Untitled No 1

About Untitled No 1

This contemporary mixed media graphic composition is by an Asian artist.

Mafu Jiang’s striking contemporary artwork has been exhibited internationally and is rooted in his Chinese heritage and his background in graphic design.
Known best for his figurative work, this is a graphic composition painted on a highly textured rice paper (a mix of rice and tree bark) that features clean geometric shapes—squares stacked one on top of the other. The neutral palette is a creamy yellow, dark gray, black and white with subtle touches of red. The work was created without using other media, such as brushes and paint, by sticking several layers of rice paper together. This piece is paper-mounted on canvas.

“Mafu’s paintings…may bring to the viewer’s mind a sense of tranquillity, peace, and meditation, an attempt to find the balance of Yin-Yang, of Tao.... But another look, from the other side, reveals tension between process and presentation, between meaning and expression, between movement and stillness. Mafu’s works are the utterances of veiled frustration.”
Rafi Ghanaghounian, Art Curator

Mafu Jiang was born into a military family in Nanjing, China, on January 1, 1963.
By the age of 25, his work was critically acclaimed in China. In 1988, he held a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing. Shortly after this exhibition, Jiang left China for Belgium, where he studied and taught art at the Belgium National Higher Institute for Fine Arts of Antwerp. His artwork has been exhibited internationally, in Europe, Canada and the U.S. In 1997, Mafu Jiang moved to Toronto to pursue a career in graphic design.