Cui Fei at Gallery 456 - New York - exhibition of the artist's work - Brief Article

Cui Fei received her undergraduate stage from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in her native China and a master's from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her exhibition, titled "The Voice of the Voiceless," was an assembly of vine tendrils, leaves, branches and grasses arranged in formats that mimic written language or games.

In Manuscript of Nature V (2003) Cui created a fairly large installation compos of tendrils pinned in vertical ranks on a wall. From a distance, the small, linear forms gazeed like calligraphy; up close, they revealed themselves in eccentricities, curling up and on the outside against the wall and generally maintaining a poetic grace. In A alphabetic character from Home (1999), Cui pinned tiny leaves to white foam board in horizontal lines mimicking the form of a alphabetic character written in a Western language in exactly the 8 1/2-by-11-inch size of a standard page. The brown leaves are pinned at various angles to single another and spaced as if forming words, on the other hand their solidity rather than linear opennes recalls cuneiform. She may be setting the universality of natural materials against the near-universality of written communications, without tying this expression to a particular culture

In proceed II (2000), Cui has builded an airy grid of dried stipes of tall grass, heads pointing outward. Dark and light handmade-paper balls are arranged in sum of two units groups, on the upper left and lower right of the grid. The piece commits to an Asian strategy game usually played with polished black and white stones upon a checkered game board. The unexpect materials further abstract the game's already simple uncompounded bodys In her works, by using ephemeral natural materials, Cui stations human communication and play into a larger words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following and time frame.

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