Morbid Excess
Study of Symmetry, Anatomy, and the Decorative Motif
Study of Symmetry, Anatomy, and the Decorative Motif
We may travel anywhere apart from inside ourselves: the territory that spans our insides maybe mapped, plotted and measured (most often by others) but never visited. It is usually only by their dysfunction that our interior workings make themselves known to us and for this reason they are, for most people, terra inferma. YetMay Lim celebrates this interior and, by implication, lays down a gauntlet to our fears. Like the stoics of old she bids us to rejoice in our mortality or be consumed by it and this she does with a grace and wit that holds fast the squeamish gaze. Though she has taken as a cue the etchings of Victorian medical illustrations, the graphic sense which imbues her drawings is entirely her own. Her filigree pen-work has a rare quality that compels us to take our time whilst we savour its lucid eloquence.
The symmetrical manner in which she has configured her designs is plain to behold yet wields a power beyond that of simple decorative motifs. In their on-going search for immutable truth, physicists will recognise as law anything that is true everywhere. This quality they term symmetry, a reading significantly different from the common reading of the word. For them truth and symmetry are synonymous and we might extend this into the way that we read our own bodies. Like exclamations of divine will the manner in which we are structured bears testament to a high order of organisation, with the heart, sexual organs and tongue by their charged nature being exceptions that colour this rule.
In this sense May Lim's chevrons are as much declarations as they are decorations and like newspaper headlines they shout their black and white truths as bold assumptions. Yet we must not forget that repetition can also be used to bolster doubt and question certainties. A serious consideration of her work will return a panalopy of such push and pull readings: beguiling yet disturbing, declarative yet doubtful, sexual yet morbid. Such nuance is a mark of the maturity and value of May Lim’s project.
(Written by: Martin Constable)
The symmetrical manner in which she has configured her designs is plain to behold yet wields a power beyond that of simple decorative motifs. In their on-going search for immutable truth, physicists will recognise as law anything that is true everywhere. This quality they term symmetry, a reading significantly different from the common reading of the word. For them truth and symmetry are synonymous and we might extend this into the way that we read our own bodies. Like exclamations of divine will the manner in which we are structured bears testament to a high order of organisation, with the heart, sexual organs and tongue by their charged nature being exceptions that colour this rule.
In this sense May Lim's chevrons are as much declarations as they are decorations and like newspaper headlines they shout their black and white truths as bold assumptions. Yet we must not forget that repetition can also be used to bolster doubt and question certainties. A serious consideration of her work will return a panalopy of such push and pull readings: beguiling yet disturbing, declarative yet doubtful, sexual yet morbid. Such nuance is a mark of the maturity and value of May Lim’s project.
(Written by: Martin Constable)
Untitled I - Ink on paper, 115cm x 115cm
Untitled II - Ink on paper, 115cm x 115cm
Untitled III - Ink on paper, 115cm x 115cm
