Kodak Portra 160
: Feature
COPYCAT The appropriated art of Jane Q Cheng
words by katherine chan photography by reece voyer Jane Q Cheng considers herself “almost cursed.” She is technically capable of replicating things she sees and likes, and according to the artist, that pertains to nearly everything. Though this gives her ample freedom in terms of what to produce, it has also made it more difficult for her to find her “thing.” Despite that, Cheng’s work pervades to showcase her technical skills in drawing and painting. Her art is like a big middle finger to the demands of the current industry in nearly every artistic discipline, questioning: Why are we not enough?
“I just wanted to prove how easy it is for someone to take from someone else, and how you can’t really say you’re the original because everything comes from something else.”
“It’s pretty to look at and it’s a lot of work,” Cheng says of the series. She sounds nonchalant, but then she confesses the state of vexation she was in when she made them. It was during her last two semesters at Emily Carr, when she stayed an extra year to focus on painting (her previous four concentrated on illustration). She was forced to confront the closed-mindedness she had gained from an exclusively illustration background: how the work of illustrators is expected to be commercial, fast, and understandable, while painters seem to live in a separate world with a completely different audience. She experienced intense existential feelings about her university career—as if it were an illusion. The holographic paintings were the result of those thoughts rattling within her. Maybe it’s not all about being able to draw or paint. “Art has to include so many things to be called art now,” she says. After that last remarkable year of school, Cheng noticed a lack of analytical discourse around illustration compared to painting. As a result, she has expanded her skills to include critical thinking on artistic issues like originality, authorship, and representation. Aside from asking questions about what is enough when it comes to art production, there appears, in Cheng’s work, a deep motivation to bring attention to ownership of appropriated content. She is a business-minded artist fascinated by those similarly drawn to purposeful copying, such as Elaine Sturtevant and Sherrie Levine. Sturtevant, spoken of with admiration and zeal by Cheng, became known for working closely with Andy Warhol and obtaining one of his original silkscreens (Flowers), and proceeding to make “Warhol copies” of it. “She was so good that when [Warhol] was asked how he made them, he’d say, ‘Ask Elaine. She’s the one who made them anyway,’” Cheng gushes. “I love her.” She excitedly covers her cheeks with both hands. When asked why she thinks Levine and Sturtevant focused on the work of others, she says she believes “they had a point to prove. It was something new when they did it. Everyone else was trying to create their own thing. And [Sturtevant and Levine] were like, “Well, isn’t this my own content, too?’” A fantastic example of Cheng’s own ability to copy is in her recent solo exhibition, Jane Q Cheng: Studying Andy Dixon, in which she replicated the work of the popular Vancouver painter.
A sense of nostalgia hangs in the air as Cheng talks. Although she is a young woman fresh out of her undergraduate studies at Emily Carr, she yearns for the olden days, even before her time, when only skills and dedication mattered. “Everyone can paint if you put the time into it,” she says. If only that was enough. Before understanding that a large component of successful illustration was its ability to appeal to a wide audience, Cheng mostly used oil paints in her illustration schoolwork. “I wish I used a different medium,” she says now. “I wanted to push myself technically, but I completely missed another point of all this, which is that it doesn’t even matter; some people don’t know how to draw properly and they’re doing so well. It really doesn’t matter anymore whether or not you can draw or paint.” In regards to herself, she says she got “lucky. And even that, I don’t know if it’s enough.”
Having not distinguished her own style, but possessing the skills to replicate almost anything, Cheng can create a solo show that looks like a group exhibition. “I just wanted to prove how easy it is for someone to take from someone else, and how you can’t really say you’re the original because everything comes from something else,” she says of being an artist who critiques the illusory notion of originality by creating those very illusions. “Especially in this day and age, with technology and the internet.” She pauses and adds, “I wasn’t out to come up with a definite answer for everything, but bring up a space for people to talk about this.” Success, to Cheng, is having the freedom to explore and make decisions. For now, though, she is leaving one choice unchosen, declining to define herself as a painter or an illustrator: “I don’t know what I am yet, and I think that’s exciting.”
This frustration is embedded in her Holographic Series comprising two paintings of small squares; each one consists of 24 triangular strips of changing hues, creating the perception of iridescence that one finds in holographic material. It took Cheng about three months to complete these labour-heavy pieces. Even on second look, it is hard to believe that the works are made of paint. As such, Cheng considers them exemplary of the illusionary nature of art. In this series, though, they actually become a meta representation of their own genre.
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