Julia Chiang’s atmospheric paintings and ceramic sculptures bring a radiant presence to every space they inhabit. Rendered with watercolors or acrylic on wood, expanses of lively color—like flame reds, zesty citruses, and floral fuschias meld with marine blues, leaf greens, and gemstone teals— are punctuated by flowing, all-over laceworks of repeating ovals and dots. These meticulously painted shapes texture her work with a particulate patterning that looks, at turns, like an expansive cosmos, cells, or 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 artwork in exhibitions and publications (including her new monograph with JRP|Editions), which examines the parallels between human and natural processes—like how blood flows, storms brew, and bruises heal.

At Rockefeller Center, Chiang’s newest exhibition, This Way That Way, Here, brings together the artist’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. And a 125-foot mural on the Rink Level features an expanse of spliced-together details from Chiang’s paintings, in all their vivid colors and textures. 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 while simultaneously immersing herself in studio art and ceramics. Clay, she notes, is a medium that “holds its own stories.” Attracted to the material’s deep historical roots and physical characteristics, the artist says she sees glimmers of humanity in the material’s softness and strength, its ability to transform through glazing and firing, and how it can survive the extreme temperatures of a kiln and endure for millennia. Chiang says, “Clay can work against its expectations, and there’s something very powerful about that.” 

Chiang has exhibited her artwork in galleries and museums around the world, including at Nanzuka in Tokyo, The Modern Institute in Glasgow, Nicola Vassell Gallery in New York City, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York. Whether within these art spaces or in public places, finding ways to spark moments of pause and connection is another through line in Julia Chiang’s art. To produce her debut duo of public murals at the The Rockaway Hotel and Spa in Queens in 2022, she engaged local residents through community art workshops and a “community paint day.” During a 2024 residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, the artist made an expansive silkscreened fabric piece that she says doubles as “a private pause within a space.”

Whether of paintings awash in waves of color or bulbous ceramic vessels with galactic glazes, her pieces invite audiences to linger and reflect. While selecting which artworks to include in This Way That Way, Here, Chiang says she imagined the people who pass through Rockefeller Center each day in a constant flow of motion and what they might be feeling. She intuitively chose paintings from her body of work with transitory titles (including “Linger Longer,” “Here and In Between,” and “Almost Where We Should Be”), which respond to each busy hallway and quiet corner. Her goal is to reflect energy into these spaces and foster moments of discovery that might snap passersby into the present tense. “Rockefeller is a place to celebrate,” Chiang notes, “and it’s a true coming-together place with people from around the world, with so much combined, diverse energy.”

This Art in Focus exhibition doubles as an invitation to come inside and explore public space anew, and to notice not only the pulsating colors and mesmerizing shapes in Chiang’s paintings and sculptures, but also to be alive to the heartbeat of humanity and the world swirling around you. “Maybe it's a flash of color, a feeling of movement, or a pause of confusion,” Chiang says “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.