FOR 3/7

LIN TIANMIAO, WU MOONCHING AT MARY RYAN GALLERY MARCH 13

AVV/CD #730549

NEW YORK CITY — “Lin Tianmiao: Focus” and “Wu Moonching: Photographs” will be on view March 13–May 3 at Mary Ryan Gallery. An opening reception will take place March 20 from 6 to 8:30 pm.

Tianmiao is one of China’s best known contemporary women artists and her work has been exhibited widely across Asia and internationally. This exhibition will feature prints and works on paper from two series, “Focus” and “Seeing Shadows,” completed during her residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute in 2006.

Printed on handmade paper, the works blend lithography, embossing and the incorporation of embedded elements, lending them texture and dimensionality.

Each work in the “Focus” series is based on the magnified image of a significant person in the artist’s life. The images — monumental in scale — are cropped and blurred, veiling them in anonymity. Each image conveys such softness and sensitivity that they evoke someone remembered, rather than someone real.

On the surface of these images, and in some cases within the paper itself, Tianmiao layers formations of thread, Styrofoam balls and embossed impressions of needles. Materials and their materiality are essential to her craft. She uses thread both as means to bind her work together and to set her images apart.

Also on view is an exhibition of recent photographs by Brooklyn-based artist Wu Moonching. The exhibition, her first at Mary Ryan Gallery, will feature photographs taken with a medium format camera from her “Rare Earth” and “Freshwater” series.

Moonching seeks out particular scenes and elements that possess a kind of beauty that she feels can be enhanced by photography. Each of her photographs reveals something new about a familiar or perhaps overlooked subject. Film and digital photography can pick up subtleties in color and light that would be lost on the naked eye, which allows her to produce images that are strikingly intimate.

In “Rare Earth,” a series that focuses on architecture from around the world, she presents her human built subjects as if they were portraits. She chooses architecture that is generally anonymous, with little signage. Buildings, framed by empty sky, are cropped and shot from oblique angles, giving them a sense of grandeur.

The “Freshwater” photographs present abstract views of water’s effect on the natural environment, using the same stylistic techniques as the “Rare Earth” works.

The gallery is at 527 West 26th Street. For information, www.maryryangallery.com or 212-397-0669.