That's right, art from Burma. If you thought Burmese art consisted solely of traditionally-figured monks walking on their alms-round at dawn, think again.
Last Saturday's opening of the "Proud Ladies, Pink Skies" exhibition at the La Luna Gallery in Chiang Mai showed us just how bold Burmese art can be: Exciting, challenging and a riot of colour and form. My first walk into the gallery literally took my breath away.
The La Luna Gallery is a new centre for contemporary arts in Chiang Mai, focusing on work from Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Malaysia and the Philippines. From July 16 to August 14 Burmese art takes centrestage with works from 12 different artists, with two of the artists, Bogie and Myint Soe, attending at the opening.
Zaw Win Pe, one of Burma's leading artists, competed with 226 other entries to come first in last year's Burmese Contemporary Art Awards sponsored by The Myanmar Times. In the exhibition at the La Luna, he is represented by Hills to Eternity and Dream Hills, large oil and acrylic paintings of bold, primary-coloured horizontal swathes, applied with a palette knife.
Zaw commented to The Myanmar Times that while travelling in the Shan State, he caught a glimpse of the sun's last rays over the landscape, highlighting the earth in reds, pinks, purples, blues, yellows, like molten gold. "I thought I had been transported to another world." His vision that day is perfectly executed in the works in this exhibition.
The young artist who came second in last year's Burmese Contemporary Art Awards is also on show at the La Luna. Nyein Chan Su's (aka NCS) bold colours snake languidly along the canvas in his "Dreamscape" series with an enchanting combination of whimsy and sensuousness. The lushness of the paint makes you want to peel off a sliver and wrap yourself in it.
Many of the artists who have been painting for a few decades have moved from realist, traditionally-figured watercolours to more modern forms, such as mixed-media. Bogie is one such, who now creates in a medium he calls "collaints", a combination of collage and painting. Strong colours in geometric shapes share his canvas with strips of gauze or tissue delicately placed upon the primary forms.
I'm not surprised to find that Bogie has been influenced by US artists Andrew Wyeth and Robert Rauschenberg. Wyeth speaks to the powerful realist mode of Bogie's earlier work and Rauschenberg to the playful collaints.
One of the most lyrical young artists in terms of line and colour is Hein Thit. Vibrant yellow and bright salmon form the background for flowing economic lines illustrating female forms in a pair of paintings, Beautiful Woman II and Beautiful Woman III.
Similar to Hein in using strong line and colour is the artist Ba Khine _ but with a difference: Ba Khine's lines and colours are angular, reminiscent of cubism. The strong blues, greens and yellows in Village Monastery, Floating Market at Inle Lake, and Stupa Platform at Kakko are compelling. The unique way in which Ba Khine has composed lines and colours together is elegant and visually striking in overall composition.
Contemporary Burmese artists are influenced by major threads of Western modernism _ Cubism, Impressionism and mixed-media. One of the artists who was present on opening night, Myint Soe, is particularly proficient in Cubism. His Mahamuni Temple, Mandalay uses small building blocks in luminous gold and red to draw one deeply into a powerful image of this most-revered Buddha. If you have seen the Mahamuni in the flesh, you will know that the colouring and composition in Myint's painting accurately reflect the energy and feeling of this sacred space.
Creating strong impressions and feelings in the viewer, coming from equally strong emotions in the artist, is what I find refreshing in contemporary Burmese work. Bogie commented, "It is most important to create visual beauty." How long has it been since an avant-garde New York artist said that?
Will you have seen these techniques and styles before? Of course, but you have not seen them executed by artists from a culture outside of the Western tradition, specifically Burma. What is important in these works, and others by Southeast Asian artists, is that they are taking these known styles _ but new to them _ and reworking them within the ambience (and in the case of Burma, confines) of their own cultural environment and traditions.
When the work is not totally abstract, this tradition is reflected explicitly in the subject matter of the work. When abstract, as in Bogie's collaints, a matter of the heart and spirit comes through that the Burmese artist is not afraid to admit is there. And, too, a cultural/traditional restraint is present, whether conscious or not, if we compare the collaints with Rauschenberg's bold "combines".
Chiang Mai is indeed blessed to have the La Luna Gallery in its midst. But we are equally fortunate to have another, little-known gallery in Chiang Mai that exhibits solely Burmese artists: The Suvannabhumi. Run by Mar Mar, a Burmese-born woman, the Suvannabhumi has a collection of 50 or so Burmese artists of all styles. In this unique space, one can see the languid watercolours of an earlier time next to expressionist nudes of Pe Nyunt Way.
The art commentator Ma Thanegi expressed it well when he said "Today there are changes in the way the younger artists relate to society, but the influences of traditions are still so strong ... the young artists of today will be in the vanguard of another change, from the idyllic gentleness of 20th century Burmese art to the strength and vitality that will portray the 21st."
One can only sincerely wish them speed, overcoming all obstacles, in moving towards that strength.