Winning artist draws on East-West, past-present influences

•	'Barriers Therein Passages' Recent work by Yida Wang Through Aug. 25 10-4:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 1-5 pm Sundays Graphic Arts Gallery, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St. 532-8701 Artists of Hawaii 2002 Through Aug. 4 Honolulu Academy of Arts

A celebrated artist, Wang is the recipient of the seventh Catherine E.B. Cox Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts. This cash award also includes a solo exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. "Barriers Therein Passages" is that exhibit.

"The academy gave me the chance to take a semester off from teaching to concentrate and enjoy the process of actually making art for myself," Wang said. "I haven't had this feeling in 10 years, it is almost a fairy tale." It took Wang six months to finish the large drawings.

Ten works in charcoal, graphite and conte crayon (a fabricated chalk) on 60-by-55-inch archival paper illustrate her past and present. "I decided on two sets of images that I wanted to use for this body of work," Wang says. "One is a door and a roof, the other is a fetus and a placenta. The door and the roof can be separate, inside and outside. When the door is open it is a passageway; when closed it is a barrier. The fetus and placenta express the relationship that is inseparable between mother and child and me and my culture."

Parent culture, American culture and what is born of that synthesis takes shape in Wang's opulent and powerful black-and-white artworks. Merging an Eastern and Western ethos, Wang prefers symbols to metaphors. Her studied and also intuitive tonal images have a dreamy quality. The charcoal drifts down the paper in deep, rich, velvety layers almost lacquered by the fixative, while the detailed drawings in conte crayon create a dialogue of memories: the ornate wood partitions that she peeked through as a child; the heavy dark doorways — carved with mythological figures or pasted with rice-paper prints for the new year — that she walked through. Coincidentally, the placenta in many of her drawings is evocative of a lotus leaf, the Chinese symbol for life and beauty.

Wang's passion is two-dimensional abstract work, even though the basis of her training was sculptural. Early on, she was strongly influenced by the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the Neo-Dada artist Robert Rauschenberg. Her experiments with 2-D vs. 3-D led her to incorporating 3-D illusionary elements in her 2-D drawings and developing a style that is uniquely her own.

The basic message is the same but it is reinterpreted in every drawing. "I tried to keep abstraction and expressionism in my work combined with line, the conversion of black and white and fine detail," Wang said. "I struggled to see how far these details can be dialogued to support each other and still be friendly to the end — to challenge the fact that a drawing can be a form of visual ending all by itself."

In the exceptional "ReEntry," a dark doorway opens up to a depth of brilliant light space while the fetus waits in the entryway. In "Anima" the upright fetus' umbilical cord seems attached to doors that are carved with celestial female fertility symbols. Warriors, lions, guardian figures and symbols of good luck interact with the different doors, tile roofs and fetuses in Wang's body of work. Her use of white space, crucial to her compositions, gives air and breath to the darker surfaces and drawings.

"I never truly ask myself who I am," Wang said. "From the Eastern point of view, we never ask that. I read my work afterwards and realize, 'Hey, that is me.' I want the painting to tell me who I am rather than me tell the painting. This art makes sense to me and sometimes scares me. That is why, when I am faced with my art, I want to be honest with myself."

Wang dedicated this exhibit to the late Helen Gilbert, her mentor and UH art professor.

This year's Artists of Hawaii exhibit, juried by Ned Rifkin, director of the Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., is attention-grabbing. Any exhibit that begins with a sign that reads, "Some of the works in Artist of Hawaii may be difficult for some visitors — view them or not at your own discretion," has got to be worth seeing.

Possibly, the warning sign refers to the female nude in Lynda Hess' "An Abbreviated History of White Women," in which the legs are straddled, exposing the vulva and birth of a madonna-like figure. Or maybe, it could be the fact that the artworks of Dorothy Faison and S. Erin Williamson are painted in blood. One can only guess.

Rifkin controversially selected only 71 from more than 997 submitted works by 418 regional artists, based on "what engages my imagination," he wrote in his juror's statement. "I know that my perspective is highly subjective. I attempt to discern the 'intent' of an artist and expect to find both rigor and resonance (in the result)." The few pieces seemed to swim in the large gallery.

Nineteen artists have more than one piece in the show. Awards, with cash stipends, were selected by curatorial and administrative staff of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and well-deserved awards were given to seven artists: Rick Mills, Deborah H. Nehmad, Dorothy Faison, Lynn Mayekawa, Charles Cohan, Pat Walker and S. Erin Williamson.

I found some of the selections worthy but predictable — artists you'd expect to see but that are often shown here — and other selections puzzling; they didn't speak to me. Rifkin said he hoped that the exhibit would raise more questions than it answered. This reviewer believes he got his wish.