The magical strangeness of Beijing-based artist Alice Lin’s watercolor paintings on silk and rice paper transports me to a realm of childhood nightmare. A profusion of friendly colors beckon, fanciful and bizarre animal characters are vignetted, gigantic mushrooms with the lush definition of their gilled stems fascinate the eye with a slight sickishness, the texture so alluring yet indefinably disturbing… The whimsy and placid vertigo of her works reveals a massed and intertwined array of sea, flowers, buttons, fruit, birds and other fauna. I love the idea portrayed by the odd, faceless beings seeming to exchange thoughts through a torrential vortex of flowers. Lin says, “This new and fascinating wonderland of possible realities combines with the human figure, plants, animals into a singular, calm, dark vision.” Her storybook delirium is full of richness and a sense of movement, of swirling florescence and bright fluidity.
