Exhibitions
Shooting Stars, 2018, pigment print on paper, 40 x 30 inches
Cindy Qiao: Our Land
Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Washington, D.C. Through February 2, 2021. Also on view on Artsy.
“Showing alongside Battenfield’s paintings are four large-format photographs by Cindy Qiao, another New Yorker. The artist’s ‘Our Land’ also contemplates nature, yet flirts with abstraction.
Qiao glances the opposite direction from Battenfield. She points her iPhone camera at the ground in parks and gardens in various cities, capturing the temporary carpets woven of blossoms, leaves, seeds and other organic remnants. These images are enlarged to more than life-size, which heightens the individual details while lending the overall scenes a sense of unreality.
The most vivid example of this is ‘Shooting Stars,’ in which long, tapered golden leaves appear to streak across a black backdrop. The darkness must be mulch or loamy earth, but the tight framing makes it look like outer space. By toying with scale, Qiao makes landscapes that seem both intimate and vast.”