hot spot - tommii lim

tommii lim, solo, mixed media on a puma shoe box

in the dreary grey of an early oregon spring, i often hunger for color. 

its dark here. i mean... really dark. its hard to get out of bed because it's black like midnight until mid-afternoon. the only recourse is to throw on all the lights in the room as soon as your alarm goes off to try to fake the funk and get your body to respond as if its seen sunlight more recently than last september. 

when i start feeling light deficient i visit tommii lim's blog. lim lives and works in long beach, ca. lim's vibrant, alive mixed media works are joyful in their resonance and complex in their intent. his work highlights the anxieties and hang-ups of a technologically driven, fractured society. as lim himself sums it up, his paintins "problematize the paradigms governing the (in)activity of "minority" races and of hollywood against an urban american landscape rife with social, cultural, and political challenges."

 

tommii lim, lol, mixed media

i love that lim's pieces manage to be bright and whimsical, and yet extremely politically provocative and contemporarily relevant. there is dark humor in the details. i love the cigarette and missing finger in lol. his most recent works place skeletal figures in threatening or destructive scenes, with complex juxtapositions of bright colors and calamitous figures. the piece below was made for the "living lines" show at the jflynn gallery, a show which lim co-curated himself. the show exhibited a group of artists who, as lim described it, "work with drawing as painting."

tommii lim, we see everything (the protect america act of 2007), mixed media on wood panel, 48"x36"

tommii lim is also an accomplished graphic designer and dj. you can check out his music on his myspace. 

how perfect...

just as i am writing this the sun is coming out. thanks tommii!