Iris Bursting

Walasse Ting

"Iris Bursting" exemplifies Ting's characteristic use of bright colors and energetic composition, capturing the essence of the bursting iris with spontaneous drips and dabs of ink that evoke a sense of movement and vitality. His unique style blends influences from Chinese calligraphy, European avant-garde movements like CoBrA (he met artists like Asger Jorn and Karel Appel in Paris), and American art movements like Pop Art and gestural Abstract Expressionism.

Walasse Ting studied at the Tamarind Institute lithography workshop in Los Angeles in 1964, publishing two suites of lithographs: Fortune Kookie and Hollywood Honeymoon. Having been in the United States for only a handful of years, he was encouraged to attend the popular workshop by friend and collaborator Sam Francis. That same year, Francis helped publish 1 Cent Life, a book of Walasse's poetry illustrated by artists such as Karel Appel, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Francis, among others. Walasse was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship Award for drawing in 1970. Toward the end of his life, Walasse split his time between New York and Amsterdam.

Today, Ting's later work, steeped in Pop Art figurative and narrative aesthetic, is the most well-recognized of his oeuvre. However, it's the abstract expressionist work of his early American years that introduces his love affair with saturated color, freeform lines, and wild energy. The influence of Tamarind left its mark upon Ting and is seen in this work's neon-tinged splashes and spots, hewn deftly into the stone.

Walasse Ting passed away in New York on May 17, 2010, seven years after a stroke left him incapacitated.