In this exhibition, a forest landscape becomes the stage for a play of flatness and depth, surface and content, point of view and vista. In a continued exploration of painting as a theater set, Lok’s new work probes the relationship between illusion and fact in pictorial space. Some works in this show offer a tilted perspective of a painted landscape to reveal the particularity of the stance a viewer must maintain in order to preserve a painting’s pictorial depth. Such a perspective is not unlike the perfect view of a play from front and center theater seats.

Taken together, the paintings and drawings in this show entertain the idea that pictures can have properties usually

attributed to statements: they can be true or false, they can mislead, and they can make promises. Here, an image of a light-filled grove becomes an assertion or argument that presents only selective evidence to support its claims of

distance, depth and light.

In Soft Fact, images and assertions have weight, volume and texture—they are things to encounter with both visual and haptic senses. Fingerprints stand as evidence of tactile investigation or entitled possession. The objects touched are plush, luminous, duplicitous, impossible.

Photo: Marco Davolio