Mengyun Han’s solo exhibition is named after the Greek word “Apeiron”, which means “indefinite and/or infinite”. The exhibition consists of four groups of oil paintings, which are named, respectively, “Saṃsāra”, “Wandering Mind”, “Letting” and “In Succession”, a set of ceramic paintings called “Plainness” as well as a series of Chinese Ink and wash painting called “Momentum”. “Apeiron” is a term created by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander to describe the origin of the Cosmos, which, in the light of its inclusiveness of everything, even the opposite things, inevitably is “indefinite and infinite”. The concept of “apeiron”, however, is not only a depiction of the style of Mengyun Han’s abstract paintings, but an interpretation of her motivation to paint. There is an old saying in I Ching: ”the heaven and earth are like dense mist, and everything is changed into the purified.” This perfectly echoes to what “apeiron” indicates.

In the tradition of Western art criticism, theoretically, the basic understanding of abstract paintings, such as the Abstract Expressionism, is deeply rooted in the Expression Theory and, historically, abstract paintings are located in the era of Cold War and a certain stage of capitalism. Yet Han’s paintings endeavor to transcend these understandings and definitions, both theoretically and historically. Her paintings are neither related to the artist’s own feelings and emotions nor to ideologies like the so-called “Americanness”, Capitalism and colonization. What her work represents is a comprehension of a generalized emotion in itself and the fundamental nature of the world—abstract and infinite.

Alluding to the English title of the exhibition In Between Islands, all the paintings in this exhibition create a new world of respective abstraction and resonance with each other. This relationship reveals exactly the chasm between our being and the world we are in, which are non-objective and by no means conceptual.