Mit Jai Inn’s exhibition “Dreamday” continues the Impressionists’ quest to transmit the quintessential translucence of light and color onto canvas. In addition to indulging in a little material alchemy (the artist combines oil paint with gypsum powder, color pigments, silver and even glitter to give his palette its magical, almost eerie glow), Mit releases his paintings from traditional restrictive frames so that their surfaces no longer hang docile and deflated on the wall. In Dream Tunnel, 2021, the canvas forms an archway suspended from the ceiling; viewers can enter its underbelly and inspect the inner linings washed with overlapping layers of paint. The material continues to shape-shift, hardening into a sculptural swirl speckled with chromatics (Untitled [Scroll], 2021) or expanding into an immersive pastel-drizzled silver mist (Midlands Dwelling, 2021).
In a smaller side gallery, a long wooden table hosts the hybrid objects of Mit’s Bangkok Apartments, 2022. Contrary to the main room’s tempest of pigmentation, the colors here have simmered into a more benign palette, evenly spread with a soft, interior-minded hue that resonates with the installation’s title. The artist intends for these objects to act as talismans. Viewers are invited to bring them back to their home, allowing the subdued tones of his “canvases” to infiltrate the collective domestic sphere. Through this gesture, Mit channels both magic and homemaking, not only furthering his formal experimentation with his materials but also intervening in and altering one’s relation to their living space.