Traditions of Asia Honored in Abstracts

Los Angeles artist Helena Jin Ah Min is seen in an unpretentious exhibition of 16 small, untitled abstract paintings at Pasadena’s Pacific Asia Museum. Titled “Tangible Space,” it continues a now long-established fusion of traditional Asian art and Western Abstract Expressionism. This is decidedly not art out to surf the trends.

Most of the compositions are achieved through painting collaged scraps of fabric or paper. The only noticeable attempt at formal innovation occurs in several works such as “Untitled 97-4.” Here transparent fabric is stretched over a frame 2 or 3 inches deep. Thus, the wall behind the fabric becomes the painting’s background. Shapes fixed to the front plane cast shadows that integrate into the composition. It’s a promising direction but the artist hasn’t yet pushed it far enough to make a significant optical difference.

Finding individual expression within established aesthetic parameters is a time-honored practice in Asian art. It bows to the artist’s influences and encourages viewers to look closely for subtle moves that constitute temperamental originality.

There’s a distinctive spontaneity that emerges from the disciplined parameters Jin Ah Min sets herself. It’s a kind of muffled enthusiasm that makes for a relatively wide variety of compositional types, from a predominantly geometric attack in one work to a generally organic approach in the next. A nice understated sense of theater informs her orchestration of color.

The most bemusing thing about this work, however, is the effect of its scale and a decided feeling of animation. Although it’s completely abstract, a number of pieces strongly suggest underlying figuration and narrative. “Untitled No. 49” consists of a lumpy black shape confronting an arabesque brush stroke. The urge to call it “Salome Dancing Before Herod” is fairly irresistible. When you notice that the upright “wall” of the composition is the collaged logotype of a local department store there’s a creeping certainty that the artist has a sense of humor.

Evidence both tangible and biographical suggests that Jin Ah Min is a relative beginner. If she hasn’t yet gotten where she’s going, she at least has the equipment to travel.

* Pacific Asia Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena, through Dec. 14, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, (818) 449-2742.