@ Ivy Ma's solo Poems, days, death @ Lumen Visum - Not long ago, a gallerist showed me the work of an artist on paper and said, "Doesn't her work make you excited?!" It was more an exclamation than a question, but I said Yes anyway. It was exciting for the gallerist for the artist's bold gestures that challenge authority head-on. I have no reason to dispute that, but thought, excitement might not be a good or reliable reason for getting closer to art/ works.
Ivy Ma said today that one can't paint well when one is crying while painting at the same time. So succinct - art demands as much (though different kinds of) rationality as other theoretical, spiritual, practical, philosophical, aspirational human enterprises. In the gallery, I saw a gradation of grey. Some grey sink (eg. "Upside down mountain, golden sea" 2017), some protrude (eg. "The Last Scene of Stalker" 2020). There is more grey in lines blurry here (eg. "The Bird Scene of the Passion of Joan of Arc" 2020) and razor-sharp there ("I Did Not Attend My Father's Funeral" 2020). I asked myself if I am seeing a finite self or infinity?

Ching Ping Lau in conversation with Ivy Ma asked if we found the show 'light' or 'heavy'. For me, it was an effortlessness coming out of ordinary habits in response to extreme absurdity - its stickiness is there, so is the magic that dissipates it.

Ivy Ma said in the talk the audience may find this show different from her work before. I remember the monochrome paintings in black I recently saw. I don't know if black is 'heavier' than grey and why and how shades/ combination of light acquire weight anyway...but I find the artist seeking light in air - the breathing in and the (last) breathing out. Light as in how it may shine for the last time. No, it's not there in the gallery, but dare I say I perceive a longing somewhere for it.

The gold leaf inserts itself where a song needs to be sung - be it for life or for death and for everything in between. The artist sets a scene, as if spreading open her closed palms for so much that could arise in between. I will be moved a long time for the asymmetry the artist presents as the reality of moving through the quotidian - the extraordinary becoming quotidian and vice versa. (Yang Yeung)