The Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Joey Syta titled The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den. This is the American artist’s first solo exhibition in China.

Syta approaches artwork with a sensitivity to a linguist. The intricacies and limits of language serve as inspiration to explore the capability of objects acting as communication devices. Through minimal, calculated gestures he alters the structure of familiar forms to unlock or accentuate their latent messages. Logistical constraints, whether material or intangible, often direct those processes. Past works have taken the shape of self-forming molten plastic as well as experimental bismuth crystals. Other, more explicitly language-based pieces, exposed morphology and syntax as modulating elements. In the works on display at CEAC Syta favors bare methodologies of displacement to strip objects of their functionality yet maintain readability. This propensity towards controlled, non-authoritative simplicity honors his viewpoint that materials and objects already come loaded with innumerable subjective characteristics. Analogous to poetry, the most subtle metamorphosis of vernacular, be it visual or experiential, can yield unique formidable presence.

Gallery