Refinement, promise, and something of a double technique figure in Chie Fueki’s paintings on paper at Bill Maynes Gallery in Chelsea, her first Manhattan show. Ms. Fueki’s imagery and meticulous craft and the fragile, ceremonial air of her work reflect her Japanese heritage.
Her tissue thin, quilt-like surfaces, made from specially painted mulberry paper and further embellished with paint and graphite, offer mirages of shifting colors, ghostly images and sparkling jewel-like expanses. Especially prevalent is a chrysanthemum pattern, which rendered in soft graphite or teased out in raised dots of paint that accumulate into repousse-like filigrees.
The densest surfaces are best in “Sun,” where gold rays seem to be refracted versions of the Japanese flag, and “Window,” with its four-way symmetry of nocturnal landscapes. Ms. Fueki understands the potent union of decoration, technique and symbolism found in Japanese screens, kimonos and lacquerware. But she also shares interests with other paper-based pictorialists like Toba Khedoori and Amy Myers.
Roberta Smith, New York Times, May 2002