David Lewis is pleased to announce the opening of artist Leah Ke Yi Zheng's debut solo exhibition in Tribeca, featuring twelve new paintings including a double-sided painting on translucent silk on hand made stretchers that will be installed in the street-facing window.

Zheng was born and raised in Wuyishan, China where from an early age she apprenticed in traditional Chinese painting techniques. Zheng continued her art education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago developing an exquisite practice that combines contemporary Chinese painting methods and with a deep knowledge of post war avant-garde European painting.

The artist’s process begins by making shaped stretchers out of wood such as mahogany, purple heart wood, and wenge wood. This produces an intimately irregular, slightly uncanny object: a parallelogram that deviates from the rectangle. She then stretches a range of silks over these unique shapes, which are as light, translucent, and evanescent as the wood is heavy and warm.

Recurring motifs or forms in her work include curtains and folds, the fusée (an engine of time), and the machine in general. These elements are often combined with phantasmagorical fgures and Baroque particularity. Across the development of the works, these forms undergo changes: they transform, substitute, alter, and deviate, raising questions on repetition and difference. When forms and variation collide, the gradual process of revealing occurs: the semiotics of hiding, veiling, unfolding, and the coexistence of silence, stillness, and living energy.

Leah Ke Yi Zheng (b. 1988) attended Xiamen University (China) and received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions at 4th Ward Project Space (Chicago), The Arts Club of Chicago, and Ca é Centrale (Monte Castello di Vibio, Umbria).