Press Release - "Did you know love is healing?" by Jeffrey Cheung
Jeffrey Cheung
”Feel Free”
Acrylic on canvas
70 x 54 inches
2021
pt.2 Gallery
Did you know love is healing?
Jeffrey Cheung
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 11th
11-6 pm by appointment only
6-8pm public opening
Showing Through October 1st, 2021
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to announce Did you know love is healing?, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Oakland-based artist Jeffrey Cheung. Presenting a new series of paintings and drawings created over the last year, this will be Cheung’s first exhibition with the gallery.
In an untitled painting, the legs of five figures criss-cross and overlap atop a blue background. Presented in profile with elongated bodies, these figures hold one another, creating a weblike formation of tenderness and support. Despite variance in skin tone across the figures, they share facial features; each bears neck-length curly hair, piercing almond-shaped eyes and a bemused smirk. Their androgynous bodies and comfort with one another support an open-ended assumption of love - that regardless of physical form or gender identity; regardless of traditional ideas of union or pleasure - love can be tender, supportive and healing.
Jeffrey Cheung
”In thoughts ”
Acrylic on canvas
47.5 x 35.5 inches
2021
Cheung’s paintings repel ideas of heteronormativity and stress the idea that representation matters. The ambiguous characters, undefinable by race or gender, are instead typified by the joy that they share, and the light they spark in one another. Many figures are rendered in brilliant prismatic colors, further removing them from any assumption of racial or gender identity. Without these signifiers, Cheung’s subjects present free of preconceived notions based on their appearance.
Cheung‘s figures display newfound freedom in both their pose and skin tone in his latest paintings. Whereas flat expanses of vivid colors defined many of his previous works, his latest paintings use a luxurious matte finish that allows for unique combinations of skin tone accented by rainbow highlights. For example in the piece, Untitled #2, the two figures are depicted in shades of brown and red, with undertones of blue and purple shimmering through. The marks that make up this skin tone allude to a history of tachisme in representing the human form. With their matte finish and colorful highlights, the figures seem familiar and approachable, as if they resemble a past or future love.
Jeffrey Cheung
”Melon”
Acrylic on paper
30 x 22 inches
76 x 56 cm
2021
White frame in museum glass
Jeffrey Cheung is a Bay Area based artist, who is the co-founder of Unity Press and Unity Skateboarding. Cheung’s bright figurative work celebrates queerness within his personal life and within skate culture. He is a prolific maker, whose vivacious art examines freedom, identity, and intersectionality, through bold color and intertwined characters. Cheung’s figures stem from his queer zine making practice and have grown into larger than life paintings. His genderless body positive world questions the boundaries of sexuality, body, gender, and race. Cheung’s simplistic line-work of gender nonspecific bodies offers a clever yet loving response to the heteronormative gaze creating a more inclusive and accessible entry point.