H Gallery is very pleased to announce an exhibition that explores aspects of the contemporary significance of painterly abstraction. Yvonne Hindle is influenced by Taoist concepts of time and flux and paints with a baroque yet romantic aesthetic. Mit Jai Inn creates canvases of subtly symbolic shapes and with gently rendered geometric surfaces, sometimes double-sided. And Chat Jenchitr abstracts metaphors from Buddhist philosophy with an often dazzling use of color.

Each of the artists in this exhibition consciously engages an oscillation between the tangible and intangible, the referential and elusive, and the coded and esoteric. Further, each artist evokes a variety of lineages, art historical and otherwise. Both these aspects prompt consideration of the very notion of abstract painting within another oscillation: East and West. In this respect,Somewhere in the Distance offers a soft rebuke to the prevarications of ‘discourse’, art historical and otherwise, that would seek divisive categorizations and definitions. Instead this exhibition suggests possibilities for sensual and/or embodied experience as one means to engage visual knowledge for the contemporary, global, context.

Yvonne Hindle is a UK-based artist and senior lecturer at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. She co-edited and contributed to the books Paint Theory Paint Practice (Lee Press) and Base and Awesome (Article Press and Ikon Gallery) and exhibits internationally. Mit Jai Inn is one of Thailand’s leading contemporary artists and has a long history of experimental art practice including The Chiang Mai Social Installation, a now legendary public art project that was a forerunner of relational aesthetics and so-called politico-aesthetic art in this country. Chat Jenchitr is an emergent artist based in Bangkok. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in New York in 2008 and held a solo show at H Gallery in 2010.