the title characters, is one of the largest canvases Chi has completed — it took three years for her to finish. The real-life Paolo and Francesca were murdered by Francesca’s husband/Paolo’s brother when he discovered the pair were having an affair. Their story is still well known because it was fictionalized in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Ahead of the exhibit, I asked Chi about her creative process:
All my works are oil painting on linen or wood/copper panels. I specialize in intense and academically-based oil painting techniques practiced predominantly during the 15th through 19th centuries. I went to New York Academy of Art in New York City in the 90s and was fortunate enough to learn from many artists who were hailed as heroes in the figurative arts. That sense of strict discipline has stayed with me throughout my entire artistic career. I do not take chances, do not experiment nor improvise; I adhere to what I know and learn from history. My motto is that “Art is an intellectual process.”
I do a lot of research before I start a project. The larger the piece, the more time-consuming it is, especially for large figurative works. I spend a lot of time looking for the right models for my narrative paintings and draw them multiple times until I find the right models and poses (there are also some of these red/black chalk preparatory drawings in the exhibit; I am curious if anyone can connect the drawings to the final paintings!) I then move on to the painting stage, which involves many layers of paint to reach the final result that I am looking for. Even the small still life paintings are objects that holds symbolic meanings; they were never random arrangements.
As I took in Chi’s art, and would be the case for anyone at the exhibit, the deliberate nature of her pieces is clearly evident. They are detailed, majestic paintings that you can easily envision hanging on the walls of major art museums. I felt transported back in time as I made my way around the gallery.
The featured of piece of the show is a set of four paintings entitled Heloise and Abelard, which is on loan for the show from the collector. Chi used prism-shaped panels to depict the two lovers intertwined into one image. As you approach from head-on, you see both lovers together, and then from the left side only one is visible, and the opposite from the right. It’s the type of artwork that will absolutely force you to stop and appreciate not only the beauty, but the talent and creativity involved to pull off the dual image so seamlessly. (I must admit that I deliberately did not ask Chi about the process behind creating this piece because I want to be left in wonder about it).
In thinking of my favorite pieces from the collection, it would be hard to narrow it down to even a few. I was particularly impressed with Chi’s oils on copper. They are mostly small, oftentimes round pieces that depict miniature landscapes or still lives of a single piece of fruit. They had a simplicity to them, especially in comparison to Chi’s larger detailed works, but the color and texture that is produced with the oil on copper drew me to the smaller pieces from across the room.
I was particularly drawn to Unspoken Diptych, a pair of small paintings done on wood. The left shows a partial skull that appears to be peering at the viewer from behind the bottom of the frame; the right features part of a jaw suspended in air by a string—perhaps the unseen jaw from the skull on the left. They are dark, moody, a little creepy, and you can easily envision them hanging in an old mansion in a gothic novel.
All of Chi’s works are created with oil paint, the skills and materials of which, she says, have been practiced since the 15th century. Chi says that while every painting presents its own unique challenges, she enjoys “playing with symbolism and hidden messages, they are puzzles left for my audiences to discover!”
Chi is exceptionally talented, and the show is well worth the visit to campus for art lovers and enthusiasts, particularly those who appreciate classical art.
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis will be on display daily through July 26th, and you can also Chi’s work on her website and Instagram.
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis: Exhibition of Works by Jenny Chi
Illini Union Art Gallery
1401 W Green St
Urbana
Through July 28th
7 a.m. to 11 p.m., daily
Free