CHINATOWN — For inspiration, artist CJ Hungerman looks to the past.
And the future.
And wrinkles in the space-time continuum yet to be discovered.
"I have a fascination with man and knowledge and space and a ... multidimensional thing," said Hungerman, who says his work is "like traveling through dimensions."
One of Hungerman's newest works has been selected as the commissioned art work for the city's new showcase Chinatown library, a glassy 16,000-square-foot "high-tech" learning hub expected to open in the 2100 block of South Wentworth Avenue in July.
The city's department of cultural affairs and special events last year assembled a panel of 14 community representatives, ranging from the local librarians and luminaries artists to architects, who were asked to sort through artists' submissions.
Six different works were named as semifinalists but only one could make the final cut.
The winning work is an offshoot of Hungerman's Tesseractory Factory series, which he said "plays around with all these images of spaceships that represent humans, human anatomy, colors representing emotions, stuff like that."
The name is derived from "tesseract," the mathematical concept used by characters in the acclaimed time-hopping sci-fi novel "A Wrinkle in Time," which Hungerman cites as a huge influence.
His "Tesseractory Factory; Chinatown Division" painting aims to create a "historical account about the quest for knowledge based on the five areas of the sky from Chinese history," including the Black Tortoise and the Sanke, the Blue Dragon, The Red Bird, The White Tiger and the The Emperor.
Hungerman, 44, of Batavia, said the painting remains a work in progress. In addition to adding even more shapes, colors and symbols, he also plans to incorporate more ideas given to him by the panel, which will likely include cultural artifacts relevant to the neighborhood.
"My work has a lot of movement and a lot of bright colors that related to Chinatown, mythologically," he said.
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