Prologue: Freer Than The Wind
November - December, 2024, pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, California.
pt.2 Gallery is honored to present Prologue: Freer than the wind, Yameng Lee Thorp’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. This exhibition features large-scale and intimate paintings alive with abstract movements and plant-like forms, evoking a sense of wildness and freedom. Constructed from the subconscious, this body of work invites viewers into a dreamlike world. Lee Thorp’s artistic process, marked by contradictions—raw yet refined, spontaneous yet deliberate—asks us to reflect on life’s cyclical nature, where resilience and fragility exist in harmony.
Lee Thorp explores themes of cultural memory and resilience, drawing from her personal history and a broader inquiry into belonging and survival. From her experience moving from China to South Africa as a child in the late 1980s, she navigates the complexities of identity in spaces where belonging often feels out of reach. These experiences shape her practice, where painting becomes a form of quiet resistance to the forces that seek to confine herself and others.
At the heart of this work is a deep sense of intergenerational healing and connection. Influenced by her grandmother’s traditional Chinese ink paintings, Lee Thorp’s practice channels the power of individual brushstrokes—using raw canvas to allow pigment to pool, echoing techniques passed down through her lineage. In the painting Hearts light, like balloons, which features a figure representing her daughter, Lee Thorp seeks to connect with her inner child while honoring her grandmother's legacy. This creates a conversation between generations, highlighting the significance of familial ties and shared experiences that transcend time and culture.
There is an underlying theme of rebuilding—of picking up the pieces and reconstructing something that was taken or erased, and weaving it into the fabric of a new reality. These paintings convey a sense of hopefulness in that process—acknowledging loss, yet refusing to be defined by it. The exhibition serves as a prologue to a deeper biographical exploration of her family’s painful history of migration and survival, drawing from oral accounts of their experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution. Lee Thorp channels a kind of internal landscape into her work, reflecting on the existential question of belonging. "What is belonging if you don’t even exist?" she asks, encapsulating the universal struggle to find one's place in the world.
To see a full show catalogue or inquire about available work please contact:
pt.2 Gallery - info@part2gallery.com
