O-1 Visas
Hailing from Hangzhou, China—a city of scenic and spiritual historical sites now become a major technology hub—Celine Lam comes by her wistfully critical painting style naturally. The artist makes free use of the marks and materials of traditional calligraphy, pasting inked-up rice paper to canvases that might pulse with abstract neon splashes or hum with beautifully narrated landscapes. In the ambitious “Checks,” her gestures become environmental, stretching 70 inches tall and just as wide, suspended from the air and wrapping around to form a 3-foot-wide rice paper space, its inside crammed with characters, its outside blurred with black and white vertical lines. Indeed, Lam currently considers the “blur” to be her primary method, one with both perceptual and metaphysical resonances. Life passes that fast, to be sure, and she depicts it thusly, but in doing so, she claims it as a position from which to be, to work, to live.
—Lori Waxman 9/2/26 1:46 PM