Some Residues from Tomorrow: Ay Tjoe Christine

Ota Fine Arts Shanghai is delighted to present Some Residues from Tomorrow, the Indonesian artist Ay Tjoe Christine's third solo exhibition in Shanghai, China.

What might remain of tomorrow? Can a future leave traces before it has fully arrived? In this new series of works, Ay Tjoe explores the concept of  "residue" originating from tomorrow. She directs her thoughts toward what is yet to come, seeking a way to loosen the hold of the present and the past, in pursuit of a better state or solution. The residue is something to be brought into view. Its appearance may offer a clue that the future has already begun to unfold. But what does it tell us? Its particular form may reveal something about the quality of the resolution it carries, and about the kind of future we are willing to imagine.

In these paintings, lines and strokes gather, separate and reassemble — configured in provisional, shifting layers of magenta, brown, gradients shifting from gray to black, dark green, and dark purple. The overlapping or consecutive organic forms remain in a state of continuous adjustment, capturing active processes where the specific form of the residue reveals the quality of the solution and the kind of "tomorrow" we wish to attain. Their configurations appear provisional, at once emerging and dissolving, held in a state of continual adjustment. The marks retain a sense of movement and uncertainty; nothing seems entirely fixed.

Titled "The Calm Residue…", these paintings evoke a profound sense of calm and quietness that does not imply the complete absence of tension. As the artist notes, a "calm" residue signifies a smooth progression towards a future that is genuinely positive. Instead, their forms remain open and in flux, suggesting that resolution need not arrive as a singular, definitive moment. Emerging from the uncertainties, vulnerabilities and continuous transformations of contemporary life, the works reflect an ongoing negotiation between Ay Tjoe's inner experience and the world beyond it.

Painting is central to this process. Through the physical act of making, strokes and the movement of lines across the canvas, Ay Tjoe works through the tensions between intention and uncertainty, persistence and change. The paintings bear traces not only of experience, but also of the choices, adjustments and possibilities through which a different future may take shape. A line or a fragment may carry the possibility of another state without determining what that state must be. The future remains open, yet something of it is already present in the traces we leave.

Ay Tjoe Christine has developed a distinctive practice centered on the human condition, painting with oil bars and a highly expressive abstract language of line and colour. In Some Residues from Tomorrow, she invites us to reconsider the relationship between past, present, and future. What if the traces we encounter today are already residues of a tomorrow in formation?

Concurrently, Ay Tjoe Christine presents The First Capriole for Tomorrow, a solo exhibition at Longlati in Shanghai, curated by Sun Wenjie, on view through 21 March 2027.