OCMA (Orange County Museum of Art)

Chinese artist Ni Youyu draws inspiration from the tradition of landscape in art history as well as his personal experiences and cultural background. He is fascinated by science and pushes the boundaries of photography and painting to explore concepts of microcosm and macrocosm as well as the ephemeral and the eternal. Using exact replicas of photographic images of the galaxy as sources for his Dust Paintings, Ni creates the paintings by meticulously applying layers of glue and powered chalk to carefully gridded images. Conscious of the contradictions implied in using the extremely fugitive and basic material of chalk to represent entire vast nebulae, Ni essentially collapses great distances of time and space using this most mundane human writing tool and fragile medium.