This article was originally written by Arden Sherman on March 17, 2008

The current exhibition at Kips Gallery, Fay Ku: A Survey of Works 2004-2008 curated by Brendon MacInnis, demonstrates Ku’s most significant works to date. Ku’s exhibit coincides with Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York, which runs from March 15-24th. The Brooklyn-based artist is simultaneously showing at Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles in a two-part group exhibition, her part titled, Deviance.

Born in Taiwan but raised in suburban America, Fay Ku’s work explores the dichotomy of two worlds. Her sparse graphite, watercolor, and ink drawings on paper display Eastern influences, at times referencing the Japanese woodcutting technique, ukiyo-e or “pictures of the floating world,” though the subject matter is purely her own. Children and women figure predominately in Ku’s work, often presented precariously straddling the divide between myth and reality. Because of the scale of Ku’s chosen canvas and the subject matter therein, the viewer is forced to investigate every minute limb and figure floating among the large stark white paper. In Deviance, there is a metamorphosis of Ku’s subjects where feminism, coquettishness and innocence are faced with uncertainty and the treacherous adult world.

Fay Ku received her MFA from Pratt Institute (2006) in Brooklyn and bachelor’s degrees in visual arts and literature from Bennington College, Vermont (1996).