By Arlene McKanic
Outside, the wind of one of the nastiest rainstorms ever howls; you read of some president giving a bare-headed inaugural address in this sort of weather and a week later he's dead of a “chill.” By the time I stumbled in like a wet rat, the few people who had attended the artist's reception had fled long since. But Oolyonghai's colorful paintings remained, testaments to his dreams, imagination and his position as an immigrant – he lives in Boston now. He explains that his paintings, all oils on canvas, are palimpsests. They started out as landscapes that were nearly obliterated as he applied pigment – by brush, knife, stick or bare hand – the same way his new life in America has come to overlay his old life back on the Mongolian grasslands. “It's like eating Italian pastry with chopsticks!” He laughs. The paintings' colors were mostly pastels, applied in a way that gave most of the paintings a shimmering quality and nearly basket weave texture, though a few were sfumatos of greens, pinks, blues and yellows – even the edges of the canvases were painted. Only a few of the works use dark colors. The works have names like “This Is Memory,” “Master of Grassland #1,” “Go With Music #1 and #2,” “Home Mark in New Land #2,” and “Becoming Red Land.” “I get lonely sometimes,” the artist admits, although he plans to go back to Mongolia soon to visit his parents. Oolyonghai says that he would have liked to have left his works untitled. “Some of the names are serious,” he says. “Some names are just made up.” “Dream And Home In One” looks like bright lily pads on still water with a touch of dawn light at the bottom and reminded me of Monet's own “Water Lilies.” Some of the paintings nearly conceal mysterious cat eyes or nude figures – you can see them better if you stand back – and one motif is a tent pole and mushroom circle, also cleverly disguised if you don't know what you're looking for. They're there because Mongolians live on the grassland in yurts, or big round portable tents erected around a central pole. When a family decides to move, a ring of mushrooms will often grow where the yurt used to be.But the paintings aren't really depictions of such detailed memories. “Everything comes from my imagination,” says Oolyonghai. “I stay in my studio and create my own landscapes, and not copy from outside.”By the way, the Crystal Art Gallery isn't a stand-alone gallery, but is part of a window manufacturing plant set in a singularly bleak area of College Point. The address is 31-10 Whitestone Expressway, but the entrance that leads you to the gallery is a hike from the expressway, to say nothing of the Q-25 bus stop. The best thing to do is drive in – there might even be places to park. The show will be up through April 24.
