Opening reception, November 20, 6-8pm

Fleisher/Ollman presents Intertwined Infinities, a solo exhibition with Isaac Tin Wei Lin featuring paintings on paper, panel, and canvas; and drawings on paper and photographs. Lin continues his ongoing exploration of how calligraphic gestures can be melded with abstract elements like lattices, biomorphs, and op-art shapes. A new theme in his work are images of tentacle and vine forms that appear part animal part plant. Lin’s paintings often reference patterns and structures found in nature bringing to mind single cellular organisms, plants, DNA helices, and clouds. Lin’s abstraction can also transcend the terrestrial and the somatic and move outward into the cosmos where constellations pulsate with colorful vibrancy and alien life forms sprout from strange vases and egg-like sacs. While Lin’s practice is distinctly his own, his work nonetheless resonates with the history of 20th century abstraction by artists such as Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; and the extreme patterning of contemporary artists like Barry McGee and Andrew Jeffrey Wright.

Lin’s play between the earthly and the cosmic might be the fruit of his 2025 residency at Oreum on the volcanic island of Jeju, South Korea. This unusual setting allowed for a new experience where he engaged with the wonders of a primordial landscape that evoke both the origins of our planet and the universe itself. The drawings on photographs on view in the exhibition depict the otherworldly lava rock formations on Jeju as well as other sites he visited while traveling in Asia. The Oreum residency was a much needed respite from a period in Lin’s life marked by alienation and doubt, where he found time to make paintings that he views as “meditations on absence, temporality, gravity and the fabric of space, emptiness and fullness—how both can seem the same.”

Isaac Tin Wei Lin (b. 1976; lives and works Philadelphia, PA) has had solo exhibitions at Temple Contemporary, the Asian Arts Initiative, the Print Center, Fleisher/Ollman, and Gallery 543 at URBN (all in Philadelphia); Park Life, Queen’s Nails Annex, Woodward Flats, RVCA, and Needles and Pens (all in San Francisco); and Lamp Harajuku, Tokyo. Lin participated with the DFW collective in Arts Le Havre, 2012 Contemporary Art Biennial, France. He has been featured in group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Fleisher/Ollman, Painted Bride Arts Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (all in Philadelphia); the Hole, Bravin Lee, and Franklin Parrasch (all in New York); MASS Gallery, Austin; Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Somerset House, London, UK; and Scooters for Peace, Tokyo, among others. Lin has been commissioned to paint several large-scale murals, including three through Mural Arts Philadelphia; a multi-story stairway mural for Facebook's headquarters in San Francisco; and a thirteen-story mural in Heerlen, the Netherlands, commissioned by Stichting Street Art Foundation. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Lin was a resident at Oreum, Jeju Island, South Korea in 2025.