Cai Jin’s Banana Plant 293 (2008).Courtesy 798 Avant Gallery
Artist Cai Jin Has Good Taste in Bathroom Fixtures
Chinese artist Cai Jin’s lush photograph of an oil painting in a bathtub is all elegance and porcelain features, recalling the ruinous beauty of Tang Wei, the lead actress in Ang Lee’s kinky war drama Lust, Caution. Tang titillated and broke all our hearts with her tragic end, and we comfort ourselves that a woman that sublime would even leave such a gorgeous bloodstain. Cai Jin is showing several such delicate, fatal works at 798 Avant Gallery through Saturday. —Emma Pearse