Mary Lai: Highly Likely

Mary Lai's textured paintings are built from layers of acrylic paint and paste. Her surfaces are deeply satisfying, with thick, tidy lines raked across areas of color like patterns in a Zen garden. The works have a rhythmic movement; shapes appear, shift, and return. Some paintings incorporate figures woven into the compositions, while others are more akin to still lifes. In Highly Likely, Maybe Not, Lai brings a playful sense of uncertainty to compositions that are otherwise remarkably controlled. The exhibition's title suggests the sometimes absurd confidence with which we approach an unknowable future. There is humor in that contradiction, and perhaps a little optimism, too. Bright flashes of pink and soothing, warm tones lend the paintings an exuberance that is tempered by their playful, off-kilter compositions. Beneath the carefully ordered surfaces, a gentle sense of chaos persists. For Lai, this tension between order and uncertainty reflects the space between doubt and belief. She suggests that perhaps the answer to indecision is a spoonful of delusion, just enough to keep chasing dreams that might one day meet us in reality.