Present Past

In this exhibition of recent works, entitled Present Past, Otgontuvden Badam offers a vision of today’s Mongolia positioned between history and the present, and in the process, encourages each of us to orient ourselves within these temporal moments. 

There is something mesmerizing about Otgontuvden’s art that can make it difficult for any viewer not to feel like they are embarking on a journey of time and place. Trained in the European style of academic painting, Otgontuvden brings an emphasis on color, narrative, and gesture to themes and myths from Mongolian history. Paintings such as The Past is Never Really Past, is particularly effective, as he blends identifiable images of naturalistic warriors who are kneeling in prayer, but raises the question of to whom or what these historical figures bend in supplication. Both literally and figuratively, the painting also asks its viewers to reflect on their own relationship to their backgrounds and values. 

Over the past year, Otgontuvden has also shifted his practice, leading him to experiment with portraying moments from everyday life. In his paintings Esui and Gunchmaa and Esunerdene, we see photograph-like snapshots of the artist’s personal circle, lost in thought or in moments of reflection and intimacy. Though the portraits are individual, the scenes are common to us all. They demonstrate the human abilities to touch, to feel, and to think–sensations that transcend the past and present.