LAM WONG
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Visual Artist
Vancouver BC, Canada
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© 2019 All Rights Reserved.
Lam Wong: Mind Transition
Canton-sardine
Vancouver BC, Canada
Jan 12 to April 2, 2019
Opening Reception: Jan 12 (Sat. 3pm)
Above images: Installation Views
About the series Transitional 2x4
A series of diptych paintings, each showing a fixed frame and depicting motion figures paired with a monochromatic colour-field counter part. Behind each piece of artwork is a hidden painting that is permanently mounted. They are created with layers of calligraphy and paint, drawing from a famous concept in the Diamond Sutra: The Buddha’s teaching on the impermanent and empty nature of all phenomena. The hidden paintings are both talismanic and abstract in nature. Below are the original texts that have been used in the hidden paintings:
一切有為法 如夢幻泡影
如露亦如電 應作如是觀
All conditioned phenomena
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows,
Like dew and like lightning;
One should contemplate them in this way.
(English Translation)
The Transitional 2x4 series was formed with a realization of a single thought - "Everything and every situation happens only once." All experience is unique. It is a quiet contemplation on time and impermanence. The frame of each painting symbolizes Nowness, and the content (the walking figures inside the frame) depict the movement in time – an expression of Impermanence in all forms and colours. Like an ever-flowing river, the walking figures seem to transition into other frames in a mysterious way. I like the idea of my paintings having conversations with each other.
My newer paintings are very often inspired by my older works. The idea of the undercover hidden paintings and the pairing of two paintings on each panel may come from my earlier work, a large diptych called Westcoast (MOA) 2008, which feature two Buddhist monks on the left panel and a same-sex couple on the right. The setting was the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver British Columbia. The aesthetics of this new series, upon revisiting them after completion, feels like a subconscious extension of two of my earlier paintings titled 1964 The Poignancy of Music, and 1964 The Poignancy of Poetry, set in Mark Rothko's studio in Soho, NYC which I painted between 2010 to 2012. They are the projected ideal of how painting should be made, and what should be felt.
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