Charlene Tan, “Warp/Weft”

By Mark Van Proyen

Re.riddle, San Francisco, California

Exhibition continues through April 30, 2024

April 20, 2024

Charlene Tan, “Researching and Remembering, T'nalak,” Ube (purple yam) powder, manganese violet pigment,

acrylic paint, giclee print, di-bond, aluminum, 43 x 48”. All images courtesy of the artist and re:riddle

In a selection of eleven recent small to mid-sized works, Charlene Tan works the interstitial space between tapestry and dimensional collage, creating elaborately layered works that are delightfully hallucinatory. These are all executed on wood panels, sometimes incorporating paint, almost always incorporating a digital print as a substrate upon which other elements are added. The list of those elements is a long one, including tiny slivers of abalone shell, rhinestones, dry pigment sourced from plants typical to the Philippines, shiny beads, and freshwater pearls.

In a few instances, seeds of different colors and textures are arrayed in tight formation, looking like they have been classified into sets and subsets. In all cases, tight formation is the operative word. The configurations formed from this diversity of materials are precise and complex, creating point-counterpoint structures that take on an animated quality as they intersect and interact with each other. Closer observation takes note of how reflective elements come alive when the eye scans across the horizontal breadth of some of the works.

Charlene Tan, “Researching and Remembering, Freshwater Pearl,”

cream, pink, black, white pearls, PVA, glue, Digital print, plywood, 43 x 48”

Tan’s works here are collectively titled “Researching and Remembering,” with subtitles referring to specific materials particular to individual works. At first glance, one might compare Tan’s work to the paintings of Agnes Martin because of their chromatic subtlety and reliance on a grid to organize and distribute their visual incidents. Hence the title of the exhibition “Warp/Weft” is a tip of the hat to the textile processes used to create tapestries.

But the more interesting aspect of Tan’s work lies in how she used the textile grid structure to smuggle a plethora of other cultural signifiers into each work. Tan spent her early years living in the Philippines as the daughter of mixed ancestry (Chinese/Filipina), surrounded by indigenous cultural practices and ancestral cuisines. Among those are the making of ornate ceremonial robes used to indicate special status within distinct religious communities. I am not as conversant in the indigenous traditions that inform these practices as I would like, but I also know that many textile traditions insert complex double meanings into the patterns and images they create. (For example, the distinctive textiles made by tribal women who live in the Amazon basin frequently double as shamanistic song scores for Ayahuasca ceremonies.)

Charlene Tan, “Researching and Remembering, Capiz and Cowrie Shells, Capiz and Cowrie shells, glue, digital print, plywood, 43 x 48”

Some of the configurations in Tan’s work look slightly figurative in a manner that we might associate with ancient hieroglyphs or 1980s video game pixelation. Many of those figures resemble spirit avatars engaged in a cosmic dance of life and death. Other works incorporate design elements derived from Spanish colonial sources, which differ from the ornamentation of 18th and 19th century Spain. Spanish colonial ornament tended to incorporate Islamic and even African design motifs to a much greater degree, in part because many of the conquistadores had a pre-inquisition connection to the period of Spanish history remembered as the convivencia (711-1492 CE), when the peninsula was a Muslim kingdom that was generally tolerant of Christians and Jews. This connection meant that Spanish colonial ornamentation tended to be more outlandishly flamboyant and less rigid than its Castilian counterparts.

Charlene Tan, “Researching and Remembering, Capiz shells and rhinestones,”

Capiz shells, rhinestones, PVA glue, digital print, plywood, each of three panels 16 x 20”, 16 x 60” total

Following from this brief, it can be said that Tan’s works function like spirit catchers that absorb, juxtapose, and reconstitute culturally resonant stylistic elements into a refined visual form. Their varied ingredients are both improbable and harmonious. Her previous exhibitions have featured large scale works using similar material strategies, sometimes including multiple collaborators to echo traditional Filipina weaving processes. This exhibition of smaller sized works also reveals that surprising visual power can be achieved at modest scale. 

Mark Van Proyen has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for Art in America . 

Photo credit: Mary Ijichi