Culture Days. Opening Reception: Fiona Huang - Free in the Chaos

Tickets

Cost: Free

Light snacks and beverages will be provided.

About the exhibition:
Bringing together paintings and mixed-media works by young artist Fiona Huang, Free in the Chaos celebrates experimentation, play, and the freedom to follow intuition in art making. Inspired by graffiti, street art, and popular culture, Huang builds energetic compositions through layered imagery, text, found materials, vibrant colours, and expressive brushwork.

Influenced by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988), Huang’s visual language moves between figuration and abstraction, image and text. Familiar characters from comics, cartoons, and games are reimagined alongside invented monsters, with words and phrases that inspire her incorporated throughout the compositions. Spontaneity is central to Huang’s process. To overcome her initial “fear” of the blank canvas and its seemingly endless possibilities, she often begins by covering it with a solid colour—usually a darker shade—before building and altering layers of lighter and neon forms on top. Embracing what she describes as “the weird, the playful, and even the ‘naive,’” Huang approaches art-making as a space to break rules, while exploring social expectations, consumer culture, and individuality. - Rebecca Wang 王晨釔

Biography:
Fiona Huang is a 14-year-old Chinese-Canadian artist who takes art classes at BC Creative Center, a Richmond-based creative education studio that mentored her in the development of this body of work. Outside of visual art, Huang enjoys comic books and hip-hop music, both of which are important sources of inspirations for her work.

Richmond Art Gallery:
Richmond Art Gallery (RAG) is a non-profit municipal art gallery established in 1980. The gallery produces an array of exhibitions and programs that connect, empower, and provoke conversation with our diverse Richmond, BC communities. RAG actively contributes to Richmond’s cultural communities through our commitment to supporting artists via exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and a permanent collection.
Richmond Art Gallery is dedicated to promoting dialogue among diverse communities on challenging ideas and issues of today as expressed through local, national and international contemporary art. Through its exhibitions, publications, educational programming, collections and significant partnerships, the Richmond Art Gallery provides opportunities for the enhancement of life in Richmond while serving the contemporary arts community in Canada.
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