Fay Ku

Fay Ku is a Taiwan-born, New York City-based artist whose work is figurative, narrative and connects with past and present cultural histories. She is the recipient of a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant and 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grant.  She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art ( Honolulu, Hawaii) New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT) and Snite Museum of Art (South Bend, IN); she has also participated in several artist residencies including Wave Hill (The Bronx, NY),  Lower East Side Printshop (New York, NY), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NV), and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE).  She attended Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont for her B.A. and holds both a M.F.A. Studio Art and M.S. Art History from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

Fontainebleau, 2015

graphite and acrylic on polyesters film

20 x 16 in.

In the artists words, “I work most often with graphite, watercolor, and ink on paper to create disquieting narratives, delicately drawn. Women and little girls emerge isolated against the white of the paper, recalling East Asian art traditions. Decorative patterns reinforce this association and, at the same time, contrast the dark content. Problematic relationships and issues of socialization are central themes in my work; stories, myths and things witnessed inspire me.”

Domesticate, 2013

graphite, watercolor, ink on ivory Fabriana Rosaspina

39 x 27 1/2 in.

Fay says, “I never have any pre-conceived notion of what the work will look like, and I never sketch beforehand. I work to discover what I am thinking, and I have to find my way to the image. I see the influence of my upbringing: I grew up in two cultures as the child of Chinese immigrants raised in all-white American suburbs. The intersection of the personal, social and cultural is where my work lives.”

Chorus, 2016

graphite, ink, acrylic and oil on layered sheets of drafting film

42 x 30 in.

Echoes of universal themes are everywhere to be found in Fay Ku's works on paper. Waterborne nymphs, anthropomorphic creatures and a menagerie of assorted fairy tale visions unfold in narratives that abound with psychological symbolism. Mythic musings from the benign to the fantastical reveal themselves in work that is as refined as it is anarchic and as sensitive as it is disturbing.