Shanghai Salad

Shanghai Salad is intimately linked with my 2019 visit to Shanghai where I got a sort of food poisoning by eating incredibly spicy hot pot. My assistant, Shaw, a young woman from Wuhan, was hellbent to dine in this firebreathing hot pot joint where everything was lacquered and upholstered in shades of red. Steaming pots of broth were brought to the table along with a variety of meat, seafood, and vegetables and - most conspicuously - large dark red bricks of red pepper boullion which Shaw eagerly added to the soup which then turned an infernal red color in the center of the table where we could add ingredients to taste.

The painting is sort of an "alchemical transmutation" of the orgy of bowel burning red I suffered through in Shanghai. The shrimps and cabbage leaves have turned into women, and crimson broth into putrid shades of chartreuse and fluorescent green. From a soup to a salad, that incidentally evokes my memory of the strange and colorful building that I could view from my hotel window at night.

This is a painting that I began at home in San Francisco, continued while in Shanghai, and eventually finished (or abandoned?) after I returned to the US. The painting is reminiscent in style to the Contraband series of collages made in 2017. They come from a cathartic method of making collages simply by ripping up old magazines (no scissors) and binding all the scraps together in acrylic medium, (or something called "Hodge Podge" - a sort of glue).