Milky Way 1966

Walasse Ting made this dreamy 'Milky Way' from who-knows-when using an all-over technique of loose marks. It's like a cosmos of color, right? The surface is a dense, speckled field, built with countless tiny dots of paint. Look closely and you'll see how the colors overlap and blend. There's a real sense of movement, like particles floating in space. It makes me think of those pointillist paintings of Seurat, but with a splashier, more playful energy. I’m drawn to the way the colors aren't contained. They bleed into each other, creating a sense of boundlessness. Then there are these occasional tiny drips, these vertical traces. They’re a reminder of gravity, of the material reality of paint itself. Ting reminds me a little of Joan Miró, both seem to be reaching for something beyond the everyday, maybe a deeper understanding of themselves, of painting, of the universe!