Christina Sucgang
Zzyzx, Apr 24 – Jun 1, 2024

CANADA is pleased to announce Zzyzx, a solo show by Christina Sucgang in CANADA’s 61 Lispenard exhibition space. The paintings are buoyant, mad-capped, perpetually unfolding spaces full of cartoony antics that are mixed with a belief in the expressive power of abstract painting. The pleasure Sucgang experiences making these paintings propels the viewer through the work like a roller coaster ride through MoMA. The high chroma oil paint is handled with brio and confidence. The paintings often feature grid-like structures, taking the form of a diamond braid in Baby, 2024 or a wavy grate that hovers in a theatrical space of hazy biomorphic forms in America’s Sweetheart, 2024.

Sucgang carries a love of painting everyplace she goes, and her dauntless attitude towards the world exudes from her canvases. The artist is often accompanied by her two young daughters in her studio, where they amuse themselves with paper and pastels as she paints. Sucgang will often grab an image from one of her kid’s drawings and add it to the painting she is working on. The drawings are quotations rather than organizing principles, as Sucgang’s work operates on a sophisticated formal level. Instead, the drawings serve as a reminder for the energy she wants to embody in the works; feral, open to experimentation and searching for potentiality around every corner.

There is aggression and sweetness in equal measure in this group of works. One thinks of the unhinged psychic implosions of German bad-boy artists Sigmar Polke and Albert Ohlen, as well as the never-say-die American sunniness of Elizabeth Murray. That Sucgang can hold both currents in her work at the same time adds depth and dimension to her paintings. Zzyzx contains elements that remind us of things we’ve seen in other paintings, but the clashes of content and mood makes these paintings all their own. 

Christina Sucgang was born in Manila, Philippines and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1992. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has lived and worked in Brooklyn since 2007.