Press Release: Out of Myth, Onto_Logical

26 Jun 2015

Yavuz Gallery is proud to present Out of Myth, Onto_Logical, 1982-1997, a solo exhibition by acclaimed Myanmar artist Po Po (b. 1957).

Mythical Myanmar has confounded the world for decades – from its seemingly interminable period of isolationist policy to a whirlwind of changes and transitional government. Out of Myth, Onto_Logical intentionally exposes an archive of work dating back to 1982, not only to bring focus to a period of Myanmar’s art history rarely explored, but also to investigate Po Po’s unique pieces in context, and explore how they have inspired generations of artists in Myanmar today.

Myth is what we invent to create stories and explain feelings, describe places and understand history. Logic is a point of departure and arrival – what we know to be true and rational, and the means to validate it. The series of work in Out of Myth, Onto_Logical explores the state of in between; when the sobering reality of political life or spiritual choices pushed Po Po’s conceptual knowledge, and inspired him to create work which can only be described as the logical outcome of his ideas.

A visionary artist who brought something truly new in concept and execution to an isolated country’s latent art scene in the 1980s, Po Po has since shown in Gwangju, Fukuoka, Berlin and Singapore. He has gone from painting to assemblage, from monotype to installation, and from design to architecture, often challenging audiences to see ideas through five senses, willing a concept out of shape.

Nathalie Johnston is a curator and researcher living in Yangon, Myanmar. She received a Masters degree in 2010 from the Sotheby’s Institute-Singapore focusing on Southeast Asian contemporary art history. Her thesis discussed the origins of performance art in Myanmar. She was the managing director of Asia Art Archive’s Mobile Library: Myanmar 2014-15. She is currently the Director of Exhibitions at TS1 Yangon, a participating scholar in the University of Sydney’s Ambitious Alignments program, and the lead editor of the upcoming English translation of Myanmar Contemporary Art I – an important work of Myanmar art history to be re-published in English in 2016.