The Brooklyn Rail, 6/2026
Art Seen
How Asian Is It?
William Corwin
How Asian Is it? is not a critical exhibition of paintings interpreting a concept of Asian-ness, but is instead a question cheekily aimed at the perception of the viewer, critic, curator, and art dealer who have historically, and are currently, looking at the work. more
Snap Shot of the Art World, 6/13/2026
Can Abstraction be Asian?
Richard Vine
"What is the “it” in the exhibition title How Asian Is It? The show’s organizer, New York-based curator and critic Lilly Wei, identifies the subject with admirable precision in her catalogue essay. Her survey, currently at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York, through July 11, presents works by 12 abstract painters, all of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean heritage, all born between 1928 and 1955, and all resident at one time or another in the US. Although those parameters might seem arbitrary or overly restrictive at first, they make perfect historical sense. After WWII, experimental artists from those countries vigorously embraced Western Modernism, while the traditional cultures that inflect their avant-garde practices have had a subtle but puissant influence on our own—in literature, fashion, cuisine, film, music, philosophy, and, yes, the fine arts." more
The Art Newspaper 5/13/2026
Enter the unsettled space of Asian American abstraction
by Xintian Tina Wang
A generation of painters sidestepped identity—only to discover that it had structured their work all along more
Hyperallergic 5/04/2026
15 Shows to See in NYC this May
Hrag Vartanian
Curated by Lilly Wei, this two-story exhibition showcases artists of East Asian descent working in abstraction. While there are flecks of representation, like in Charles Yuen’s work, most refuse the traditional markers of identity in favor of more formal languages. It offers a way out of the straitjacket that many racialized artists are forced to endure, where being measured by a barometer of identity can feel like the only way to be seen. Artists as diverse as David Diao, Kikuo Saito, Barbara Takenaga, and Kim Uchiyama are among the 12 artists on display.
Hyperallergic, 9/10/2024
10 Shows to See in New York Right Now
Hyperallergic, 9/2024
The Maverick Legacy of Godzilla Asian American Artists Network
An exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery spanning the late 1980s to present day delves into their multidisciplinary output.
Brooklyn Rail (video), 9/10/2024
Panel Discussion
Godzilla: Echoes from the 1990s Asian American Arts Network exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery
with Jennifer Samet (curator), Eugenie Tsai (moderator), Emily Cheng, Mel Chin,, and Charles Yuen
Eric Firestone Gallery (panel discussion), 1/17/2024
Godzilla: Politics, Aesthetics, Community
Moderated by Ryan Lee, with Emily Cheng, Helen Oji, & Charles Yuen
ArtDaily.com, 5/24/2023
Exhibition at LaiSun Keane Gallery features works by Charles Yuen
Video, 5/5/2023
Charles Yuen in conversation with writer an poet, John Yau
Art in America
Charles Yuen at Elizabeth Harris
Hawaiian-born painter Charles Yuen cites as influences 16th century Persian miniatures and the medieval court jester, who indulged in "socially sanctioned anarchy." Jesters abound in Yuen's work, coming to us via comic strips, dreams and children’s drawings, in an array of shapes and sizes. In the big oil As Above, So Below, a man with a masklike face perilously folded in on itself displays a puffed-up bare chest with an upside-down castle tattooed on it; his snaky. slim legs end in tiny black mandarin-toe shoes on a maroon Persian carpet. A big cartoon word balloon filled with Morse code floats alongside him. The scene Is ornamented with four “cameos" of primally limned roses. all this on top of a dim checkerboard ground.
The checkerboard takes center stage in Zone of Liability. where its largish, wobbly squares come in cheerfully dull shades or yellow, gray, beige and black. It’s occupied by more "jesters," one a freestanding bare-chested guy with a strange, Sllnkylike object linking his cupped hands. Beside him is a double-faced male head in a flattened Buster Keaton hat who emits a cryptic word balloon. In Air Heads there are no actual heads, just a host of little ectoplasmic human visages-male, female, in-between- traced in gold filigree against a blue ground, an arising from a translucent blue-and-white amphora like so many genres.
There's a parochial-school-prankster availability to Yuen’s work; his dreamland iconography is personal but never private. In pieces such as Infinity, where a yogic fellow balanceses above his head an infinity sign that also functions as his left arm as his right arm dribbles down into a Medusalike ball. the artist's imagery is highly communicative, especially in its dark but abiding sense of humor-for which, no doubt. we have the tradition of the court jester to thank.
Yuen's resolutely dumb. endlessly codified scribblings appeal to the unconscious unreasoning side of our natures. He’s a merry mocker of popular notions of the dark or “shadow" side of tho psyche, that sacrosanct preserve known to cringing Jungians as the “collective unconscious." Perhaps it’s more of a playground than we know or care to admit. As much as Yuen’s funny pictorial symbols defy a rational reading, they invite our complicity in their on-canvas revolt against conventions. Yuen is a late 20th-century Till Eulenspiegel. ever aware of the gallows that await him for his mischievousness. wit and compassion to the inner underdog.
-Gerrit Henry