EXHIBIT OPENS JUNE 5, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibit through JUNE 28, 2008
Gallery Location: 206 SW First Ave. (DOWNTOWN) www.atticgallery.com
Gallery Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5:30 pm
Z. Z. Wei, originally from Beijing, China arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 1989 at the invitation of the Washington State Centennial Commission to participate in the Pacific Rim Cultural Connection Project and to be a resident artist at the Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, Washington. This led to another residency in 1991 at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. While there, he met his wife, Lin. They now live in Seattle with their two young sons.
The esteem for Z. Z. Wei’s paintings has grown over these past years to make his work highly collectable and sought after, each time he produces a new exhibit. Wei’s work suggests to the viewer that there is a vast country out there and that they are standing at the edge of a hauntingly spiritual land without another human in sight. This illusion is created by the subjects he uses in his paintings such as cars winding around lonely roads passing barns, trees or abandoned trucks along the roadside. The rolling wheat fields and wide open spaces, indicative of Eastern Washington and Oregon are painted in a warm palette of oranges, yellows, purples and dark siennas accented with bright white in rich, full and appealing strokes. His use of foreboding shadows produces a quality that reinforces the loneliness that one sometimes finds in America’s farm country.
Z. Z. Wei, in his not so long ago move to the Pacific Northwest, has captured the essence of the country as if he had lived there his whole life. His paintings stand alone. They are strong, inviting and a riveting experience to view. It is difficult to draw ones eyes away from the visual treat of bold colors and shapes that Z. Z. Wei creates in his paintings.
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