3Land

1/15/10

Horizon 4
oil on canvas 30"x 120"

My name is Ma Chao, and I've recently moved to the US from China. I'm currently working on an animated short based on a story by Lu Xun called "The Kite." I also am a painter. Recently I've been working on a series of paintings based on my travels in Tibet. The theme for this series is "Horizon." I'm interested in how the horizon is viewed by people in different settings. In the city, for instance, you usually aren't able to see the true horizon, whereas the flat landscape of Tibet allows you a view of an almost limitless horizon. This view is so unfamiliar to most of us that it seems almost surreal, and yet what I portray is realistic and natural. How is it that nature appears so unnatural?

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Installation Show / 2010 in GZ.China

“Life of the Horizon” is the extension of a theme I’ve been working on for some time. In other paintings I have sought to express what I feel when viewing a horizon uncluttered by a man-made skyline. In “Life of the Horizon” the horizon is not the line where the earth meets the sky, but the line created by a recumbent human body. I first created a simple animation of a line whose motion suggests breathing or a human heartbeat, then made the paintings based on that animation. I used a brown color that’s very similar the earthy color used on the walls of a traditional Japanese house, and used the gradated black and white areas to force the eye to see motion and variation in the brown areas of each painting. My hope is that viewers will sense my own feelings of calm and serenity when viewing each piece.