Works on Paper  

Intellectual Games   

41x29",   Ink, charcoal, gouache and paper collage on hand made paper

Straddling Cultures by Edward J. Sozanski. The Philadelphia Inquirer 1999

In his exhibition at Schmidt/Dean's Spruce Street gallery (March 5- April 10, 99). Wei Jia achieves inspired hybridization by combining the format of Chinese scroll painting with subject matter that is both personal and emblematic of Western culture.

His mixed-media paintings on collaged Chinese papers take the 64-square grid of the chessboard as a motif. The artist's 7-year-old son, Arthur, is a chess prodigy who competes in tournaments.

However, the paintings aren't about chess per se. Wei Jia appears to have adopted the chessboard as a multilevel metaphor that also offers him opportunities to create pictorial variations.

The paintings can be read as pride in Arthur's precocity - his photo is collaged onto one painting; as an expression of a close bond between father and son (the artist travel with Arthur to tournaments) and as evidence of the son's ability to straddle two cultures comfortably.

Initially, though, one reads the paintings pictorially, as simple grids energized and transformed by dramatic color contrasts. Some paintings are essentially white in white, others are black and still others are composed with warm colors that range from pale lemon yellow to flaming terra-cotta.

Many artists use grid strategies, but Wei Jia's paintings don't appear to be programmatic. The most minimal are figure-ground exercises in which color plays the dominant role. Contrasting textures of the various papers also contribute to the general sensuousness of the series.

At their most intense, Wei Jia's paintings project a meditative spirit, and they're subtly ingratiating in the way they celebrate the simple virtues of pure painting

Size 30"x30", Ink, charcoal, gouache and paper collage on paper