David Diao left his home in China under extreme circumstances 59 years ago at the moment of the Communist takeover. The property was confiscated and made into the offices of the Sichuan Daily. By the time of his first visit back 30 years later, the house had been demolished.

For years Diao has sought to render his charged feelings about this loss into a group of paintings. He finally did so for his first solo exhibition in China in March 2008 at the Courtyard Gallery. For his 10th show since 1985, Postmasters Gallery is proud to present this version with new and additional works. The subject has grown into an ongoing series.

In an essay David Diao's Da Hen Li House Cycle Philip Tinari writes:

Using his memory and those of his assorted aunts and uncles, and calibrated by the fixed dimensions of the tennis court that was the house’s special feature, he conjectured his former reality back into existence. The resulting canvases brim with subtle references to the intertwined languages of architecture, painting, and Chinese, as well as to his project of reconstruction through imagination. (...) In this inherently futile act of seeking to reclaim a bygone space and time, Diao places his typical pictorial wit and skepticism into a new context of historical pathos.

David Diao was featured in “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1965-75” which traveled to numerous museums in the US, Mexico and Europe (2006-2008.) His first solo in Germany at Tanya Leighton in Berlin, “Best Laid Plans” is on view until mid-January 2009.

Diao’s work is in the collections of, among others, MoMA, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, Brooklyn Museum, NY, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, MOMA, San Francisco, CA, Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin, TX, FNAC, France, MOMA, Saint Etienne, France, FRAC, Burgundy and Brittany, France, Ontario Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada.