Featuring artists; Xiaochi Dong, Rowley Haynes and Sammi Lynch.
From the delicate cellular structure of a plant to a bare leg resting on a sheet or the glow of a yellow moon hanging low in the sky; from microscopic to human to cosmic, we experience the vibrations of fleeting affinities at every scale. In Delicate Bonds, Lychee One presents a trio exhibition of new work by Rowley Haynes, Sammi Lynch, and Xiaochi Dong. Working across figuration, landscape, and abstraction, the three artists share an interest in intimacy, light, and colour, coming together in a collection of mysterious and dreamlike images. In these captivating paintings and works on paper, closely observed moments in time are distilled to their emotional and formal essence.
Viewers are granted unguarded closeness with the subjects of Rowley Haynes’ paintings and drawings, which often depict people in simple private acts such as eating or resting. These transient moments of serenity are nevertheless tinged with a sense of nostalgia or even melancholy, as if recalled at a later time from different circumstances. While the models for these works are often members of Haynes’ family or close friends, their appearance and surroundings also provide the artist with the opportunity to explore the complex and ever-unfolding relationship between light and colour. In one work, the vulnerable soles of the sitter’s bare feet loom in the foreground, their contours carefully delineated with moving tenderness. Here, as elsewhere, Haynes masterfully captures fleeting shadows, whether through thinly applied oil paint or through the variation of texture and line afforded by coloured pencils.
Sammi Lynch’s evocative landscapes are unpopulated, but they often contain anthropomorphic shapes or evidence of human activity such as the furrows of a ploughed field, subtly drawing out the fundamental connections between people and places. The artist begins outdoors, drawing from life with pastels, before using these sketches in the studio as materials to compose her oil paintings. Through observing temporal changes in both the physical qualities of a landscape and in the psychological sensations it evokes, Lynch attempts to reflect lived experiences of environments. She clarifies complex ecosystems into simpler sets of compelling colours, lines, and shapes, recalling the universally recognisable landscapes. This familiarity encourages viewers to find their own narratives and resonances within Lynch’s hazy, saturated images.
Xiaochi Dong similarly creates spaces for viewers to employ their imaginations. With a practice rooted in classical Chinese painting and blending multiple visual traditions, Dong’s tonal monochrome images capture the essence of light and atmosphere. The artist is interested in artificial landscapes at different scales, from botanical gardens to terrariums, and the ways in which human beings attempt to contain and imitate the natural world. Several of his new works are inspired by Derek Jarman’s cottage in Dungeness, where plants are rooted in the shingle among driftwood sculptures and visiting devotees, all equally unrestrained by fences. Dong is interested in how Jarman’s garden breaks away from the traditional rules of gardening, creating a space boundaried only by the horizon in which nature is allowed to flourish freely. Presented on shaped canvases, the works borrow techniques from landscape paintings to zone in on small details until they almost take on the quality of abstraction. The use of monochrome tones is also isolating, creating space between viewer and image, and forging liminal parallels between microcosm and macrocosm.
Through a series of paintings and drawings evoking moods and sensations, this exhibition exudes a peacefulness which is shadowed by a recognition that every passing moment is replete with the power of change. Although at first glance these artists appear to be working across different genres, they are brought together by the reflective nature of their works and by a shared interest in the balance between the personal and the universal.