“When it comes to concealment, I used to be interested in how we’d learn these figures underneath such phrases. When we’re not aware of their ideas and actions. I believed it might be thrilling to open up the potential to a number of readings and finally haven’t any finite reply. Admittedly, from a painterly perspective, it additionally allowed extra room for exploration in materials and visible manipulation. It was thrilling to contemplate the figures’ subjectivity underneath completely different phrases.” When Timothy Lai said this in Juxtapoz in 2024, I could not assist however consider this line when his latest physique of labor, Nonetheless. But. Nonetheless., opening at Jack Barrett this week. Within the context of the quote above, Lai was working with curtains, whether or not as concealing the character or concealing the motion of a room. It was an efficient emotional device, a thriller on the canvas, that kind of supplied a distance between the viewer and the work itself.
In Nonetheless. But. Nonetheless., Lai is working once more within the concept of what it’s we conceal, however obscuring even the flexibility to learn the distinctions of figurative and abstraction. There are some hints, a canine, a person, an arm outstretched, however the density of illegible figuration is beautiful. It’s just like the articulation of a previous dream and the method of understanding the depths of memory. —Evan Pricco
