Come here, enigma

Yesterday I left the house and made a beeline for H Gallery. The new exhibition by Maymay Jumsai was up and I wanted to check it out. She is not only my favorite Thai artist, but one of my favorite artists regardless of nationality. Her show last year at Gallery 55, entitled “Come Here,” featured work that was done using a magnet to manipulate iron filings on the canvas. Once a shape was formed varnish would be applied to preserve the image. Simply stunning—some of them resembled the surface of skin, others the birth of small universes. Her new series is called “Enigmatic” and it certainly is. Again she experiments with her materials—black and white paint on canvas. First applying white, then black paint she folds the un-stretched canvas in half to create a variety of Rorschach-like forms when unfolded. Some resemble fluttering wing, others wind-swept plains, or waves. All of them suggest undulations, movement. From the gallery’s literature: “(…) the expression of these labor intensive and unorthodox paintings is left open to the viewer—for some an expression of Buddhist doctrine, for others a post-apocalyptic landscape, and for others they may imply a search for reconciliation of opposing forces, unification with the world and the achievement of transcendence.” Rather lofty, but true.