Free Element V, 2000.
Silver gelatin print.
Courtesy of Laurence Miller Gallery, New York.

Born in 1955 in Beijing, DoDo Jin Ming is an artist with a growing reputation; a recent New York gallery exhibition was featured in The New York Times. She is receiving international accolades for her breathtaking photographs, and she has been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as in galleries in New York, Europe and Asia. The Saint Louis Art Museum recently purchased one of her photographs. Jin Ming's career in visual art began later in her life; she trained as a classical violinist and performed with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Her life course changed in 1988 after visiting an exhibition of Joseph Beuy's drawings; she abandoned her musical career and began a pursuit of art.

DoDo Jin Ming: Land and Sea (organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in conjunction with the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York) will be the first public presentation in St. Louis of Jin Ming's work. The exhibition includes 32 photographs, a medium in which Jin Ming is self-taught, with subject matter that includes haunting vistas of sunflowers in the plains of the Dakotas, and riveting seascapes. The exhibition will introduce the concept of the sublime in nature to audiences unfamiliar with it, and offer fresh insights to those who have already encountered it. Curator's notes from the Columbus exhibition make clear the connection of DoDo Jin Ming's art to the notion of the sublime:

Respecting the awesome power and drama found only in the sea, DoDo Jin Ming creates violent black and white images that transport the viewer to a precipice about to be submerged under a cascade of water. Printing her pictures from a combination of two negatives, one of the sea, the other sky, Ming has intensified the power of the surging waves by blanketing them under an engulfing sky. Although this technique of multiple-printing harks back to the mid-19th Century and the majestic and peaceful seascapes of Gustave LeGray, DoDo Jin Ming's turbulent images are more akin to the paintings of J.M.W. Turner and Winslow Homer. … Ming made most of her exposures along the coast of Maine and the outskirts of Hong Kong. Often at great personal risk, she was able to capture on film the power and rage of the sea that would stir the heart of any sailor.

Additional programming will include a lecture by distinguished art historian Robert Rosenblum on the sublime in contemporary art, and a performance in the MOCRA gallery by a critically acclaimed local string quartet. Dates for these events will be announced.