Even if the artistic world of South East Asia is considered distant from the western and European one, I have always worked to build a bridge between the two cultures, being convinced that they are closer than it might seem to a hasty observer.

This is why I accepted U Tun Aung's invitation to critically comment on Soe Naing's work because it is an excellent opportunity to prove my thesis.

So, I start from a few words of a contemporary Italian artist who says "Leisure has nothing to do with painting and drawing, being a painter is an obsession, one has a deviant gaze, the world is codified through signs, one reads the real making it penetrate inside.”

These words well describe the works of Soe Naing who never stops on the surface but first enters the subject to be represented and then onto the canvas. The result is significant: reality is not represented but is filtered through the artist and then represented enriched by what Soe Naing intends to communicate with his nervous signs, almost like tiles of a sentimental mosaic of complex sensations.

The nervous strokes of the spatula represent not only shapes but are words of an essential, strong and sometimes biting speech directed at the observer.

The characters on the canvas are almost always in motion and never lose their essentiality as "puppets of life".

It seems that life is a big stage on which Soe Naing places his characters by capturing the characterizing traits for each of them so that each character is always different from the other, but everyone (like us) moves on the stage of life.

Instead of landscape Soe Naing prefers abstract sets that are life situations. The scenes are rich in the third dimension so that the observer feels even more attracted and immersed in them. And the scenes themselves move sometimes like a kaleidoscope sometimes drawing the observer towards the cyberspace of feelings.

Today there is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence. Those who control it try to subjugate us with algorithms.

Soe Naing's art is not controlled by algorithms but by the sensations and feelings of life. Those that artificial intelligence will probably never be able to emulate. Looking at his works is a way of feeling free. Free from the www, free from the images of social media. The figures and images of him do not refer us to images we have already seen but arouse emotions that refer to other emotions and then again to the images linked to those emotions that only the observer has within himself. Thus, painting is free and sets us free.

Soe Naing prefers feelings to social aspects.

For many of the Western art critics this is a limitation but I don't think so. The signs of the paint are strong and strike us by touching the strings of our feelings as only art can do. Strengthened by these feelings, anyone who looks at a work of art should find the strength to deal in the best way with the internal and external problems of his being and therefore also the social ones.

Soe Naing with his art can certainly help bridge the cultural gap of the exchange between East and West: feelings are the basis of his works and feelings unite human beings in every part of the world.

Mauro Salvemini

photographer and curator

Rome, Italy. August 2023