Peter Jap Lim: The Horizon Is Your Horse

While walking around Pimlico I ran into a small exhibition organized by Palagkas, a company that offers small artists the opportunity to exhibit their work around London. The exhibition showcased the work by German artist Peter Jap Lim, it included pantings and sculptures.

I first went through the sculptures. They consisted of big sheets of coloured paper folded into shapes. The two faces of the paper have different colours, and the darker one bleeds through creating a connection between the two sides. The paper has rough edges, in contrast with the shiny finish. The folds are gentle and organic.

I then looked at the paintings. The technique used was layered ink on a sort of porous handmade paper that allows the colours to bleed freely and create fuzzy patterns. By adding typography to this technique, the words seem to come out accidentally from the weaved lines of ink. By introducing letters and phrases, the artist gives a structure to the otherwise wild jungle of colour.

Doing some research on the artist I found out that his paintings are inspired by Rorschach's test and Wittgenstein's language theory. Not knowing Wittgenstein, I researched further and tried to understand how Peter Jap Lim's paintings are related to his theories. One thing Wittgenstein says about language, is that by having structure and limits, it restricts our thought and therefore anything beyond our thought, such as religion and ethics, will result in nonsense, even though it's not.

The phrases that appear on the paintings, (The horizon is your horse, Meeting point for parallel lines from infinity, Void of the day, Your discourse is my decoration, I knew someone who read a book in which this sentence appears) are enigmatic, they create infinite loops and leave the visitors with more questions then answers, like hidden keys to unknown locks.