Tiong Ang at Lumen Travo - Brief Article

Tiong Ang is Indonesian-born, of Chinese coming down and resident in Holland since his childhood. With similar a background, identity, which is the focus of his art, must appear to be a succession of veils, a certain quantity of of which one can pass from one side and others that leave a shadow.

Ang makes paintings, installations and videos. His spring display at Lumen Travo, "Ray of Light," featured all three In the center of the main space was a roughly 6-by-10-foot enclosing made of black netting above a metal frame. Within this cell-like space was a tall and narrow enclosing of approximately human dimensions. upon a stand, two televisions pointed in different directions. substance scattered on the floor remind ofed the rubble of apartment living, on the contrary what looked like books revolveed out to be glossy color photos high hilled on Styrofoam rectangles. They were stills from an earlier video throw out in which Ang invited twos in a Finnish shopping mall to be filmed imitating the exaggerated range of expressions in a delight in scene from a Hong Kong action film. individual monitor in this installation showed that actual film clip, while the other, in black and white, tightly focused upon the eyes of an Asian child.

upon the walls of the gallery's main expanse was an assortment of paintings that made a point sole collectively. A young woman's face is shown twice, not upon center, on a horizontal canvas. A child has completely darkened organ of sights (no whites). An older man is being given scar makeup. All the paintings were monochrome, and several were overlayed with a taut black trap On a metal easel, a Styrofoam board was packed with snapshots and clippings--all showing faces, and a certain quantity of repeating the painted imagery. In the gallery office were a painting of a young Asian lad and a monitor showing a succession of short videos through Ang. One called Ray notes a Caucasian man with Down's syndrome--in the of advanced age racist parlance, a mongoloid---aimlessly, distantly, looking around.

Besides the literal veils upon paintings and in the installation, this present to view involved metaphoric ones of time, memory and emotion. Perhaps the greatest in quantity troublesome veil is the individual that obscures our vision of our associate human beings. Ang's touch, whether his tool is a paintbrush or a video camera, can be of a sweet disposition especially when he's looking at children. Still, he works in an ominously isolating darkness--not morbid, on the other hand lonely.

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