Wonderland: Selections From the La Verne Art Collection

By Damairis Lao, Rachel Sheng, and Yek Wong

Wonderland presents paintings by AAPI artists and celebrates voices that explore self-expression as portraiture, landscape, and abstraction.

Damairis Lao’s acrylic on-panel portrait Branovan presents a figure with carefully rendered warm tones and defined features. The background is a cool atmospheric blue that may allude to an imaginary space that is calm and contemplative. With his vision obscured by a brassiere, the subject seems to be caught between feelings of vulnerability and desire.

Rachel Sheng’s Untitled acrylic on canvas painting has eye-catching optic energy dancing around airy and gentle open spaces. Expressive marks of concentrated colors tangle, twist, smear, and spread; these gestural maneuvers and compositional layers build a complex abstract picture.

Singaporean-born artist Yek Wong’s Cabriolet Las Vegas to Los Angeles is a shaped canvas in a landscape format. While living in Las Vegas and driving back-and-forth to Los Angeles he photographed the desert, roadway, and setting sun through the windshield and side windows of his VW Cabriolet. With black, orange, and ochre color block sections, the abstract canvas becomes a record of his road trip experience and presents a minimal, almost sci-fi, landscape.

For additional information please contact Dion Johnson djohnson@laverne.edu or 909.593.3511 x 4383