Microscope is very pleased to present “Istoria’s Garden,” the first solo exhibition at the gallery by New York-based artist Lili Chin.

In “Istoria’s Garden,” Chin, whose work is often driven by “a desire to salvage and reconstruct significance from vanishing sites and systems,” evokes the concept of the global garden directing our attention to the natural world at this moment in history. Chin’s new works in multi-channel video installation, ceramic tile, fresco painting, and 16mm film are infused with a profound sense of fragility and of concern for our planet: they not only depict nature, but are imprinted with or contain the traces of organic materials used in their making.

The exhibition’s title piece is an installation comprised of a three-channel video projection onto a row of suspended white paperclay sculptures and the wall behind them. Interwoven across the video’s three screens are scenes and close-ups of lush plant life, waterways, barren rock formations, and animals from Super 8mm footage Chin filmed at such varied locations as upstate New York, Wyoming, Australia, Japan and Singapore. The floating sculptures resembling tree branches and other organic forms also serve as additional screens capturing the projection and acting as three-dimensional embodiments of the imagery. Gradual shifts in the color tones reflect the hues of the changing seasons, while natural and electronic sounds form a similarly fluctuating, yet cohesive audio landscape.

Influenced by Leon Battista Alberti’s concept of “istoria” as put forth in his 1435 treatise “Della Pittura (On Painting)” — a text that refers to an elaborate and cohesive form of narrative painting able to maximally engage and move the viewer — Chin applies some of the aesthetic principles such as composition, verisimilitude, and variety, to slowly construct a unity from disparate elements that allows us to forget time, as well as geographical and national boundaries.

In a series of salt-fired tile compositions, Chin emphasizes the healing properties of vegetation by imprinting the shapes and textures of the leaves of medicinal plants grown in her family’s garden in Singapore into the original clay. The medium-sized works are composed of small puzzle-shaped tiles that are joined together with golden lacquer using Kintsugi techniques, the Japanese art of repairing broken objects to embrace the imperfect and celebrate a more resilient whole.

The artists turns to the ancient process of fresh lime plaster fresco painting for her series “IODP,” which is based on the historical photos by the International Ocean Discovery Program of sediment cores extracted from the sea bed. The series of small-scale buon, or true, frescos reproduces the colorful layers of sediment in which information about the Earth’s environment and climate in eras past can be found and deciphered, in order to inform human’s actions in the future.

Finally, in Chin’s 16mm film “Elegy for the Genesee River” (2023) the artist addresses the impact of humans on nature, and especially in the production of the material of celluloid film itself. The two-and-a-half-minutes piece is a tribute to the flora along the Genesee River, which passes through Rochester, New York and has been “affected by legacy silver contamination due to the Kodak processing plant,” as Chin states. In the development of the film, the artist used the plants themselves — through phytography, a process in which to a plant’s own chemistry is used to produce images on the film. The images of leaves, pale-green liquids and tiny organisms that were originally in contact with the filmstrip during exposure flow across the screen, resulting in a symbiotic work merging nature with the very element that taints it.

“Lili Chin: Istoria’s Garden” opens May 2nd and continues through June 8th. For further information, please contact us at [email protected].