Julia Chiang’s atmospheric paintings and ceramic sculptures bring a radiant presence to every space they inhabit. Rendered with watercolors or acrylic on wood, swaths of color and organic forms are punctuated by flowing, all-over laceworks. These meticulously painted dots and ovals texture her paintings with a particulate patterning that looks like an expansive cosmos, like cells, or like pores—echoes of natural phenomena.

“I am focused very much on our bodies, even though my work is not really figurative,” the Brooklyn-based artist told The Center Magazine. “Most of it comes from thinking and looking at our bodies and the natural world.” This theme carries through her solo exhibitions and publications, such as her monograph with JRP|Editions, which examines the parallels between human and natural processes—how blood flows, storms brew, bruises heal.

At Rockefeller Center, This Way That Way, Here brings together Chiang’s paintings and ceramics in bold new ways. A trio of glass cases inside 45 Rockefeller Plaza houses 18 glazed vessels set against a backdrop of brushstrokes. Echoing these ceramic forms, coiled pots fill a diorama-like window at 10 Rockefeller Plaza—the results of an artmaking workshop for children, called Art Sundae, hosted by the artist and Art Production Fund. Murals throughout the campus display larger-than-life excerpts from Chiang’s recent works from 2021–2025, reproduced on vinyl. A 125-foot mural on the Rink Level features an expanse of spliced-together details of Chiang’s paintings in all their vivid colors and textures. An installation view of this mural captures both its immersive scale and intricate detail. On display through the end of October, this show is the latest installment of Art in Focus, a public art series produced with Art Production Fund.

Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1978, Chiang studied art history at New York University before immersing herself in studio art and ceramics. Clay, she notes, is a medium that “holds its own stories.” Its softness and strength, its transformation through glazing and firing, and its durability across centuries deeply inform her practice. “Clay can work against its expectations, and there’s something very powerful about that,” she says.

Chiang’s career spans solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including Nanzuka, Nanzuka Underground, The Modern Institute, Nicola Vassell Gallery, The Journal Gallery, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. She has shown at the New Museum in New York, Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, and in Japan and Spain. Notable works include The Glows and The Blows, Run Like the Rain, Pump and Bump, Soft/Cover, Salt on Our Skin, Remember That Time When What, and Space Forgets You. Her installation views—whether of paintings awash in icy waves of color or ceramic vessels recalling natural phenomena—invite audiences to linger and reflect.

Residencies have also shaped her work: as an artist-in-residence at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, The Rockaway Hotel in Queens, and projects in Syracuse, San Francisco, and Málaga. These experiences broadened her exploration of public projects, where art transforms communal spaces into moments of pause and connection.

Her exhibition Holding My Breath Moving Closer Closer exemplifies this deeply personal approach, while installation views of the series reveal a balance between intimacy and expansiveness. Across her practice, Chiang channels her life experiences, thoughts, and feelings into her art—alchemized through recurring shapes and lively colors.

“Maybe it’s a flash of color, a feeling of movement, or a pause of confusion,” she says of her intent. “As someone who makes things, all I can hope for is that it creates some sort of connection with somebody.”

Julia Chiang’s exhibition This Way That Way, Here is on view at Rockefeller Center through October 31, 2025. This installation is part of Art in Focus, a series of art exhibitions produced in partnership with Art Production Fund.