Provenance: Luz Gallery

ABOUT THE WORK

Time and time again, Lao Lianben has shown as that he is the master of the monochrome, profound and unmatched in his ability to create worlds using the sparest of means. In Tryst, painted in 1975, the country’s foremost abstractionist meditates on the way light inhabits surface which, in this particular work, suggests something liquid: the sea. Curvilinear forms indicative of rocks briefly rises up, faintly lit by an accidental glow. They seem to be submerged in an expanse of glimmer that intermittently bristles with filamentous strokes. As pure abstraction, the shimmering surface gathers in the center of composition, before ebbing out to subdued luminescence. It is work that beautifully captures the brief interruptions in the darkness, signs of life suggestive of an enfolding, divine presence.