Despite their subdued grisaille palette, Olivia Jia’s intimately-scaled paintings at Margot Samel Gallery entice with their crisp, realist renderings of artworks, artists and nature. Here, a bronze ritual vessel features on one page of an open book opposite an ornamental comb, their relationship a mystery, the pictured book a product of the artist’s imagination. Jia has explained that her upbringing in the U.S., cut off from family by distance and from the material culture of her parents’ homeland has prompted her to paint artifacts that stand in the gap. Though we know from the painting’s title that the featured photograph of the young woman is Jia’s grandmother, the picture is partially obscured and rests on a sheet of broken glass or mirror; though the significance of each item is clear, the meaning is not, allowing us to share in Jia’s desire for deeper connection. (On view through May 31st).
