SOUTHAMPTON, NY.- Eli Klein Gallery presents new works by Quan Wenfei, an interdisciplinary conceptual artist whose exploration of digital nostalgia takes tactile form here in oil and silkscreen on canvas. Deeply inspired by gaming culture and the nostalgia of 1990s computer card games, Wenfei’s practice explores contemporary expressions of digital nostalgia. The exhibition will showcase her Click and Win series, inspired by the classic 1990s Windows game Solitaire, a touchstone for many who grew up clicking cards across glowing screens, capturing the excitement of small victories in a rapidly digitizing world, at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in 2025. Wenfei represents and reorganizes internet imagery, aspiring to be the ultimate “sky-cam,” observing how our aesthetics have been digitally trained.

Wenfei continually investigates the concept of “selective looking,” a unique methodology drawn from her internet experience and printmaking practice. She merges the mechanical reproducibility of silkscreen printing with the subjective expressiveness of oil painting. Through playful manipulations of scale, color, and compositional arrangement, she gradually strips away redundant layers of information from original images. This visual deconstruction and recomposition invites viewers to re-examine familiar yet overlooked visual elements, pixelated cards and drag-and-drop movements, revealing the hidden perceptual mechanisms underlying everyday viewing practices.

The series is rooted in the 1990s Windows Solitaire, which Wenfei identifies as among the internet’s first-generation "dopamine-feeding machines," playing a crucial role in the brief history of digital pleasure systems. Wenfei has long been concerned with how digital environments shape aesthetic cognition and viewing habits, describing her practice as "internet archeology," emphasizing the significance of forgotten digital artifacts for understanding contemporary behaviors and aesthetics.

Creation is a form of hybrid, a way of pushing the boundaries of language through known formulas, and it is the only method I have to free up memory in my brain. — Quan Wenfei

Wenfei’s work resonates with traditions of Pop Art and digital art, notably engaging with Andy Warhol’s silkscreen works, and interrogates the role of reproducibility and pop cultural iconography in image production. By juxtaposing oil and silkscreen on canvas, Wenfei reflects critically on contemporary society’s rapid pace: the slow sedimentation of oil painting starkly contrasts with the rapid dissemination of information on the internet, thus highlighting the inherent tension between temporal perception in viewing behaviors and digital media. Her silkscreen process is remarkably meticulous and time-consuming; each color layer requires its own plate, individually registered and aligned, with the number of plates corresponding to the number of colors in the work. This laborious precision becomes a deliberate counterpoint to the instantaneity of digital images. Through this approach, Wenfei reveals how accelerated societal rhythms and internet mediums subtly shape and control visual perception, inviting viewers to contemplate how we perceive and interpret reality in this context.