Calligraphics
"I'm not perfect but I improvise." - Tierra Whack
Calligraphics are meditative arenas that translate stirrings of the soul into the shape of thought.
Inspired by Chinese calligraphy, jazz, natural phenomena, and the question of free will, artist Kaixi Yang flows & composes - making sense of what just happened, when is 'complete', and all throughout, 'what is'.
Fine Art Prints
All prints are archival quality, sold unframed, giclée printed on bamboo matte paper, and shipped in cardboard tubes.
If you're interested in purchasing originals or commissioning original artwork, email me here.
About Kaixi's Practice
"By practicing calligraphy in my own way, outside of the realm of language, I've been able to better make peace with my emotional states.
I have learned to appreciate that the output can never be perfect. Both the good and bad in you is boiled down to the moment you chose to create.
The whole composition comes out - the harmony & discordance.
It all just is."
I learned to draw from an old Chinese man, Mr Li, in his garage, every Sunday growing up.
While he predominantly taught technical sketching, which I could, stroke by stroke, and erasure by erasure, build up an image, the form I thought was endlessly challenging was traditional Chinese ink brush painting.
I would get so frustrated that he would be so sure, so confident, and so fluent in the exact moment of transferring thought to representation.
My strokes would be filled with doubt.
So over time, I tried.
Initially trying one-line drawings, the act of not lifting the pen forced me to be present and to make decisions without the possibility of regret.
It taught me to see the essence of things, and to represent accurately, though sparsely. It encouraged me to pay attention to the ephemeral, and to the decay of the most beautiful things - ferns uncurling, smoke unfurling, water rippling, and emotions rising within me and others.
"In making art that expresses what comes to me subconsciously, I'm accepting who I am, accepting that I don't have control in the moment, and that's okay.
That's how we are.
This is living; the art is alive."
About the Artist
Kaixi (pronounced kai-Shee, born Katherine in 1998,) is a polymathic artist from Auckland, New Zealand, based in Brooklyn, New York.
Technically adept, and spiritually adventurous, her art is a practice of achieving resonance, or oneness, with the material at hand, to make artefacts that make sense of a complex world.
Kaixi has shown in exhibitions internationally. She is the recipient of CIE's Top in the World in Painting, Top in New Zealand in Graphic Design, and Sociology, has won regional and national awards for her paintings, and has been featured in a number of leading New Zealand news outlets and web publications.
She studied Product Design at Stanford University, where she cofounded ArtX, a creative collective bridging art & technology for ethical inquiry.
She has made bacteria glow with microbiologist Dr. Siouxsie Wiles for the Auckland Art Festival, has welded with large scale figurative sculptor Marco Cochrane, and has interned with genre-bending immersive artist Alexa Meade. She is part of the Interact Fellowship, and is a WEF Global Shaper.
When she’s not working on fine arts, she works as the CEO of ENTITY, a systems design studio for the health of people & planet.
Her current projects include learning guitar & songwriting, crafting a regenerative framework for Auckland city, planning an installation for the Venice architecture Biennale, making a capsule fashion collection, and architecting a coliving community in upstate New York.
