Damien H. Ding: After
Damien H. Ding, Landscape with a Calm (Poussin), 2025-2026, egg tempera on linen laid on panel, gilded frame, 28.125 x 34.25 inches framed
March 28 - May 9, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, April 3, 5:30 – 8 pm
Z’M Projects is pleased to present After, an exhibition of three new paintings by New York-based artist, Damien H. Ding. The exhibition will be on view from March 28 - May 9, 2026 with an opening reception on April 3 from 5:30 - 8 pm.
The works in After reflect on painting as both subject and method, as a practice grounded in return, revision, and sustained attention, where meaning remains provisional and in flux. These three paintings developed through Ding’s extended engagement with Landscape with a Calm by 17th-century painter, Nicolas Poussin, alongside his reading of TJ Clark’s The Sight of Death, a memoir of experimental art criticism.
In The Sight of Death, Clark records his observations across multiple viewings of two Poussin paintings at The Getty Museum: Landscape with a Calm and Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake. Returning day after day, Clark observes how perception shifts over time, shaped by mood, attention and duration.
Ding’s process mirrors this oscillation. Moving between close study of Poussin’s work and Clark’s reflections, he continuously revised his painting in response to shifting perceptions. Through this iterative practice, Ding locates an analogy between Poussin’s suspended tensions and the act of painting itself: a space of uncertainty, negotiation, and unresolved meaning. This inquiry extends into two accompanying paintings, one of which is a self portrait.
In Self Portrait as a Stick Figure, an abstracted spindly figure stands in for the artist, at once observer and participant. The left side of the picture plane and the artist’s body begin to merge together, as his right arm lifts to paint a pastoral landscape. Are artists akin to shepherds guiding the scene, or figures on the periphery, passively fading into the ramparts and witnessing from a distance?
After ultimately considers the relationship between stillness and motion, perception and finality. While calm may suggest rest or resolution, it often exists within ongoing change. Like a pendulum pausing only at the height of its arc, the paintings inhabit a moment of suspension, poised between equilibrium and collapse.
Though each piece appears as a carefully composed scene, the images and materials shift over time as an active investigation. In a world craving absolutes, Cabrillos Jacobsen exists in the transient in-between—a reminder that painting can function as a contemplative space where emotional and cultural tensions can be held, rather than resolved.
DAMIEN H. DING (b. 1992 Nanping, China) lives and works in New York City and Singapore. He received a BA in Art History with a minor in Asian Studies from Swarthmore College and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions have been hosted by Island Gallery (New York, NY), Denny Gallery (New York, NY), The Anderson Gallery (Richmond, VA), and Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA). His work has been included in notable group exhibitions at March Gallery (New York, NY), Amanita (New York, NY), Huxley-Parlour Gallery (London, UK), Fragment Gallery (New York, NY), Eugster (Belgrade, Serbia), Linseed Projects (Shanghai, China), Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (Schloss Goerne, Germany), Galerie Marguo (Paris, France), Alexander Berggruen (New York, NY), Denny Dimin Gallery (Hong Kong, China), Afternoon Projects, (Vancouver, Canada), and Spazio Amanita (New York, NY), among others. His work has been written about in publications such as Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Whitewall and Artsy. His work belongs to the collection of the Samek Art Museum (Lewisburg, PA).