Dresser | 2018 | Ink, acrylic; drawer, table lamp base, denture, dry flower, mulberry paper, wallpaper | 48 x 44 x 10 in. (122 x 112 x 25.4 cm)

Curve Calculation | 2017 | Ink, acrylic, fiber paste on linen; chalk, collage, commercial paint on panel | 30 x 40 in. (76 x 101.6 cm)

Annysa Ng Atelier. Copyright © 2024.  All Rights Reserved.

Oval Portrait | 2018 | Ink, acrylic on linen; test tube, Plexiglas, acrylic mirror, cotton, commercial paint on panel | 36 x 48 x 2.75 in. (91.4 x 122 x 7 cm)

Borrow the motif of “memento mori” genre – hourglass, mirror, soap bubble, to reiterate the timeless idiom - life is transient.

Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's "The Oval Portrait" - "It was an impulsive movement to [close my eyes, so to] gain time for thought -- to make sure that my vision had not deceived me -- to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze...."

Inspired by a lyric adapted from Elise March (age 9)

"You are a princess, but Death will come for you.

You are a baker, but Death will come for you.

You are young, you may be beautiful, you are old, you are not,

but Death will come for you.

You may not think so, you will not like it,

but Death will always come for you!"

Mirror | 2017 | Ink, acrylic, fiber paste on linen | 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76 cm)

Danse Macabre | 2018 | Ink, acrylic on linen; clay, imitation gold gilding, quail egg shell, moss, glass, paint on panel | 60 x 20 x 2.5 in. (152.4 x 50.8 x 6.3 cm)

Tempus Fugit Memento Mori | 2017 | Ink, acrylic, fiber paste on linen | 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76 cm)   "Time Flies, Remember Death."

Dresser is an installation on a wall where a silhouette portrait is presented on a mirror in the form of a black cutout. The visual and virtual likeness of people, is juxtapose with a drawer filled with haphazard scrap heap, which may be more of a Rorschachian reflection of the psyche.

Bubble | 2017 | Ink, acrylic, fiber paste on linen | 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76 cm)

In Circle with Radius of Zero, Annysa Ng addresses the inherent ineffability of the void, the cycle of birth and rebirth, the conscious and unconscious mind, and the transient, intangible, and invisible force of death that enlightens the meaning of life. One of Ng's constant motifs is the circle or oval which appears in every painting as the form of a face, an Elizabethan ruff, a mirror, or other expressions of this shape without beginning or end. The circle, which evokes an infinite series of endless successions, paradoxically denotes zero or nothing. But this void or absence of anything is not nothingness. Like dark matter whose existence and properties influence the universe's large-scale structure, the formation of galaxies, and the entire cosmos, it garners great importance in our world. Zero may symbolize naught, but as a numerical placeholder, it changes the value of everything.
This philosophical contemplation of the nature of the circle as both all-inclusive and void-like is expressed vividly in "Oval Portrait." Here an oval image of an Asian beauty is encircled by an Elizabethan ruff, like a restraining collar, an apt metaphor for Hong Kong identity. She is placed beside another oval, a mirror which should be reflective. But what we see in this mirror is not an image of the physical appearance of this beauty but an echo of the absence of a tangible something that is the nothingness of the soul. This very special mirror reflects the intangible, the unreflective, and the essence that is part of everything reduced to a nothingness that is the transcendence of desire. In order to express ideas that are practically inexpressible, Annysa Ng draws together an assemblage of her signature silhouette portraits, daily found objects, and the erasable chalk writing of a mathematic equation, a verse, or a lyric, which casts a flicker on the cornea and then submerges into the unconscious, speaking to the unseen, the immaterial, the tenderness and the fragility of life and death in all its proud, gossamer beauty.   -  Karen Wender