Deeply Softly Gently Tenderly by Mengju Lin

The artist presents a body of paintings that seem to hide as much as they reveal, forming a luminous concreteness that warrants repeated viewings. The effect of these small works lies in the liminality between their surfaces and interiorities. All of them have words that seem to be in formation—mute, incomplete, shy, teasing or gently proclaiming. Behind these word-shaped planets, they are washed with layers of marks, colours and glazes that form new meanings and vicarious experiences for the viewer. The painting here, as an idiom, conflates the codes of the visual, the verbal, and the object as one. Influenced by punk ideology and guerilla metaphysics, they vacillate within sincerity for the subjects the artist holds dear, a resistance to commercial productions and signifiers, and a personal ecology of things. Together, they form an embodiment of indexical traces: signs, material and codes that are yet undetermined and undisciplined by the medium to convey immaterialities of thoughts and desires.