Juxtapoz Journal – Opal Mae Ong Has Created “A Spell for Refusal”

Arsenal Modern Artwork New York is happy to current A Spell for Refusal, a solo exhibition of New York primarily based artist Opal Mae Ong. The suite of work included on this exhibition has been produced throughout a yearlong residency with Arsenal artwork contemporain Montreal.

In her work, Ong is enthusiastic about recurring themes of therapeutic, grief and longing. Her work are the results of a gradual and methodical course of by which parts are positioned judiciously amongst fastidiously deliberate compositions. Over the course of a number of weeks, the artist constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs her work; including and subtracting parts to attain completely ambiguous and hypnagogic scenes. Drafting from fiction simply as a lot as her personal expertise, Ong weaves parts from her private recollections, desires and visions with a vocabulary that borrows from common tradition, exalting pictures pulled from poetry, novels, songs and / or movies.

In consequence, all forms of unusual characters populate the artist’s work. In Equipment of The Tongue a hoofed and winged character presents a bowed lock of hair to a water effectively within the hope of attracting good luck whereas a floating pair of elegantly gloved fingers push a child stroller in a bit titled Unique Pleasure. In A Spell for Refusal, an ominous cloaked determine is being serenated by a ball-chained violinist-skeleton. 

In different items, figures look like swaying between emergence and disappearance, seemingly seen and on the sting of vanishing. Such is the case with A Silence that Comes Again and Silk’s Sororal. Different characters are solely partial seen like in Bitch’s Maldoror and Gone is the Ritual as if undecided in the event that they aspire to be acknowledged or left alone.

Painted in a vibrant palette of wealthy hues, starting from deep indigoes to flushing scarlets and gleaming periwinkles, Ong’s playful visible narratives are imbued by gloom, anguish and dread. Regardless of the foregoing, the artist holds on to optimism as she instils in her figures a unilateral sense of hope and belief. How else to heal or grieve than by cooperating with struggling? Afterall, don’t we are saying per aspera advert astra: by means of adversity to the celebrities?