JASON JAGEL: FLESH OF MY SKIN, STELLA LAI: I LOVE MY FOREIGNER FRIENDS, DEC 8, 2006 - JAN 26, 2007

Flesh Of My Skin: my studio, my other body. It's interior skin of drawings & paintings are the accumulated surface layer of activity and time spent. The work in the installation are fragments, paint tests, notes to self and unfinished projects (permanently or temporarily abandoned, in progress, forgotten, abomination) populate the majority of Jägel's flat files as the finished pieces go to galleries, art fairs and, ideally, to loving homes. Scraps and unfulfilled works collect like that of dead skin. Flesh Of My Skin, Blood of My Blood is the title of the 1974 Album by Jamaican Keith Hudson also known as the Dark Prince of Reggae, who was a dentist, producer, musician and singer raised in a musical family. Long regarded as one of the key innovators of Jamaican music of the 70's, his tunes for thers captured a number of hits, while his own records didn’t receive the same acceptance.

His voice has been described as eerie, awkward and discordant, his music is genuinely unnerving. The doom-laden, introspective music did not find an enthusiastic audience in Jamaica and, like so much of the enduring music produced on the island, was destined to be pressed locally in minute quantities or released overseas. Living in London and then New York, Hudson spoke in 1981 of a desire to be embraced by Jamaica and perform there for the first time. He died in 1984 of lung cancer. Jägel's own doom-laden, introspective artwork finds a friend in Mr. Hudson, and while his music can be difficult I find it appeals to Jägel because of that very thing. Coincidentally, and wholly by accident the artist painted an image striking reminiscent of the cover to “Flesh of my Skin…” which shows Keith reaching for a mango still attached to it’s tree.
Jägel attended CCAC as an undergraduate and later received his Master's degree from Stanford University. He has exhibited widely in the Bay Area, as well as in New York, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. Jason was featured in three solo exhibitions at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles, including a solo show in Miami Basel. In addition to his rigorous studio practice he also teaches drawing and painting at the California College of Arts in San Francisco.

STELLA LAI: I LOVE MY FOREIGNER FRIENDS

Stella Lai examines the architecture, language, technology and gender of her native China in her most recent work, which attempts to define the decidedly schizophrenic cultural identity, its effects and influence in contemporary China. In I Love My Foreigner Friends, a new series of paintings and wall installations (debuting at Queens Nails), which utilizing inexpensive Chinese generic landscape wallpaper, gouge paintings and vinyl signage. The work examines cultural phenomenon such as certain obsessions (food and sex), Chinese typography and phrases from advertising campaigns directed to the contemporary consumer (diet cream, plastic surgery, skin whitening), as well as traditional Chinese flowers and landscape paintings, textile designs, Tibetian Thangka iconographic, Chinese internet imagery, seedy sexuality and isolation.The artwork attempts to create a better understanding of the current culture of China, which is imprinted by history while also driven by the frenzy of contemporary technology and consumerism. An example is the painting When Magic Comes True; the piece explores the western-influenced cultural effects of the new Hong Kong Disney Park in Hong Kong. The painting features Asian symbols of ultimate beauty such as, Asian pop singers with green eyes, child-like mythological characters, colonial-style floor tiles, traditional Chinese flowers and classic Mickey Mouse ear gold rice bowls. Lai reflects on a country that is a hyper-accelerated and embroiled in a new global dialogue. As Lai comments, it is a country whose "...identity is sought in aggressive 21st century fashion: consumption of product, consumption of foreign culture, and consumption of icons." It is a consumer market society where one can find original fashion designs by Vivienne Tam next to knock-offs of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, ancient Chinese artifacts next to similarly priced replicas, the authentic and fictitious side by side.

Lai has previously shown at Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester, UK, ASU Museum, Phoenix, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles, Luggage Store Gallery, and San Francisco with upcoming exhibition at 1891 Artspace, Shanghai. Her work has been written about in Flash Art, Art in America, ID magazine, and Art Forum.