Video credit: Jarrett Hendrix

Taiwanese-American artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann captures the tension between the artificial
and the organic in new acrylic paint and ink-based works on paper.

Morton Fine Art is pleased to present Water Ribbon, a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Washington, D.C.-based artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, on view from September 8th – October 6th, 2021. Featuring a collection of recent pieces by the artist, the exhibition offers an evocative perspective on contemporary ecologies during a time at which environmental destruction and the consequences of climate change loom ever larger. Utilizing acrylic, sumi ink, and collage, Mann draws from traditions of Chinese landscape painting to create mesmerizing, vibrant depictions of organic matter.

Mann begins her process by pouring liquid pigments onto paper, allowing them to dry and yielding a stain of color from which the work is then based. Through an embrace of the indeterminate qualities of her materials—the ink or paint takes its own course, without the artist dictating its shapes or forms—Mann demonstrates a symbiotic relationship to her materials that serves as an apt metaphor for coexistence with the natural world. What results from Mann’s subsequent additions to the paper are rich, layered tableaus imbued with an affective interplay of ideas. Of the challenges posed by her recent work, Mann describes her rumination upon “the resuscitation of landscape painting in a world where ‘landscape’ is represented and defined through an ever-widening field of digital, graphic, and visual forms.” At times almost dizzying, the pieces shown in Water Ribbon eschew Western conventions of spatial perspective and inert figuration, instead embracing qualities of movement and monumentality central to Chinese landscape painting traditions.

Bright hues and a multiplicity of patterns are nestled among Mann’s illustrations of flora and
fauna, with streams of ink evoking vines and riverbeds. Lying in the tension between the artificial
and the organic, Mann’s renderings suggest an intertwining of systems rather than a constant
grappling for control or domination. Splashes of ink seep across each image, traversing various
shapes and forms. Elsewhere, translucent swathes of paint filter views of plant life, appearing like
stained-glass windows through which to gaze. “In my most recent work, I hope to live in the
tradition of landscape painting, experiencing it for what it has always been: an occasion for
radical experimentation and confrontation with the world, in the broadest sense of the term that
sustains us,” said Mann. Amongst all the chaos and beauty, Water Ribbon proposes a mode of
coexistence attuned to change, reciprocity, and an honoring of diverse forms of life.

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