Red Cube

Do you sometimes wonder why paintings always need to be hung neatly on a wall? The Yangon-based artist Po Po questioned conventions like that too, which is why he decided to hang the red canvas in front of you at an angle. He also chose to place a pile of rocks underneath this canvas, challenging the two-dimensionality of paintings.

What category of art would you say Red Cube is? It’s been called a non-objective canvas installation, because non-objective art is a type of abstract art that is usually geometric, and aims to convey simplicity and purity. Many Minimalist artists such as Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd embraced the philosophy of non-objective art in their work, and you might therefore assume that Po Po had some interaction with Minimalism.

However, Po Po had no formal training in art and hadn’t even heard of Minimalism when he created Red Cube. As an artist who began practising in Myanmar in the late 1980s, he had little access to international art developments. This was because Myanmar was then isolated from the world under General Ne Win’s dictatorship. Po Po actually adopted abstraction as an approach to art because of his spiritual and philosophical beliefs as a Buddhist. The mound of rocks underneath the red canvas is inspired by the traditional shape of a pagoda, which is fitting because the artist has described Red Cube as a shrine.