Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to present Distance of Seeing, an exhibition of recent drawings by Dan Jian, exploring the shifting relationship between observation, memory, and the materiality of an image. The exhibition opens with a reception on November 7th and runs through December 19th. The artist will be in attendance.
Working from fragments of landscapes, figures, and everyday encounters, Jian brings disparate forms into unexpected relationships. Her drawings emerge through collecting, assembling, and revising, allowing images to develop without necessarily resolving into a coherent whole.
Jian describes her drawings as collections of fragments, each carrying traces of a previous life into a new surreal composition. A leg, a staircase, or a distant hill may become the starting point for an image whose eventual form remains uncertain. She likens the process to a Frankenstein-like creature coming to life, with the challenge of giving its assembled parts a measure of grace. The resulting drawings balance construction and accident, allowing disparate elements to coexist in tension, uncertainty, and harmony.
In these recent works, made while observing the Tuscan landscape, Jian’s attention moves between mountains, trees, hills, and passing encounters. Yet looking does not necessarily produce a faithful record of what is seen. Working on aged Xuan paper, whose absorbent surface allows watercolor and liquid graphite to disperse unpredictably, she grants material processes a degree of autonomy. Pigment and graphite move beyond deliberate control, producing granular forms and unexpected associations that shape each drawing’s evolving structure.
The exhibition’s title invokes a central concern in Jian’s practice: the distance that persists between observer and observed. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s writing on aura, Jian considers the possibility of a reciprocal gaze, in which the landscape seems to look back at the person observing it. What appears near remains, in some essential sense, beyond possession. Her drawings register this exchange without resolving it, bringing fragments together while preserving the distance between them. In Distance of Seeing, looking becomes less an act of capture than an encounter with what remains elusive.
Originally from the mountainous Hubei region of China, Dan Jian came to the United States at nineteen. She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University and her MFA from The Ohio State University. She is an assistant professor of Art at Texas Christian University and maintains an ongoing studio practice in Fort Worth. Jian has exhibited nationally and internationally in China, Italy, and Korea. Recent exhibitions include Passing Through, Cell Series at Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX; Library of Partial Things at East Texas A&M University-Commerce University Gallery, Commerce, TX; 21 Days at 器Organhaus Contemporary Art Space, Chongqing, China; The Echoes of Nature at Capital One, Plano, TX; and The Bow Whispers to the Arrow at Women & Their Work, Austin, TX.
Jian has participated in residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Organhaus Contemporary Art Space in China, and the Cerrito Artist in Residency program in Tuscany, Italy. Upcoming 2027 residencies include Organhaus and Awagami Factory in Japan. Her honors include a 2023 Artist Grant from the Nasher Sculpture Center, finalist recognition for the Don Bachardy Fellowship and the 2025 Moss/Chumley Award, and numerous research and creative grants from Texas Christian University.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is a Dallas, Texas based contemporary art gallery located in the Dallas Design District. With over 20 years of experience, Cris Worley is dedicated to promoting innovative work by contemporary artists at various stages of their careers.