Lot 223: JONATHAN CHING

JONATHAN CHING B. 1969 IN THE DAY'S LAST LIGHT, A GOLDEN LAKE SIGNED AND DATED 2011 LOWER RIGHT OIL ON CANVAS, ALUMINIUM CASTING painting: 183 by 152 cm.; 72 by 60 in. object: 8.5 by 14.5 by 7.5 cm.; 3 ¼ by 5 ½ by 2 ¾ in. (2)

Jonathan Ching transforms a Sante d' Orazio photograph into a setting worthy of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence, a magical realist novel from which Ching's painting borrows its title. The artist unleashes his imagination on a sepia photograph of an Italian villa and, with his impasto strokes, turns it into a fairy-tale bedroom. The heavy drapery of an antique four-poster bed is pulled back to reveal a lake harboring a pair of solid aluminum ducks. The birds, unbothered by the wondrous circumstances that surround them, swim through a textured surface of brown, violet, and orange. The folds and creases of the bed's canopy leap off the canvas, begging to be touched. The thick paint reflects light just so and bathes the canvas in a glow reminiscent of sunset.

Ching, one of the founding members of the art collective Surrounded By Water, (which counted amongst its members Geraldine Javier, Yasmin Sison, Mariano Ching, Wire Tuazon, Kieye Miranda, Lena Cobangbang, and Louie Cordero), began incorporating objects into his paintings in 2009. Previous artistic endeavors using this technique saw his canvases populated by creatures made from polymer clay and metal.

In The Day's Last Light, A Golden Lake is a poetic example of Ching's ability to weave literary and visual references into a conversation piece that invites you to explore its narrative potential. This bedroom exists in Rushdie's "half-discovered world" of "visionary, revelatory dream-poetry" and you become the traveler, a teller of tales who "could dream in seven languages."