Phillip Lai

Untitled

2011

Phillip Lai is an ethnically Malaysian artist from Britain. He is interested in the psychological projections that occur when people observe and interact with "things". As mentioned by one of the artist's exhibition critics, "This sense of a ‘meeting’ between self and object, self and composition of, is where the poetry of Lai’s work lies." Lai excels at manufacturing a feeling of alienation from objects with which we are already intimately familiar: a twisted piece of metal on felt pointedly interrupts our thoughts and desires, careless strokes of paint applied to lightbulbs transform the objects into something entirely abstract, removed from human conception—"matter" itself.

Medium

Dyed silk, dyed cotton, steel, reclaimed wood, transit blankets