0-0 LA is thrilled to present Oh Brother. Oh Bother the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Timothy Lai. The show will run from March 2nd through April 4th, 2019. The gallery will host the opening reception on Saturday, March 2nd from 6 – 9pm.
Whether colorful paintings or monochromatic drawings, the works included in Oh Brother. Oh Bother interrogate the spectacle of expectation. The paintings depict seemingly unresolvable hierarchies, figures permanently entrenched in conflict both within themselves and between each other. Departing, but never straying too far from the blunt didactics of his upbringing, Lai takes on themes of masculinity, familial obligation, and failure. Lai merges biblical narratives with personal symbolism, questioning whether these systems of authority are internally or externally imposed.
The painted works employ an almost metallic color scheme, adjoining a naturalistic palette with an artificial one. In Lamentation of a Son, 2018, the figures are rendered in rusted orange, muted turquoise and midnight black, with three figures cramping the frame in a frenetic embrace. The linework is fluid but static, as if to freeze and expose the violence in fidelity. Limbs are woven into the composition, grasping and recoiling with a futility that prevails throughout Lai’s body of work. Ranging from minimal interiors to baroque landscapes, the settings of Lai’s paintings function as theatre sets, imbuing each tableau with a sense of operatic foreboding. Conversely, in the works on paper, Lai strips away color and setting with only the figures left wanting. Each scene is reduced to a duality, leaving two subjects to do with each other what they will. The drawings are stark, with much of the paper preserved to further expose the vain efforts of his subjects. Whether it is in the shameful embrace of a sculpted bust, or in bearing the weight of preceding generations, each figure is fixed in a state of perpetual negotiation.
The embattled subjects of Lai’s work are best described as wrestlers. Fighting for and struggling against themselves, their histories and their counterparts. With absolution deferred, they lack the precise finality Barthes wrote of in his 1957 essay, The World of Wrestling. The characters do, however, perform the ultimate function of the wrestler, “…to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him.” And they do so with contrition, with frustration, with solace.
-Laura Jasek
Timothy Huiming Lai (1987, Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BA in communication from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2009, and his MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. His work has been featured in group presentations at Bass & Reiner Gallery, Jack Barrett Gallery, and Field Projects.
