Silverlens is pleased to announce one of its two concluding shows of the year, Horizon, Lou Lim’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Lou Lim is recognized for her highly sculptural practice wherein industrial and at time noxious building materials like epoxy, silicon, latex and elastomeric house paints are seemingly tamed and gently coerced to mimic skin, flayed or otherwise enveloping inanimate objects. The results are deeply introspective works that encapsulate her reflections on confinement, distance and the spatial and temporal limits of the physical human body.

For this exhibition, one may initially suspect that Lim has purposely shifted to painting and took it upon herself to create the single, largest piece she’s made to date: an expansive and monumental 7 x 12 ft. landscape painting with a hazy, idyllic, pastel-hued depiction of an equally expansive sea meeting the sky. However, it is curious to note that for this task she has chosen a most methodical approach. All the oil paints were premixed beforehand and were neatly arranged according to gradual variances in tone. The vast surface of the canvas was divided into the smallest sections and filled in line by line as if by a mechanical printer. From the initial sketch, to the ochre-toned under paint, to the final coat of varnish, the whole process took several months with the artist patiently translating to paint what she sees on screen, from a photographic reference. No sweeping gestures made by a wide and eager paintbrush. No misplaced wave in the water, no aberrant cloud in the sky.

When it is later revealed that upon the painting’s completion, the artist has intended all along to peel off the horizon line, to extract from the resulting, realistic picture this thin strip of paint where the sea and sky appear to have merged, then things will slowly start to make sense. With this, Lim has gracefully managed to materialize something that exists purely in the visual realm and lay claim to a physical and tangible quotation that can be held, examined and transformed, teeming with limitless potential.

Words by Gary-Ross Pastrana

Lou Lim (b. 1989) earned her BFA from the University of the Philippines. Her works are primarily concerned with relationships and connections between individuals, their contexts, between objects and visual imagery, the corporeal and the spiritual and what these relations articulate. Lim has been active in group exhibitions since 2011 in Manila, Philippines and has participated in a residency program of Pavillon Neuflize OBC in Palais de Tokyo, Paris resulting to exhibitions in ICA Singapore, Seoul Korea, and Opera de Paris.