Voorblad met naam c. 1935 - 1936

Thung Liang Bok made this unassuming cover with name and address in an unknown year using ink on paper. The paper has aged and is now a kind of beige-grey, and it's pretty hard to see what's written there. It's interesting how the most modest surfaces can become unexpectedly rich with meaning. Here, the bare minimum becomes everything! The texture, the color, the slight variations in the surface – they all quietly invite you in. If you zoom into the upper right corner, you can see where the ink bleeds into the fibers of the paper, there is a delicate dance between the line and the ground, a push and pull like the ebb and flow of time. It reminds me a little of Agnes Martin, actually, in its simplicity and devotion to the material. Like Martin, Bok seems to be saying that less is more. The gesture might be small, but the feeling can be expansive.