Longing turns to desire, mourning to melancholy, complacency to joy, liking to loving and passivity to action, but what is the boiling point?

Each of my works follow a similar process – there’s a pressure to look inwards and document information lodged within the psyche, but letting someone else in is hard.

I want to care for the surface, while trying to be in touch with what’s below.

Markings, text, and images come and go. Organisms, angels, demons, spirits comingle in a murky swamp. Stories and feelings are confused about what stories and feelings they tell. What to feel, what to sense? I have some narratives in mind at first, but it’s not about holding on that tightly.

It’s a journey through landscapes of my psyche, a voyage to find refuge and put roots down.

I want to have a one-on-one conversation. My work records this attempt with nervous optimism.

James, a son of immigrants from China, was born in Toledo, OH, spent most of childhood near Dallas, TX, and received a BBA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2015. He spent three years in the Bay Area, and is now currently living in Chicago, IL. In Fall 2019, James began the PostBaccalaureate Painting & Drawing Graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Currently, James’ work explores Racial Melancholia, a term coined by psychotherapist Shinhee Han and critic David L. Eng in "Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation" (2019) that describes the unresolved process of "the compromised immigration and assimilation of Asian Americans into the national fabric.” The melancholic process is a means to preserve lost objects or ideals by incorporating them into the ego but in an indigestible, ambivalent way.

jamesjgu.com, @jamesguu