Immaculate Conception

by Ling Ling Huang

Enka-as-Mathilde’s once-shocking art has become kitsch because it is produced by popular demand and based on tested formulas. A cheap formula with the aim to please, rather than to challenge. How else do E-M’s pieces differ from the original performance pieces by Mathilde, you might ask? It’s clear that Enka Yui-Dahl approaches the mind of her friend as something to be extracted, mining it for narrative and theme, whereas Mathilde is content to make works without prescribing their meaning. Where Enka constructs, Mathilde discovers, trusting an audience to complete her work with observation. Every recent exhibit by E-M has felt false or secondhand, too heavily engineered for a specific message or response. The constant churn of meaningful and defiant work that critiques basically the same thing every time betrays a lack of growth. This exhibit of Mathilde’s paintings, spectacular webs of tar and white paint layered to look like heavy cloth, shows an artist grasping for something new. Something she doesn’t know. It is a joy to reach into the unknown with her.