Danese is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works on paper by Theresa Chong. The opening reception will be held Thursday, February 11th from 6 to 8 PM.

Chong’s pencil and gouache drawings revel in detail and the exploration of line, form and gesture. Abstract images – minute squared punctuations seamed together by skeins of delicate lines – cluster upon the rich surface of the paper in a haze of plotted points. These purposeful and intricate markings, quietly articulated in gray on off-white rice paper, or with crisp whites on hand-dyed indigo Japanese paper, appear at once ordered and spontaneous.  Connecting one geometric dot to the next, Chong infuses the work with a sense of lyrical rhythm, expanse and calm, tranquility in movement, improvisation. This intimation of music is in part derived from Chong’s accomplishments as a cellist and also her admiration for the work of John Cage.

Included in this exhibition are two large-scale diptychs. Spanning more than seven feet in width, Jatla and Miksa function as meditations on the infinite. Though each drawing is firmly rooted in the abstract, the mind’s eye conjures a string of associations – tethered stars of the blackened night sky, visualized musical cadences, a blizzard of falling particles, a map abstracted, a glimpse of chaos ordered. Minimal and clean, Chong’s work deconstructs a space known and imagined.

Theresa Chong was born in Korea in 1965 and immigrated with her family to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1974. She attended Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio and the Boston University School of Fine Arts. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, among others. Chong participated in the faculty residency program at the Anderson Ranch in Colorado in 2003 and 2005. She was recently awarded a grant from the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, and she has received fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts). Theresa Chong lives and works in New York.

The exhibition is accompanied by an online catalogue, which can be found at www.danese.com. For further information, please contact Carol Corey or Alexandra Woodworth at 212/223-2227.

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