RIVERS OF CONNECTION, POOLS OF SEPARATION

JAN JENSEN & YUAN WEN

SHOW DATES: NOVEMBER 20 - DECEMBER 2

ARTIST PARTY: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 6 - 8 PM

YUAN WEN

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice revolves around printmaking, drawing, and mixed media, focusing on the beauty and complexity of organic forms. I am particularly interested in exploring the original forms in nature, studying the structures that constitute an ideal natural form, and observing how a single structure is repeated to develop complex living beings. My work reflects organic colours, shapes, and details found in leaves, roots, and fossils, depicting the organic appearances in harmony while conveying a message of coexistence with the environment.

Using various materials and techniques, I create textures and patterns that demonstrate the mechanisms of development in nature. I adopt a flowing structure and introduce lines and geometric shapes to convey interactions, emerging narratives, and conflicts. My cross-cultural background and exposure to diverse art forms have influenced my work, which embodies an East-West aesthetic process of image-making. I draw inspiration from the cultural decorative design and natural patterns, which inform the compositional decisions in my work.

JAN JENSEN

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work as an artist celebrates the resilience of the human spirit by expressing an enduring awe for even the most ordinary, everyday moment. Articulating this sense of wonder through a range of artistic idioms—including abstract painting, collage, sculpture, and multi-media installation—my goal is to remain responsive to the here and now while also invoking the startling vastness and the mysteries that daily surround and connect us.

I see the world in its incandescent and kaleidoscopic complexity; in its energetic dynamism as well as its crystalline stillness. Visually in my work this perception of immeasurable intricacy and diversity takes shape through fluctuating layers of colour or flowing lines; or of intersecting and overlapping patterns whose configurations contrast, converge, shift, dissociate, and even disappear. Within the sculptural realm, I am fascinated by the way a three-dimensional tiering of imagery or a contrast of materials can engender a multiplicity of shifting vantage points and meanings—be they social, political, spiritual, or natural.

The array of spaces created by my pieces hinge, paradoxically, on a kind of kinetic stillness. Mine is an aesthetic of translucence and calm, but also of collision. Through this dynamic, novel and evolving perspectives are consistently birthed, as is an awareness of new connections and relationships within the viewer’s inner and outer worlds. Overall, my practice yields work whose openness and vitality function metaphorically as a story about the mysteries of birth, evolution, connection, acceptance, and delight.

BIO: Jan Jensen lives and works on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, where she has built her painting and sculpting practice since 1992. She spent time living in Europe as a child and as an adult she taught in BC’s public school system—both of which she credits as having shaped her appreciation for the importance of recognizing societal structures. After finishing her studies in fine art at the University of the Fraser Valley, she completed an intensive, transformative year-long course at the Banff Centre focusing on visual art.

Jensen’s large-scale installations have shown in galleries across Canada, including Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre, the Cartwright Street Gallery in Vancouver, and the Burlington Cultural Centre in Burlington, Ontario. Her work is also held in the public collections of the Sechelt Hospital Foundation and The Banff Center. Most recently, two-dimensional pieces have exhibited in the Gibsons Public Art Gallery, Sechelt’s Doris Crowston Gallery, and the Maple Ridge Act Art Gallery. Jensen has also served as a designer and facilitator for movement and art workshops; as a board member of the Coast Cultural Alliance, Sechelt; and as an organizer for the Independent Writers presence at theMSunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, BC.

When Jan isn’t actively painting or sculpting, she remains engaged with her surroundings as well as her inner worlds (body, spirit, and mind), appreciating the mountains and oceanside that surround her home, working in her garden, or practicing and teaching Nia, the holistic movement practice that deeply informs both her life and work.