Danni Shinya Luo “Soft Candy“

February 14 – 26, 2012 –
Valentine’s Day
Book Signing Party
Tue, Feb 14th; 7-10 PM
La Luz de Jesus Gallery

click for show preview

Shanghai-born Danni Shinya Luo presents a collection of brand new drawings, paintings and illustrations. Turning the pages of this dainty 7″ x 7″ art volume is like stealing glances into a beautiful young woman’s salon — the voyeuristic reward of forbidden access. Watercolor, ink and graphite give rise to Luo’s vision of sexuality, innocence and whimsy over 200 full color pages behind a foreword by art impresario Billy Shire (of Soap Plant, Wacko and La Luz de Jesus Gallery). This new collection explores shifting perspectives of beauty, attraction, lust and decency presented through alluring and decadent images of the female figure. Visions of nymphs in a myriad of suggestive contexts are divided into five distinct chapters -each acknowledging a different aspect of sensuality as expressed through food, frailty, fetish, fauna and fantasy. The notion of eye candy is emblematic of the capacity to sense flavor, and Luo’s gift for capturing the soft, subtle sweetness of young adulthood is often erotic but always tasteful.

Shinya’s art is whimsically feminine, and her watercolor paintings are meditations on the female figure. The colors are fresh and luscious, her line work fluid and organic, and her composition engaging and impactful. Psychological tension and emotional torsion fill the images, binding love and lust. SOFT CANDY is an irresistible temptation that satiates the hunger of desire.

At first blush, Danni Shinya Luo would seem to be the unlikeliest source of the sexually charged material in Soft Candy. A sweet and invariably good-natured Chinese girl, she can disarm you with her bubbly personality while her paintings all but clobber you over the head. Her primary subjects are nubile nymphets; as wrapped in allegory as they are naked. They are both innocent and in your face. While the natural inclination of many artists is to paint naked women, most of Danni’s contemporaries (and a great deal of her predecessors) have managed to miss the sublime femininity that seems to come so easily to her. Sensuality and fragility, enacted simultaneously, don’t battle on her arches –they dance. Whether in her watercolors or in her sketches, which encompass both the doe-eyed and the deadly, the graceful lines of her figures boast that most prized of artistic commodity: intuition.

All of the drawings in this show were created specifically for (and published in) the Soft Candy art volume (published by Last Gasp Books, and available for pre-order).

Soft Candy:
The Girls of Danni Shinya Luo
Hardcover, 200 pages
7″ x 7″
$25.00

The first 100 orders will receive a signed, limited edition (1/100) book plate created specifically for this event!