Tessar Lo

Considering the art he produces is so awe-inspiring, Indonesian- born Toronto artist, Tessar Lo, is surprisingly modest. You won’t find him trumpeting about his talent (which, for the record, is worth trumpeting about). In fact, he confides that after he completes most collections he doubts himself, and has to convince himself to go on. Tessar’s latest collection at The Show & Tell Gallery in Toronto is titled Everything We Wanted In Our Nostalgic Future and is a testament to the exceptional talent he possesses. It’s also the first time he’s felt really happy with a completed body of work.

The collection consists of paintings that make you feel as though you are looking into a dream—or at least a snapshot of one. The paintings hold a misty, ethereal quality that allows the onlooker to get lost within the context. Tessar explains, “I feel like we have chances to have these moments of stillness, and I was hoping in a very literal sense that maybe my work can draw people in, to stop and look, to just take a moment from doing other things—just stop and breathe, and kind of enjoy the time.”

Most of the paintings in Everything We Wanted In Our Nostalgic Future are based on Tessar’s memories and they’re intended to give the onlooker a moment of tranquility. “When we remember things, we sort of distort them—if it’s a happy memory, more often it will tend for the sky to be really blue. I think that’s a really interesting thing, and a really beautiful human tendency when we go back in our memories we sort of create the most beautiful scenario that’s possible.”

Anyone familiar with Tessar’s work probably wonders about the recurring Chinese-inspired emblems or wildlife imagery, and what they are meant to signify. These visual markers make an appearance in the latest collection as well, but even Tessar doesn’t know exactly what they represent. “I think there are reasons why I put them into my work—because they reoccur, not only in my work, but also in my head. I think that we as people identify with certain animals and maybe the certain traits that they have, and it might have something to do with that.” He adds, “I don’t purposefully use it as a vocabulary of work—like as a metaphor necessarily. It’s more that I just paint it because I see it so often.”

With this collection, the unassuming Tessar reveals that, “This last show was just the tip of the iceberg—I feel like I’m onto something, and I’ve really started to get into something that I am fully enjoying.” The paintings reveal evidence of this liberated, carefree spirit and may be accredited to Tessar’s openness to serendipity. He reflects that it “might be attributed to, kind of like my abandon, my surrender, and surrendering that control… Sometimes when you think about something too much, when you have too much control, that element of chance, and that randomness isn’t there. And that’s not like, really natural—nothing is really whole and perfect.”

Whatever it was that he did, having one of these paintings hanging on your wall will change the whole feng-shui of a room— bringing a sense of calm, and a sense of wonder with it. But for Tessar, all he really wants is for people to think that he’s having fun. “I just remember from a past show someone came up to me and said, ‘Oh man, you must have had so much fun working on this body of work’, and I think that was the most, like, the biggest compliment to me.”

[www.tessarlo.com]
Words: Chelsea Moore