In sculptor Xawery Wolski's 'Empty Sky', it's the emptiness that's full

There’s a humble, almost feminine look to the slight sculptures of Xawery Wolski currently on view at the Jim Thompson Art Centre, but there’s complexity too in these signposts along a road that leads out of turmoil and, as the exhibition’s name says, “Into an Empty Sky”.
The show is a pleasure to move through, sharing its calm.
The Pole, now a Mexican citizen, is known around the world for making magical things with terracotta and for his intertwined chains that signify infinity and the ephemeral.
Wolski’s residency at the Thompson centre last summer gave him a chance to see what Central, North and Northeast Thailand might add to his arsenal of ideas.
He visited the Thompson silk factory and several kilns and foundries, and the new pieces in the show are the results.
Greeting visitors at the door is his 1998 terracotta sculpture “Chain”, a white tangle snaking across the floor.
The chain concept, he says, “is related to my homeland, Poland, which is always full of drama and being torn apart. This one is white, as a symbol of peace, and it’s really about the emptiness between the lines.”
Dresses and necklaces made of black and white beads hang alongside new versions created from leftover silk. They retain the form of the wearer, suggesting both her presence and absence.
A crisscross of beads hangs from the ceiling like a huge chande¬lier. Wolski studied traditional celadon techniques in a small northern factory, and found a way to say something about timelessness and continuity.
In a separate room called the Moon Cathedral are suspended Buddhist prayer bells and hundreds of Bodhishaped leaves made of zinc and iron.