Modern Art is proud to present an exhibition of new work by Phillip Lai. This is the British artist’s fourth solo show with Modern Art.
Phillip Lai’s work offers a family of sculptural approaches composed of analogies and associations. It offers itself up in various guises that are always essentially sculptural, and are always asserted in the context of central questions to do with the conception of a set of ideas, and the capacity in which these ideas can be imagined and actualised. His work is resolutely and rigorously situated in material objects: notionally represented forms and subtly manipulated spaces that might stand-in for an idea of something known, and that in turn might suggest an abstracted narrative of urban experience, transience, vacation, exchange and utility.
For this exhibition at Modern Art, Lai has affected an upending of the gallery architecture, quietly but assertively reorienting the approach to and encounter with his exhibition of new sculptures and 16mm film.
Phillip Lai was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1969, moving to London as a child. He lives and works in London. Lai undertook both BA and MA Fine Art degrees at Chelsea School of Art & Design, completing his studies in 1994. In 1997, he presented his first solo exhibition at The Showroom, one of London’s most vital contemporary art institutions. Lai previously made solo exhibitions with Modern Art in 2000, 2007, and 2009. Other solo exhibitions include Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (2007 & forthcoming later this year), and Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin (2009).
“The great thing about dub is that it’s the engineers’ art… it’s what the sound engineer does. The de-construction of a piece of music, and its re-construction… as an act of illusion. By an act of illusion I mean you have a spatial dimension which is created with echoes and reverbs” — Linton Kwesi Johnson