Christine Ay Tjoe

b. 1973 in Bandung, Indonesia
Working in Bandung, Indonesia
Showing at Asia Society Museum
On view October 27, 2020, through February 7, 2021
Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 1, 2018

Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 1, 2018. Lithographic crayon on aluminum. H. 17 1/2 x W. 23 1/8 in. (44.4 x 58.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick)

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 4, 2018

Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 4, 2018. Lithographic crayon on aluminum. H. 17 1/2 x W. 23 1/8 in. (44.4 x 58.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick)

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 10, 2018

Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 10, 2018. Lithographic crayon on aluminum. H. 17 1/2 x W. 23 1/8 in. (44.4 x 58.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick)

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 15

Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 15, 2018. Lithographic crayon on aluminum. H. 17 1/2 x W. 23 1/8 in. (44.4 x 58.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick)

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 17, 2018

Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 17, 2018. Lithographic crayon on aluminum. H. 17 1/2 x W. 23 1/8 in. (44.4 x 58.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Ollie Hammick)

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Pleasant Breath of The Black, 2018

Christine Ay Tjoe, Pleasant Breath of The Black, 2018. Oil on canvas. Diptych, each: H. 78 3/4 x W. 70 7/8 in. (200 x 180 cm); overall: H. 78 3/4 x W. 141 3/4 in. (200 x 360 cm). Private Collection, London. Courtesy of White Cube. © the artist. Photo © White Cube (Theo Christelis)

Location: Asia Society Museum
From left to right, top to bottom: Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 1, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 4, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 10, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 15, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 17, 2018; Courtesy of the artist and White Cube.

Installation view of Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone at Asia Society Museum, New York, October 27, 2020–June 27, 2021. From left to right, top to bottom: Christine Ay Tjoe, Always Floating In A Constant Distance 1, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 4, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 10, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 15, 2018; Always Floating In A Constant Distance 17, 2018; Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. Photograph © Bruce M. White, 2020

Location: Asia Society Museum
Christine Ay Tjoe, Pleasant Breath of The Black, 2018, Private Collection, London

Installation view of Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone at Asia Society Museum, New York, October 27, 2020–June 27, 2021. Christine Ay Tjoe, Pleasant Breath of The Black, 2018, Private Collection, London. Courtesy of White Cube. Photograph © Bruce M. White, 2020

Location: Asia Society Museum

Christine Ay Tjoe’s practice has its roots in the graphic arts and specifically drypoint etching. The artist received a Faculty of Art and Design degree in printmaking and graphic art from the Bandung Institute of Technology in 1997. While her choice of medium has expanded beyond prints to include drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, the centrality of the line, first seen in her prints, has remained. Ay Tjoe’s scratches, marks, gestures, and strokes—most evident in her two-dimensional works—seem to tap into a personal and primal outpouring of emotion and psychological anxiety. 


For the Triennial, Ay Tjoe presents a group of works demonstrating her mastery of line and her ability to evoke emotional intensity through varying the density and thickness of lines. These marks and lines almost seem to resist any sense of formal structure and threaten to break out of their canvas or aluminum containers. The 2018 diptych, Pleasant Breath of The Black, is accompanied by five works of lithographic crayon on aluminum plate, from Always Floating In A Constant Distance, a series of thirteen prints also from 2018. The intimate scale of the works and their cold, stark surfaces accentuate the explosive quality of the artist’s jet-black strokes. This suite of works captures the tensions—between light and dark, presence and absence, and freedom and constraint—that run through Ay Tjoe’s practice. Hovering between pure abstraction and figuration, her works hint at the possibility of violence being ever-present beneath the surfaces of our lives and raise concerns relating to human existence.

Supported in-kind by White Cube.