Dominique Fung

Dominique Fung takes a fresh look at surrealist painting. She paints objects from museums and their catalogues. She also paints from auction catalogues, and historical artefacts. They come together in busy scenes with weird propositions. Swimming pools can be the same size as a teapot. Vases the same size as a door. The paintings have a soft fuzz, and their colours are warm too. Many have a honey-coloured glaze, like traditional Chinese scroll paintings. But alongside these sweet tones are ominous undercurrents. Dismembered body parts, knives, snakes and rose thorns all linger – a quietly disturbing world unfolds.

Fung flips Orientalist tropes on their head. Throughout history, Asian women in Western art have been treated as objects. Fung does the same, but with a wink and nudge. Vases and pots have human qualities like vaginas, hair, breasts and sweat. On the other hand, the people are inanimate. Faces are obscured and skin is reminiscent of shiny pottery – hairless, slim, pristine. This speaks to history and personal experience too. “The Asian-American experience is that people don’t see us as whole – as a full person with complex stories.” Likewise, the figures are reduced to parts and objects. But, through painting, Fung gives them a new story.