Modern dilemmas

{artspeak} - Judy Seckler, Pasadena Weekly

Acton Chin, "body series I ~ IV," 2003, charcoal, pencil on drawing paper, 4: 48"x32"

In the mid-1990's, painter Acton Chin began searching for a new visual vocabulary to express the conflicts of the modern world and at the same time communicate a desire for mankind to regain a foothold in the natural universe.

While his canvases fill the walls of the Absolute Art Gallery for another month, his search continues. Due to the many requests received by Gallery Director from visitors who wished to view the heady themes explored in Chin's work a second time, the show has been extended until October 23.

Chin's larger works combine textures with Michelangelo-inspired figures composed of energetic line work layered with linear, geometric shapes that radiate away from the human forms. Strategically placed black geometric shapes represent the "unsatisfied parts of the world." Whether the figures are whole or disembodies parts, the overall effect is alive with meaning given the unusual pairing of realistic and abstract iconography.

Chin doesn't try to explain the madness of 9/11 that he first thought was a movie before tuning into a Chinese news broadcast. The broken and floating human parts in his paintings depict a world of destroyed lives but "never destroyed spirituality." While the artist doesn't obsess on politics or politicians, 9/11 was "a social human event that influenced everyone in the world" and he just wanted to "visualize the emotions."

Chin displays his sense of jumor most clearly in his black and white series titled "4 Set." Human forms, front and back, are redesigned to minimize their sexual orientation and their race by the process of deconstruction and deformation. The figure have no heads to further identify them only rectangular shapes marked with the letter "N," representing neutral and natural. Influenced by news reports of animal cloning, the artist puts his own spin on humans by creating a new breed with truncated torsos and muted sexuality.