Dust in the Sunbeam Opening Photos

certain things cannot stay lost

Mimi Tecson's practice is quite obsessive - circulating around activities of collecting and configuration all the while weighing the combinations of certain formalities that would uncover multiple connections. Fittingly her works have always been inclined towards the sculptural, relying on the constellation of components. Her practice is effective only because Mimi understands mass - that the mass of an object is not always equivalent to its physical weight but that the mass of it is proportional to the potential of Memory we give to it.

Mimi's works are deliberate in composition. With color, they abide by symmetrical compositions. Contained, they make up an impression of calculated values. As a whole, they are neither haphazard nor capricious. The discipline of her works, however, do not cancel out the intuitive nuances that govern her practice. At the center of Mimi's works - both as a physical component and as artistic motivation - are objects rooted in a context very close to her self and her locality. These objects are plastic toys obtainable in sari-sari stores and market places, often available at prices easily accommodated by a child's meager pocket money. They are produced in quantity and in variety, such little things and yet they hold a sentiment disproportionate to their disposability. They gather in Mimi's works, painted over as if further resigning to their mass production destiny. Nonetheless these things require scrutiny as they become symbolic of our shared childhood and even can be disclosed as a significant cultural design.

Personal narratives inform her work. Particularly with the objects, the anecdote of loss emerges constantly in Mimi's back story - impressing upon the personal use of toys and the activity of collecting them again as a means of making up for what was taken from her. However bittersweet, she translates her general debonair outlook into this remorse. The effectiveness of her practice is on account for her ability not to remain singular in sentiment, but for containing these different histories and states of mind.

Dust in the Sunbeam is not making sense of loss. While she revisits the past, Mimi draws on her experience of growing up with her grandmother's store - coincidentally named 'Laureen's Store,' after her - as a happy one. This exhibition recreates the artist's safe corner, employing forms reminiscent of Laureen's Store. Images from this point in time of Mimi's life are placed alongside jars, soft drinks containers and an assortment of details that are made over in the artist's interventions in color and configuration. Light radiates through most of the work, casting not shadows of the past but bringing forth the resonance of events and places full of promise. As much as Mimi grounds Dust in the Sunbeam to a setting subjective to her, she extends this place as an expanded field to navigate through our own 'happy place' that is close to us. Through the elements in the exhibition, we identify similar experiences that even single objects in the works can draw us from, as they perform as capsules to time and localities within our proximity. As Mimi reminds us, certain things need not be found by digging too deeply - after all, they surround us always like dust in the sunbeams.

- Sidd Perez, 2012.