ISOLATION INTERVIEWS | KRISTINA CHAN

Dream in Blue, Installation View, Litvak Contemporary 2020 – Kristina Chan and Itamar Freed. Photo by Youval Hai

Here at Anise Gallery we are continuing to use our time under lockdown to reflect on what we do and explore new ways of sharing art in these times of isolation. As we continue to plan for the future, we have also been catching up with some of our artists to see how they are doing under the circumstances. As frightening as they are, they have provided us with an opportunity to think differently / work differently and this is no less true of the artists that we have been working with over the years.

Kristina Chan first exhibited with Anise Gallery in 2016 and has since shown her work in Musée du Louvre, Royal Academy of Fine Art Antwerp, Royal Scottish Academy, The Royal Academy and Idio Gallery in New York. Most recently, she has exhibited her collaborative project, ‘Lucid Dreams’ — made in collaboration with Itamar Freed — at Litvak Contemporary in Tel-Aviv (pictured).

As Kristina writes on her website, her works explore “site-specific history to depict socio-cultural entropic narratives.” With so many of us restricted to inhabiting a very limited number of locations, in a moment of great entropic change, there is perhaps no better person to check-in with.

We asked Kristina how she’s holding up and how she is adapting to the present circumstances.

Where are you right now?

I’m currently in London. I’ve set up a home studio after our print shop and studios closed when the lockdown was announced.

How has the current lockdown affected your usual practice? Have you made any changes to your practice to account for the current disruption?>

Printmaking is a communal practice, insofar as a group of printers tend to share a press, workspace and, by proxy, ideas. I miss this atmosphere and have traded it for a more solitary and traditional studio setting where I work alone. Unable to access facilities, I have returned to a more analogue practice: drawing, painting, hand-dying and collage.
These changes are slower but more direct. I am enjoying the immediacy of these marks. The lines are as they appear, unaltered by the ink you choose, or time spent in acid. It is a different form of application which feels softer, more intimate and direct.

Do you have any tips for others on how to adapt and stay creative under the current circumstances?

It’s just that: an adaptation. I don’t feel hindered or unable to continue my practice under these circumstances. I feel challenged to see it in a new light, to return to mediums and techniques I’ve not explored in a long time or have always meant to try. Amongst all the uncertainty, there is solace in the time we’ve been given for this experimentation.

RECENT WORK BY KRISTINA CHAN