Alice Wu: Line Shape Color Shape Line

Kala Gallery is excited to present Alice Wu: Line Shape Color Shape Line in Mercy and Roger Smullen Print & Media Study Center.

Line Shape Color Shape Line highlights the interdisciplinary and playful nature of Alice’s practice with a presentation of compact gouache paintings alongside textile-based sculptures created over the past five years. The selected works reflect Alice’s process-driven and meticulous yet intuitive and exploratory artmaking approach. The geometric, pattern-like paintings, all on uniformly-sized kraft paper, demonstrate Alice’s linework and dramatic chromatic vocabulary.

Alice composes vibrating color relationships that pulsate with energy. Certain motifs such as a particular kind of zigzag, a loop, a curl, a wave, reappear throughout multiple paintings, and then again in sculptural form, each occurrence opening up the possibility of new readings. The sculptures, alternately free-standing and wall-hung, are made with reclaimed upholstery textiles. As with Alice’s paintings, the sculptures initiate their form from simple drawings. The sculptures are stitched and stuffed, then painted to highlight texture and shape. The results invite touch. Alice constructs a visual language to design new and liberating self-mythologies.

Alice Wu is an artist in Oakland, CA. Drawing on a former career in fashion, her practice explores themes of performance in everyday life, self-presentation, and reinvention after loss. She has recently shown in the Bay Area at Southern Exposure, Edge on the Square, 120710, Your Mood Projects, and MAG Galleries. She has staged performances and installations at Exit Art (New York, NY), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx, NY), High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree, CA), MAK Center/Schindler House (West Hollywood, CA) and HaNNa Gallery (Tokyo, Japan). Alice earned an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.