Exhibition Dates
23 September–22 October, 2016
Pearl Lam Galleries Hong Kong SOHO
No. 1, G/F & 1/F, SOHO 189, 189 Queen’s Road West, Sheung Wan

Hong Kong—Pearl Lam Galleries is pleased to present Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, the first solo exhibition of British/Indonesian artist Sinta Tantra in Hong Kong. Tantra’s vibrant geometric paintings explore the concept of “dimensions” through the use of colour and shapes. Well regarded for her site-specific works in the public realm, Tantra combines public art elements inside the gallery space, splicing together the interior and exterior world—tentatively, fluidly, and on and off the beat.

The exhibition title Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is from the title of a satirical novella published in 1884 by Edwin A. Abbott, which explores hierarchy, social order, and internal tensions between individuals and a collective society through its examination of “dimensions”. The story’s narrator, A Square, comprehends the concepts of depth and dimension when he enters the three-dimensional world of Spaceland—an idea that Tantra explores throughout the entire exhibition.

Tantra examines the territory between two and three dimensions—the balance of push and pull. Her works define the clarity between the two but also finds endless ways of distorting it, questioning the relationship between painting and architecture. Influenced by her Balinese heritage, Tantra draws upon a bold and vibrant palette on an architectural scale, exposing the “architecture” of painting on raw linen, creating works that celebrate spectacle and question the decorative, functional, and social role of art. Tantra collages, layers and constructs with colour in her works. Colour, an integral element in the artist’s work, straddles the language of art and industry.

Tantra’s works merge pop and formalism, colour and rhythm, East and West, as well as identity and aesthetics. The artist is intrigued when private becomes public and when the viewer becomes active. Tantra’s architectural works insert their identity, aesthetics, and fantasy into the functional. In this exhibition, the artist explores the association between pictorial and physical space, combining elements of public artwork inside the gallery space.

Sinta Tantra writes, “Can painting become architecture? Can architecture become a painting? I believe that it is the activity of drawing itself which physically links these two disciplines together. If drawing links painting with architecture, can drawing also reverse the way I paint? In other words, can architecture be applied on top of painting? And if so, do we as viewers become more immersed in its physical or pictorial dimensions?”