Dan Jian’s drawings are meditations on the act of looking. Her works remind us that our stories are constantly evolving. In "The Bow Whispers to the Arrow," time and material collide and seem to hover on the surface of each piece.

Jian constructs work using mostly dust. Charcoal dust and burned ashes are first mixed and fixed on translucent paper; the process allows the medium to form gravitational washes, similar to the effect of ink. Then, through a painstaking process, she uses scissors, an Exacto knife, and glue to create introverted landscapes filled with imaginary narratives and symbols. The result is her nimble interpretation of an inner world of remembered images on the dusted ground.

New works navigate the tension between the past and present in monochromatic compositions and layers of cutout collage. Her (re)creations float between recollection of old memories and construction of new meanings: mundane modern images pulled from the Texas landscape seamlessly merge with non-western and ancient pictorial motifs, which link to Jian’s interest in Islamic and Chinese painting traditions. Multiple meanings of home and belonging are referenced throughout her works, such as in the mountainscapes reminiscent of the artist’s home in Hubei, China.

Each work functions as an open-ended formal search that examines how one negotiates individual, cultural, and geographic space. A deliberate lack of grounding shrouds floating subjects and contributes to a sense of mystery, urging viewers to keep looking while contemplating the unknown.

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until September 7.

Currently working in Austin, Thomas Flynn II is bringing a fresh perspective on plein air painting by using an intuitive method and thoughtful color to create environmental and thought provoking paintings on raw canvas that resonate with contemporary collectors.

Flynn’s mixed media works on canvas, experimental raw edge flat canvas floated on wood mounts and more will be on display.

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until July 22.

"When it suns, it pours" is an exploration of perceptual downshifts that scale the environmental to the elemental, an exercise akin to looking for a star with a microscope. The exhibition of drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and sound installation by Abby Flanagan and Kerry Maguire features artworks that are fragments of day-to-day attempts to reckon with oblivion.

Through an accumulation of small gestures, each artist logs daily encounters with their environment that unveil facets of their surroundings which would otherwise go unnoticed. Both artists turn to material traces and glitching as a means of calling attention to the realm of the infinitesimal and the unapparent: a singular shell in the ocean, a particle of dust in the atmosphere, a drop in a rainstorm, a blip on the radar.

Flanagan and Maguire’s investigations seek fault cracks in the avalanche of information, models, and data that attempt yet fail to articulate the pervasive narrative of environmental threats in contemporary life. By sounding the depths of intimate, tactile experience and material knowledge, the artists work in collaboration with weather, minerals, water, infrastructure, and each other to ask: how does the ostrich learn to lift its head from the sand?

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until July 9.

West Chelsea Contemporary will host Austin-based musician Bob Schneider for an artist talk. A fixture in the Austin music scene, Schneider was previously the lead singer of the rock band Ugly Americans and has gone on to release over 10 albums and win 55 Austin Music Awards. In addition to being a musician, he’s also a prolific artist and will talk more about his process and pieces.