Hannah Traore Gallery is pleased to present Dreamkeeper, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the Brooklyn-based artist Arlina Cai. This new series of paintings features compositions of flowing, vibrant planes of color and mesmerizing, swirling brushstrokes—a body of work through which Cai hopes to communicate personal emotions and experiences, which she feels are expressed more authentically through abstraction than with words. Approaching painting as a meditation practice, with each composition, she aspires to harmonize her interior thoughts with the physical world—inviting her audience to peer through her mind’s eye with solace, safety, and wonder.
Cai’s process entails laying intimately-scaled, untreated, and unstretched canvases across the floor of her studio, which she then paints with water-diulted acrylics—creating translucent washes that soak and settle into the weave of the fabric rather than drip and spill. Her palate is earthy, lush, and gem-toned, applying color she is drawn to instinctively, often inspired by her immediate surroundings or the current season. Cai laces her gestural compositions with symbolic details such as eyes—creating a portal through which her work can peer into the world and make an embodied connection with her audience.
While she does not sketch before a new composition, Cai often draws in anticipation of painting to clear her thoughts—getting closer to some ideas (and letting go of others) so that she can approach the canvas with an open mind, presence, and focus. What follows is a series of meditative, preparatory compositions, making painting after painting until she builds momentum towards a final work that encapsulates the sensation or emotion she is striving to convey with the greatest fluidity and instinct. Cai describes her process as somatic, rooted in the body and informed by feeling—infusing her background in still life painting and figurative portraiture into images that are simultaneously grounded and ethereal.
Each of her works possesses its own wisdom and consciousness, and Cai titles every piece as if observing and naming a tarot card—framing what she feels the painting holds for her in the moment while leaving ample room for interpretation. This series is the culmination of the artist’s daydreams, the result of following her thoughts as they wander and sink into the great depths of her imagination. Dreamkeeper, Cai feels, “is the moment you wake up, but you’re still in bed, and the earth is fertile for planting.”
Hannah Traore Gallery is pleased to present Dreamkeeper, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with the Brooklyn-based artist Arlina Cai. This new series of paintings features compositions of flowing, vibrant planes of color and mesmerizing, swirling brushstrokes—a body of work through which Cai hopes to communicate personal emotions and experiences, which she feels are expressed more authentically through abstraction than with words. Approaching painting as a meditation practice, with each composition, she aspires to harmonize her interior thoughts with the physical world—inviting her audience to peer through her mind’s eye with solace, safety, and wonder.
Cai’s process entails laying intimately-scaled, untreated, and unstretched canvases across the floor of her studio, which she then paints with water-diulted acrylics—creating translucent washes that soak and settle into the weave of the fabric rather than drip and spill. Her palate is earthy, lush, and gem-toned, applying color she is drawn to instinctively, often inspired by her immediate surroundings or the current season. Cai laces her gestural compositions with symbolic details such as eyes—creating a portal through which her work can peer into the world and make an embodied connection with her audience.
While she does not sketch before a new composition, Cai often draws in anticipation of painting to clear her thoughts—getting closer to some ideas (and letting go of others) so that she can approach the canvas with an open mind, presence, and focus. What follows is a series of meditative, preparatory compositions, making painting after painting until she builds momentum towards a final work that encapsulates the sensation or emotion she is striving to convey with the greatest fluidity and instinct. Cai describes her process as somatic, rooted in the body and informed by feeling—infusing her background in still life painting and figurative portraiture into images that are simultaneously grounded and ethereal.
Each of her works possesses its own wisdom and consciousness, and Cai titles every piece as if observing and naming a tarot card—framing what she feels the painting holds for her in the moment while leaving ample room for interpretation. This series is the culmination of the artist’s daydreams, the result of following her thoughts as they wander and sink into the great depths of her imagination. Dreamkeeper, Cai feels, “is the moment you wake up, but you’re still in bed, and the earth is fertile for planting.”
