Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

No one has approached abstraction with Zen-like ardor more than Lao Lianben whose works appear as chain-link continuities of each other. In this work, Substance, a ghostly presence —lifted from the support as though in a low relief — emerges, taking a more corporeal form as it transforms right in front of the eyes of the viewer. The commotion of darkness surrounding the effulgent shape is equally assertive, providing not so much as background as a highly - charged space inflected with agency. This associative leap doesn’t distract from the fact that the emergent central from may be the imprint of the artist himself — mutable, nebulous, but no less luminous.