Portals

Glass Rice, SF
January 6 - February 3, 2024

In a captivating display of practices rooted in meditation and surrender, Jain’s abstract paintings and Tran’s ceramic sculptures work in tandem as thresholds offering a look into the healing qualities of their work.

Jain’s paintings are deeply influenced by her spiritual practice. Samadhi, a state of undisturbed peaceful consciousness free from time and space, is a crucial point of entry into understanding and experiencing her work. Oscillating between seated meditation (stillness) and active meditation (painting), Jain structures her work around organized dots and lines in her yantra series, while maintaining a mindfulness of breath throughout.

An array of earthly tones carefully marked by a dot or line fill each cell of the golden grids that make up the entirety of the canvas. The gold oil paint repels the watercolor pigments, creating a swirling kaleidoscopic pool in each cell - like two magnets, pushing and drawing each other in in an unpredictable dance. This positive-negative force is also seen in her grid-less tantra series on a macro level. In this systematic and logical approach, Jain is better able to enter a state of samadhi. It is within this structure and acceptance that a flow-state and freedom arises - allowing her to surrender to the process and remain present in the moment.

Similarly, in centering her creative process around introspection, meditation and the interconnectedness of humanity, Tran’s ceramic sculptures take on biomorphic forms representative of what she imagines to be the human soul actualized. Inspired initially by her own emotional landscape and personal history, she animates her forms by sculpting feelings of loss, belonging, and the yearning for love. In anchoring her own human experience into the material, Tran begins a wordless, yet earnest conversation with the viewer through her sculptures - the sensuous forms acting as a gateway to introspective learning.

Tran’s innate draw to clay comes from its ability to hold memory as a material. In the artist’s words, “Clay is an interesting material because it holds memory. Like people, clay bears the imprints of external forces that shape and mold it, encapsulating memories that define its essence.” This profound connection to the material allows Tran to physically infuse her work with a record of her movements, emotion, and time - building up each form with traditional coil, pinch, and slab techniques. Each sculpture a snapshot of an emotional state frozen in time - a psychological self-portrait.

In this exhibition, central to each of Tran’s sculptures is an opening - a portal. The negative space serving as a nucleus in which the form expands outward. The openings also act as windows framing Jain’s metaphysical paintings. Portals takes viewers on a visual journey of what can manifest from self-reflection, the act of surrendering, and the profound transformation of creating from a non-judgmental and harmonious place.