nrm. curatorial project

A+ WORKS OF ART is pleased to present AL/linum, a solo exhibition by emerging artist Luke Heng. Making his debut in Malaysia, the exhibition brings together the union of two series of works that deal with the perception and manipulation of spaces within a painting. Heng’s subject is forms as markers that demarcate spaces. The exhibition exudes the notion of being monumental and oblique, sleek and detail-oriented, and it maintains its distance from any standard aesthetic response or conventional display, with Heng creating changes in illusiveness or cycles of illusions.

“Having conceived the larger oil paintings that deals with the spatio-temporal, which was a continuous development of the Non-Place series, the small-scale digital prints came as a form of counteraction to what the larger oil paintings are doing.”

– Luke Heng

Luke Heng Non-Place 2019 Oil on Linen 200 x 150cm (image courtesy the artist and A+ Works of Art)

Luke Heng Non-Place 2019 Oil on Linen 130 x 330cm (image courtesy the artist and A+ Works of Art)

Luke Heng Non-Place 2019 Oil on Linen 130 x 360cm (image courtesy the artist and A+ Works of Art)

In recent years Luke Heng’s practices have developed in two distinct trajectories, with the first being his painterly works that engage on a philosophical level and preoccupation with the perception of painting and its results; and the second being the more conceptual thread that emphasises materiality and the process of materialisation, as evidenced in his wax and steel creations.

Guided by his interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine – stemming from the fact that he comes from a family of Chinese physicians –, Heng also picks up ideas and concepts from the I-Ching (Book of Changes) whereby yin and yang philosophies govern his thoughts and compositional effects during his process, informing his manipulation of choices in his works to maintain a sense of visual harmony. These influences reflect the artist’s views on liminality and boundaries, witnessed in the abstract variations in his artworks: a misty narrow strip or two in an otherwise plain-looking canvas, or rectangular steel bars bound within translucent wax slabs.

AL/linum presents an immersive environment built on shifting intellectual and emotional states to grant access to imagery and information beyond the reach of abstraction, within Heng’s fusion of paintings and digital renderings; becoming a contemplative refuge for chanced neutrality and mediated encounters.

About the Luke Heng

Born in 1987, Singaporean artist Luke Heng is interested in the dialectics between painting, object, and picture making. His practice revolves around the conceptualization and physical manifestation of painting. His works respond to the history of painting, drawing upon various other art forms to influence his approach and process, constantly questioning the possibilities of a painting.

Heng’s first solo exhibition, The Waiting Room, was held at FOST Gallery, Singapore in 2015. Followed by a solo exhibition at Galerie Isabelle Gounod in Paris the following year. His last solo outing, After Asphodel, took place at Pearl Lam Galleries, Singapore in 2017. Heng has participated in group exhibitions, including Constitutent Concreteness at Mizuma Gallery (2016, Singapore), Peculiar Textures at Galerie Steph (2015, Singapore), and Primavera 3 at Galerie Frédéric Lacroix (2014, Paris, France). He was selected to participate in the Dena Foundation Artist Residency Program in Paris, France, supported by the National Arts Council, Singapore. Heng graduated with BA (Hons) in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2013, which he attended on a scholarship.

About nrm.

nrm is a curatorial consultancy by Josef Ng, Andrew Ruff and Chris Moore.  @nrmpartners

Luke Heng Gnawing Bite 2018 Inkjet on aluminium composite 34 x 31 x 2.9cm (image courtesy the artist and A+ Works of Art)

Luke Heng Swallowing 2018 Inkjet on aluminium composite 34 x 31 x 2.9cm (image courtesy the artist and A+ Works of Art)

The performance artist Lee Wen passed away on 3 March 2019, in Singapore, after having suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. He was a pioneer who defined and shaped performance art in Asia. He came of age at a time when Singapore was undergoing the turbulent and uncertain processes of nation-building—from a former British colony to a brief federation that formed Malaysia, and then rapid modernisation as a republic. Together with some of his peers, Lee reimagined the foundations of academic art, opening its vocabulary and techniques to a socially engaged practice.

Image: Lee Wen, Is Art Necessary?, 2004. Lee Wen Archive, Asia Art Archive Collection. Courtesy of the artist’s estate.

Born in 1957, he was the youngest of five children raised by a single mother, Lee Mee Lan, after his father, the writer Lee Xue Min, passed away. Upon graduating from Raffles Institution in Singapore, Lee worked at various jobs, including as a bank officer for Chase Manhattan Bank. He quit after six years at the bank, and in 1987 enrolled at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. In 1989 he joined The Artists Village (TAV) founded by Tang Da Wu. He thrived with peers in an environment that fostered conversation and work that was ephemeral, time-based, process-focused, and collectively and socially informed. A year after joining TAV, Lee studied at City College of London Polytechnic from 1990 to 1992, and later finished his Master of Fine Arts at LASALLE in 2006.

During his time in London, Lee often was mistaken as someone from Mainland China. This accentuated his questions about his identity and the purpose of art: his father had been a well-known writer in the Chinese literary community in Singapore, but Lee Wen felt more comfortable in English, having been educated in a system borne of British colonialism. Subjected to the homogenising gaze of Orientalism, Lee embarked on a series of projects that developed alter egos he could use to address socially constructed ideas. The first of these projects is Journey of a Yellow Man. Developed for fifteen iterations (No.7, No.8, No.10, No.12, and No.14 were planned but never executed) from 1992 to 2001, Yellow Man traveled to England, Singapore, India, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Australia, and China. The project evolved from a critique of Orientalism to a meditation on freedom, climate change, humility, and religious practices—responding to the locations in which Lee performed. Other performances—including Ghost Stories (1992–2003), Anthropometry Revision (2008), Strange Fruit (2003), World Class Society (1999–2000), and Ping Pong Go Round (1998 and 2012)—embodied rewritings of histories and conventions.

Parallel to his practice as a solo artist, Lee was active in artist-run initiatives—in particular the collective Black Market International, and the festivals Future of Imagination (FOI) and Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S.). He co-founded FOI in 2003, to test the Singapore National Arts Council’s loosening of its ten-year de facto ban on funding for performance art. He also co-founded R.I.T.E.S. in 2009, as a platform that explores sound as a part of performance and visual art. Throughout his practice, Lee questioned the purpose and possibilities of using the body as material, and the relevance of art—in particular performance art—for the issues of its time.

Aside from showing his work at The Artists Village, he published A Waking Dream (1981), a book of his sketches accompanied by texts, and also had solo exhibitions at Singapore Art Museum, The Substation, and elsewhere. Notable group exhibitions included SunShower at The National Art Center, Tokyo, and Mori Art Museum (2017); Secret Archipelago at Palais de Tokyo (2015); Singapore Biennale (2013); Asiatopia (2008, 1998); Third Asia Pacific Triennial (1999); Sexta Bienal de La Habana (1997); and Kwangju Biennale (1995). His work is in the collections of Singapore Art Museum, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, and Mori Art Museum, among others. He was awarded the Joseph Balestier Award for the Freedom of Art in 2016, the Artist Scholar Activist Award from Performance Studies international in 2014, and Singapore’s Cultural Medallion in 2005.

Additional material about Lee Wen:

Lee Wen’s essay about the relevance of performance art

Lee Wen Archive

A video on Lee Wen Archive

Lee Wen’s website

Independent Archive

Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak

For Chang Jinchao, painting is an indispensable part of his life, furthermore it is a result of his daily thoughts, a weapon to resist the humdrum. If the life can be divided into reality and devildom, Chang Jinchao is tend to believe the language of painting is more real in the impractical world, and this is exactly the realistic part that a creator can master.

「Long lasting creation is a resistance to boredness of our lives. While facing a unsolvable inanition of the inner world, even after it gets filled temporarily, we would be pleased merely for a short while. It may even be followed with a bad consequence. Artistic creation is a language through which I find an exit to record my memory and thoughts, to find, to face, to resist, to devour and to achieve distorted value. Thus I will become the self that is unrelated with the outer world, or the self with brand-new relations to the outer world」- Chang Jinchao

Chang Jinchao’s creation is always about his intimate world, and presented with symbolically charged language. In his opinion, there remains an allowable space in the inner world for a person, within this world we kept our emotions and personalities. Each emotion and personality requires new space. Thus the pursuit for the fresh and unknown becomes the protagonist again. After being through the journey before we get lost, we transform most of our emotions and characteristics to new shapes and languages. These then turn out to be the symbols of past emotions. Between the moment for us to get rid of and to rely on it, these symbols repeatedly recombines, links, and leaves. It is the fear when we face something to be lost.

「Am I so important? How much fear do I suffer when I face myself? What does the fear look like? Is it what I am long for when there is something hard to overcome while facing fear. What else can I do after finding out the missing consciousness? Repeat it again and again?」- Chang Jinchao

To transform to be a demon is not easy. When we force ourself into the devil world that once we imagine, fear and beyond our control, we firstly get a cup of saccharin beverage from the demon. Our instinctive resistance to sweet flavor is merely zero. When it get inside our body, the pleasure makes us follow orders to take poison from the demon, and an another story begins.

There are different tricks played by each demon, but resulted the same consequence that is to make you to become the demon. To tell a tory is what they are good at, whereas curiosity makes us wallow in their tricks. It is an unfamiliar game mastered by the demon. Each new order make us confusing. The demons in the dark always play their tricks to control the lights, and spirits on the stage. Each eye contact, communication are effective medicine. A new story is another fraud. There is real value within each conscious exchange, and they are considered as substance. We are all eager to become a suasive demon and are always be parallel to them by fulfill the stories of the demons.

Bio:

Chang Jinchao graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts with a Masters in Fine Art, where he had previously received a Bachelor of Printmaking and a Diploma in Jewellery. Based on drawings and most recently embodied in sculptures, his works have evolved into animation and mural installation.
Jinchao evokes the literary works of the Czech Writer, Franz Kafka and Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, resonating with his personal experience of displacement and ennui of living in a city. As city inhabitants, the condition of being subjected to an abundance of sensorial images from television, propaganda and films is called ‘ spectacle’. The world it creates is one of mere appearance in which messages are communicated often without questioning; and the identities of people are driven by their material desires. This brings the notion of self under scrutiny. Jinchao’ s previous works are known for an incessant portrayal of his alter ego depicted as an anonymous toothy and suited man and the emergence of a multiplicity of selves.
As a young artist, his works have been presented at exhibitions including Cut/ Log Contemporary Art fair in Paris, Institute of Contemporary arts in Singapore, The Esplanade, Wheelock Gallery in Singapore, Istanbul contemporary art fair, Beijing Artnow Gallery and M50 in Shanghai.

February 24, 2017, Vancouver, BC – The Vancouver Art Gallery is pleased to present Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver, an exhibition showcasing the work of David Lam, Paul Chui, Carrie Koo and Josh Hon, created before and after their relocation to Vancouver throughout the 1960-80s. On view at the Gallery from March 4 to May 28, 2017, this exhibition focuses on the early stages of modern landscape and abstract painting in Hong Kong, as well as the cross-disciplinary performance and installation of the 1980s. Showcased are these four artists’ predominantly modern and contemporary paintings, while examining the influence of a new environment on their work.

June 2017 marks the 20-year anniversary of the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from the United Kingdom to mainland China. In the lead up to the handover, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents immigrated to Canada, many choosing to settle in Vancouver. Among them were a significant number of artists, including the four artists in the exhibition, all of whom chose to leave their burgeoning artistic communities and immigrate to Vancouver during the 1960s through to the late 1980s. Archival images and texts also provide insights into the social and cultural community-building that developed among artists in the years following their arrival in Vancouver. Most importantly, the exhibition presents diverse and distinct practices from an active art community that often resides on the periphery of the mainstream.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver is a program of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Institute of Asian Art, curated by Diana Freundl, Associate Curator, Asian Art.

Artist Biographies

David Lam (Lam Chun Fai / 林鎮輝) Born in Hong Kong, Chinese Canadian artist David Lam (1932-2013) bridged the Chinese and Canadian art worlds, developing an aesthetic that mined both spheres.

Lam studied in Shanghai and later at LaSalle College in Hong Kong, working throughout his high school and post-secondary education as an illustrator for local magazines. During his studies he was mentored by Lee Byng, a Chinese-Canadian painter who contributed greatly to the development of art in Hong Kong through his involvement with local art organizations between the 1930s and 1950s.

After graduation, Lam worked as an Exhibition Specialist for the United States Cultural Center in Hong Kong and later as an Assistant Curator at the Hong Kong City Hall Museum. He was a co-founder of the Circle Group in 1964, a Hong Kong avant-garde collective that included a majority of the city’s most progressive painters and sculptors.

Lam immigrated to Vancouver in 1965 where he was employed by Woodward’s Department Store as a visual designer until pursuing art full-time in 1975. The Canadian Rockies and Hong Kong cityscape were the subjects of his paintings from the 1960s through the 80s. Lam utilized watercolour, acrylic, colour pencils and ink in his paintings to capture the city and natural landscapes of Asia and Canada.

Paul Chui (Chui Yung Sang / 徐榕生) Born in Hong Kong in 1933, Chinese-Canadian artist Paul Chui studied calligraphy and Chinese ink painting in primary school where he was a student of ink landscape painter Lam Chin Shek.

After graduation Chui held positions in the art departments of three major television stations in Hong Kong, including lead set designer on Enjoy Yourself Tonight, the popular and longest running variety show on Hong Kong’s Television Broadcast (TVB) network. While working in film and television Chui continued to paint and held his first solo exhibition in 1958. In the late 1960s he joined the Circle Group, a Hong Kong avant-garde collective that included a majority of the city’s most progressive painters and sculptors. He was an active member of the modest Hong Kong art community until immigrating to Vancouver, Canada in 1973.

While Chui experimented with Western ideas of modern sculpture and mixed media on canvas throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his landscape paintings since the 1980s reflect a classical tradition of ink painting utilizing only ink and rice paper. Staying true to more conservative traditions of Chinese abstract shanshui (mountain water) painting, Chui places great emphasis on the rendering of mountains, with water seldom depicted in detail. His scenery, albeit non-representational, demonstrates a fascination with the mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwest and Central Canadian Rockies.

Carrie Koo (Koo Mei / 顧媚) Born in 1934 in Suzhou, Southeastern China, Chinese-Canadian ink painter Carrie Koo was a celebrated singer and actress in Hong Kong, Thailand and mainland China before she went on to become a successful painter. Koo moved to Hong Kong with her family in 1951 and in the early 1960s, she studied part-time under ink painters Chao Shao An and Hu Nien Tsu. In 1973, Koo was accepted as a student of the renowned master of contemporary Chinese ink painting, Lui Shou-Kwan.

Koo developed her own style, painting mostly mountains shrouded in clouds and mist. Her landscapes are abstract, displaying subtle gradation of ink tones and rich textures realized through interweaving lines and layers of colour pigment and ink wash. In 1984 Koo immigrated to Vancouver to join her brother. After spending time in British Columbia and Alberta, Koo’s work began to transition from expressive ink and colour pigment to depictions of snow-clad Canadian landscapes.

Koo has taught ink painting courses at the Chinese University in Hong Kong and at the Taiwan Normal University in addition to giving demonstrations and workshops throughout the United States and greater China. She has received several awards for her painting and has participated in many exhibitions throughout Asia and North America.

Josh Hon (Hon Wai Hong / 韓偉康) Born in Hong Kong in 1954, Josh Hon holds a BFA in Painting and Photography from Pacific Lutheran University, Hong Kong; a MFA in painting from Central Washington University, Tacoma; and a partial MFA in Painting from University of Illinois. One of the most celebrated artists in 1980s Hong Kong, Hon faded from the art scene in the early 1990s when he immigrated to Hope, BC. However, his cross-disciplinary art practice that ranged from theatre performance to multimedia installation remains critically acclaimed in Hong Kong’s art history.

Hon’s paintings, installations, videos and performances translate forms, materials, text and gestures into enthusiastic expressions that reflect Hong Kong’s fraught socio-political climate during the pre-Handover years. The body of abstract paintings he made in the 1980s, imply a political unease through the use of illusionistic space, an increased density through multiple layers of paint and ambivalent signs and shapes. Later as Hon’s involvement in experimental theatre increased, his paintings began to incorporate more figurative elements.

Hon departed Hong Kong and the art world in the early 1990s. He continued to write, sketch and work with ceramics in his personal time while pursuing a career as a trauma counsellor. He currently holds a Master of Arts in Counselling and is a Registered Clinical Counsellor in BC.

About the Vancouver Art Gallery

Founded in 1931, the Vancouver Art Gallery is recognized as one of North America’s most respected and innovative visual arts institutions. The Gallery’s innovative ground-breaking exhibitions, extensive public programs and emphasis on advancing scholarship all focus on the historical and contemporary art of British Columbia and international centres, with special attention to the accomplishments of Indigenous artists and the art of the Asia Pacific region¬—through the Institute of Asian Art founded in 2014. The Gallery’s programs also explore the impacts of images in the larger sphere of visual culture, design and architecture. www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

The Vancouver Art Gallery is a not-for-profit organization supported by its members, individual donors, corporate funders, foundations, the City of Vancouver, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

About The Institute of Asian Art

Responding to the city’s geographic location on the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, the Vancouver Art Gallery has been committed to presenting contemporary art of the Asia Pacific region for more than two decades. Launched in 2014, the Gallery’s Institute of Asian Art (IAA) is a comprehensive initiative committed to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of Asian art.

Singapore—Pearl Lam Galleries is delighted to present In Silence, a group exhibition that explores the introspective qualities of art from the contemporary era. The show features works by eight artists from international strongholds in contemporary art: American artist Jenny Holzer, Chinese artists Qian Jiahua and Tao Hui, Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo, Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi, Japanese artist Sayaka Ishizuka, and Singaporean artists Ezzam Rahman and Zen Teh. The exhibition title draws inspiration from Nyepi Day, or day of silence, which marks the coming of the Balinese New Year. On this day of self-restraint and reflection, people withdraw from each other with all social activity halted from 6am. 24 hours later, the healed rouse themselves and begin the renewal of ties with each other. The observance of prohibitions is a ritual similarly practiced and expressed in a variety of ways in art. In Silence seeks the essence of this day of recollection and meditation, establishing renewal and reconciliation as a shared concern.
As a practitioner of classical Persian calligraphy, Golnaz Fathi (b. 1972) subscribes to the disciplinary belief that movement, breath, thought, and emotion come together and are expressed in the flow of the line, which is created using a qalam, a reed pen used in Persian calligraphy. The highest level is achieved when the calligrapher is able to disengage from the ego, abstracting him or herself from the process. In Fathi’s calligraphy, readability is abandoned in favour of sign. The specific sign isn’t a fixed visual form but lies in the marks of her qalam, which are delicate, restrained, and forceful. A highly volatile tool, the production of each line is a challenge to the calligrapher and evidence of her mental disengagement.
Where Fathi seeks to let go of the ego, Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) deals with the unconscious inflation of it in the speaking world. Her truisms are simple declarations that challenge their audiences’ perception of the world through irony and double entendre. “不良意圖也能產生好結果 (BAD INTENTIONS CAN ALSO YIELD GOOD RESULTS)” is one truism that features in this exhibition. While her truisms tend to declare their presence as text, they are often also deliberately difficult to read, flashing and moving on LED panels and projected on uneven building surfaces, dissolving into displays that play out a scenario where the aforementioned truism runs true. Text, moving text, and text on uneven surfaces are made deliberately difficult to read, echoing John Baldessari’s idea of “wrong” art. Despite playing out a situation where readability is put in question, Holzer continues to produce a “good” result, making a witty statement against those who believe themselves to know it all. The world is vast and infinite, ever changing, and bigger than the self.
In today’s globalised world, we are simultaneously growing more distant and virtually closer to each other in terms of cultural history, way of living, and social identity. Tao Hui (b. 1987) uses technological procedures to force viewers to confront this conflicted situation, often challenging the barrier between what is public and private and blurring the boundaries between the personal and institutional. In Talk About Body (2013), he removes his private emotions from the anthropological description of his body in order to find a semblance of balance in identity and being. In order to understand himself, Tao abstracts his mind from the body and seeks virtual intimacy in physical distance.
Understanding ourselves as beings who are distinct from each other does not necessarily lie in the physical. Ezzam Rahman’s (b. 1981) work, made up of performance for photography, found and everyday objects, and skin sculptures, captures the aftershock of a social high. Alternately intimate yet isolating, Rahman infuses dark humour in his work, commenting on us as individuals who are unconsciously driven toward each other. We reach out in embrace, but despite the euphoria of physical contact, the body still finds itself bereft of emotional intimacy. It remains hungry for a connection in a mistaken corporeal yearning, which only manages to accentuate the feeling of isolation.
Each person, self-contained as a living being and differentiated from the next, is an island. We are literally marooned from each other. Performance artist Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969) takes this as one of her starting points. Best known for her durational performances made up of simple gestures and actions repeated laboriously over time, she forces her body to repeat and move in what has to be seen as a non-productive manner: nothing is ever completed, only repeated. By repeating spoken phrases and movements, her works question the efficacy of action or inaction and the significance of words and gestures. For Suryodarmo, she is trapped in a constant attempt to reach out to the world in vain.
For some people, they are also marooned within themselves. Working with the body’s presence in space, Zen Teh (b. 1988) presents situations that challenge the way we orient ourselves in the gallery. Geometric shapes are layered, overlapped, and continuously present new dimensions of the visible world, thwarting any normative attempt at spatial negotiation. Alternately confrontational and vertiginous, Teh plays with our habitual reactions toward material like concrete and reflective surfaces in order to displace the visitor. Meditating upon the possibility of the mind accepting singular or multiple perspectives depending on the situation, Teh expresses its alternately rigid and fractured identity, alone in its own way.
Qian Jiahua (b. 1987) plays with painting’s reliance on its singular objecthood, reducing her paintings into multiple pieces of canvas elements that integrate the wall into the painting-installation itself. Strongly sensitive to the impact of space and its relationship with objects, Qian strives to integrate the experience of painting with the experience of painting-object through its considered placement in the exhibition environment. In a certain way, each canvas could stand alone as a single painting but would quickly reintegrate itself into the larger work through the viewer’s attention of the surface, littered with thin diagonals that lead the eye subtly from one canvas to another. Alternately systemic, diagrammatic, and random, the communication process is constantly being challenged through a process of reduction. The ties that bind are fragile and demanding, requiring constant attention and work.
These ties are often found in the everyday. Sayaka Ishizuka (b. 1980) uses grains of rice as a metaphor for individuals. Beginning her creative process on the level of the real, the lived, and the experienced, Ishizuka selects personal histories, memories, daily rituals, and processes as the point of departure in fleshing out her simple yet profound spatial diagrams of the ties that bind us. Rice grains come together to form patterns and shapes on her canvases, expressing an instance of communal harmony. For her, rice’s double status as seed and food in her social and cultural life means there is simultaneously a potential for new life and the end of the current one. This serves as a metaphor for human life, which is like a long journey with a constant promise for new life. Grains of life touch each other, sometimes even literally threaded together in gold, reflecting abundance and the valuable connections made and preserved between people.
For the works chosen for this exhibition, encompassing pen and paint, organic and industrial materials, video and performative media, the link lies not in the material but in their joint respect for a presence. Works that belie a retreat and discipline are brought together with the intention of touching upon how art reflects and expresses the varied human interaction with the world made up of people, society, and our natural environment.

OPENING PERFORMANCE
Eins und Eins by Melati Suryodarmo Thursday, 14 July, 7pm
“Nevertheless, we live our individual lives and certainly carry our own personal histories. We cannot always classify ourselves as one with others. As individuals, we are unique beings with specific molecular constellations within our bodies.”
—Melati Suryodarmo

On the occasion of the opening reception for In Silence, Suryodarmo will present a new performance piece at Pearl Lam Galleries Singapore that expresses the pressures of an ever-changing sociopolitical environment upon the individual who has been shaped by his or her personal experiences within society.

About the Artists
GOLNAZ FATHI
Golnaz Fathi (b. 1972, Tehran, Iran) is one of only a tiny handful of women trained to the highest level within the discipline of traditional Persian calligraphy. An influential member of a currently thriving generation of artists to surface in Iran over the last twenty years, Fathi appropriates the form, practice, and technique of calligraphy in modern media.
Golnaz Fathi has works in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brighton & Hove Museum, England; Carnegie Mellon University, Doha; the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur; Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore; British Museum, London; Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; and The Farjam Collection, Dubai. She has received a number of awards, including the Best Woman Calligraphist in Ketabat Style in 1995 by the Iranian Society of Calligraphy in Tehran, and she was chosen by a jury to receive the Young Global Leader award in 2011 at the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennale. Fathi currently lives and works between Tehran and Paris.
JENNY HOLZER
Jenny Holzer (b. 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio) graduated with a BA from Ohio University in 1972, and received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. She has honorary doctorates from the University of Ohio (1992), Williams College (2000), the Rhode Island School of Design (2003), The New School, New York (2005) and Smith College (2009). Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters and up to her recent years with light projections on landscape and architecture, she has rivalled ignorance and violence with humour, kindness, and moral courage.
For more than thirty years, Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including 7 World Trade Center, the Reichstag, the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Holzer received the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990, the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in 1996, and the Barnard Medal of Distinction in 2011. Holzer currently lives and works in New York.
SAYAKA ISHIZUKA
Sayaka Ishizuka (b. 1980, Shizuoka, Japan) graduated from the Painting Department of Joshibi University of Art and Design in 2004. Her quietly arresting works are matched by the attentiveness to the lived histories, cultural associations, and evocative potential of the commonplace found objects that are frequently her chosen medium.
In 2009, Ishizuka participated in the Wellington Asia Residency Exchange artist-in-residence programme in Wellington, New Zealand. She has held several solo exhibitions in Tokyo and Kanagawa, Japan, and her work has been shown widely around Japan in group exhibitions, as well as the Setouchi Triennial and the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial. Ishizuka currently lives and works in Oiso, Kanagawa, Japan.
QIAN JIAHUA
Qian Jiahua (b. 1987, Shanghai, China) graduated from the China Academy of Fine Art in 2011. Visually provocative, her canvases, often properly seen as parts of painting-installations, are carefully layered with colours that come through only when physically regarded by the eye. Populating her canvases with areas of colour, subtly un-geometric shapes and conscientiously placed lines, Qian joins some of the most interesting artists today in questioning the category of abstraction.
Qian has received significant critical attention, having been included in curated exhibitions at Long Museum, Shanghai, China; Time Art Museum, Beijing, China; art-st-urban, Lucerne, Switzerland; among others. She currently lives and works in Hangzhou, China.
EZZAM RAHMAN
Ezzam Rahman (b. 1981, Singapore) graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Arts from the University of Huddersfield, UK and was formally trained as a sculptor at LASALLE SIA College of the Arts, Singapore. Presently he is undergoing his MFA with Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, at LASALLE. A multi-disciplinary artist, Ezzam sees his work as unfinished glimpses of the basic human emotions, improvisational objects in which the constructed of ready made are used to question our own making of the world through memories, feelings and senses.

Ezzam’s miniature artist’s skin sculptures were commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum and showcased in the exhibitionUnearthedin 2014. He presented an installation-cum-performance artwork at SingaPlural, an anchor event for Singapore Design Week 2015. Ezzam is also a joint winner of the Grand Prize for the President’s Young Talents 2015 and awardee of the People’s Choice Award at the Singapore Art Museum. Ezzam currently lives and works in Singapore.
MELATI SURYODARMO
Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969, Surakata, Indonesia) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Germany under Marina Abramović from 1994 to 2003. As a performance artist, Suryodarmo explores the relationship between a human body, the culture to which it belongs, and a constellation where it lives.
Since 1996, she has presented her work in various international festivals and exhibitions, including Marking the Territory (2003), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; Räume und Schatten (2005), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; Erotic Body (2007), 52nd Venice Biennale Dance Festival, Venice, Italy; Manifesta7 (2008), Bolzano, Italy; Medium at Large (2014), Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; and FantAsia (2015), Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea and 8th Asia Pacific Triennale (2015), QAGOMA, Queensland, Australia. Suryodarmo currently lives and works between Gross Gleidingen, Germany and Surakarta, Indonesia.
TAO HUI
Tao Hui (b. 1987, Yunyang, Chongqing province, China) graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute with a BFA in Oil Painting in 2010. He is interested in his culture and in traditional art and folk culture, which have became main factors in his works. Tao works with various mediums, including graphic arts, painting, video, objects, and installation.
Tao’s work has received international acclaim. In 2015, he won the Grand Prize at the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas for his presentation ofTalk About Body (2013). Tao was also awarded the Art Sanya Huayu Youth Award in the same year. Most recently, he has held the solo exhibition New Directions: Tao Hui (2015) at UCCA, Beijing, China. Group exhibitions include Essential Matters—Moving Images from China (2015), Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; and UP-YOUTH, China Young Artists Exhibition (2011), Times Art Museum, Beijing, China. Tao currently lives and works in Beijing, China.
ZEN TEH
Zen Teh (b. 1988, Singapore) graduated with a BA (Hons) in Art Design Media in 2011 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore with a specialisation in photography and digital imaging. An emerging Singaporean artist dealing in the photographic arts through the perspective of painting, Teh is constantly investigating alternative ways of photography and image making to raise environmental awareness.
Teh’s work has been represented in both group and solo exhibitions. In 2014, she presented works as part ofThe Art Incubator 5: From When We Last Met, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Most recently. Teh held her second solo exhibition,Sensing States: HealingSpaces (2015), at Art Science Museum, Singapore.She currently lives and works in Singapore.
About Pearl Lam Galleries
Founded by Pearl Lam, Pearl Lam Galleries is a driving force within Asia’s contemporary art scene. With over 20 years of experience exhibiting Asian and Western art and design, it is one of the leading and most established contemporary art galleries to be launched out of China.
Playing a vital role in stimulating international dialogue on Chinese and Asian contemporary art, the Galleries is dedicated to championing artists who re-evaluate and challenge perceptions of cultural practice from the region. The Galleries in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore collaborate with renowned curators, each presenting distinct programming from major solo exhibitions, special projects, and installations to conceptually rigorous group shows. Based on the philosophy of Chinese Literati where art forms have no hierarchy, Pearl Lam Galleries is dedicated to breaking down boundaries between different disciplines, with a unique gallery model committed to encouraging cross- cultural exchange.
The four branches of Pearl Lam Galleries in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore represent an increasingly influential roster of contemporary artists. Chinese artists Zhu Jinshi and Su Xiaobai, who synthesise Chinese sensibilities with an international visual language, are presented internationally with work now included in major private and public collections worldwide. The Galleries has also introduced leading international artists, such as Jenny Holzer, Leonardo Drew, Carlos Rolón/Dzine and Yinka Shonibare MBE, to markets in the region, providing opportunities for new audiences in Asia to encounter their work. Pearl Lam Galleries encourages international artists to create new work which engages specifically with the region, collaborating to produce thought-provoking, culturally relevant work.

September 29–October 2, 2016

Registration deadline: April 30

Swab Barcelona is proud to introduce its ninth edition, which will take place from September 29 until October 2. This year, over 70 galleries will be participating in both the general program and the curated projects, which include new sections—IN/OUT, Focus Maghreb and Cross-Bounders—plus the consolidated sections Solo Swab, Swab Seed, Swab On Paper and MYFAF.

Solo Swab

Direlia Lazo and Zaida Trallero curate this section that consists of individual presentations by artists from Latin America. In its third edition, Solo Swab consolidates itself as a space that reflects upon the artistic practice in the region, in dialogue with its social and political context.

Focus Magreb

Curated by Xavier de Luca, this program arises from the need of European society to know in depth the social, cultural and artistic realities that are taking place in the Maghreb region.

Cross-Bounders

Program curated by Susana Sanz and produced by Wang Zhongwen, with the participants including Song Fang, Ju Anqi, Yu Depeng and Wang Liren, four acclaimed and emerging Chinese filmmakers who will come to Barcelona to create their first video-art piece in the frame of Swab House.

Swab Seed

David Armengol curates the second edition of this space of visibility and debate for independent gallery proposals located throughout Europe.

IN/OUT by Banc Sabadell Foundation

Under the supervision of Frederic Montornés and Imma Prieto, this section comprises a selection of artists representative of nine different galleries throughout Barcelona. The artists were grouped together to establish a unified nexus within the city’s current artistic program, providing multiple perspectives and insights into some of Barcelona’s most interesting creators. This section asks, “What does being in or out mean?” and empowers a debate through a diverse group of artists and artworks.

Swab On Paper

Curated by Mónica Álvarez Careaga, and presented by eight international galleries, this section displays artworks from eight individual artistic projects that describe the “sketch” from traditional to contemporary uses.

MYFAF (My First Art Fair)

Curated by Rosa Lleó, this section consists of three contemporary art galleries who have been open for less than two years, and that have not participated before in any international art fair.

General programme

Established art galleries that present emerging artists are divided into three types of booth: 25, 20, and 15 square meters.

Swab is proud to present two other novelties: Fundación Swab Barcelona and Swab House.

Fundación Swab Barcelona aims to strengthen the creation and support of social networks with cultural agents and to facilitate collaboration in acquisition programs for a public art fund during the fair.

Swab House: In collaboration with creative centers Hangar and La Escocesa and the artist residence Jiwar, four artists will develop a curated project during the month prior to Swab Barcelona, which will be exhibited at the fair.

Swab Barcelona continues with the acquisition awards:
DKV Award to the best Spanish artist
MANGO young artist Award Grisart Photography Award that will be ceded to the MACBA Foundation Barcelona
Lluís Coromina Foundation Award for the best Catalan artist
Idea Art Marset Award Drawing Award by Diezy7 Collection

Last but not least, in the frame of Swab Off, we present the 4th edition of Swab Stairs, a program that grows to 17 art and design schools from all over the world. The stairs of the main metro stations of Barcelona will be covered with vinyl, displaying the winning projects presented by the students from the main local schools and six international guest schools: Royal College of Art, London; SCAD, Hong Kong; LASALLE, Singapore; Escuela Da Vinci from Buenos Aires; ECUAD Vancouver, Canada; and ESBArts from Algiers, Algeria. The registration period for the galleries started on February 2 and will remain open until April 30. See you at Swab!

22 – 26 Mar 2016
AAA Booth P9, Institutions and Bookstores Area on Level 1 Concourse, Art Basel, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Asia Art Archive’s annual Open Platform programme, held in partnership with Art Basel in Hong Kong, is an integral part of AAA’s endeavour to enable new thinking and critical dialogue around recent art in Asia. Selected proposals from an open call bring cultural practitioners from all disciplines to participate in a series of ‘meetings without walls’ hosted at the AAA booth. By leveraging AAA’s network, Open Platform supports researchers, curators, writers, artists, students, academics, and art organisations to further ongoing projects, catalyse new ones, or simply make connections.

The expanded 2016 edition includes a discursive live events platform designed by local architects commissioned through an open call—the structure will subsequently be adapted for a second location.

#AsiaArtArchive #OpenPlatform2016

Program Schedule

Tuesday 22 Mar

3-5 pm
New Body Politics: Art or Dance?

Susan Sentler, Faculty of Performing Arts in Dance, Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore

4:30-5 pm
New Body Politics: Art or Dance?
Alice Rensy, Choreographer Performance

5:30-7 pm
Front Room Conversations
Paul Chan, Artist, New York with Ingrid Chu, AAA Public Programmes Curator & Hammad Nasar, AAA Head of Research & Programmes

Wednesday 23 Mar

12:30-2 pm
Front Room Conversations
Ko Sing Tung, Sara Wong & Wong Wai Yin, Artists, with Jane DeBevoise, AAA Chair of the Board of Directors & Anthony Yung, AAA Senior Researcher

2:30-4 pm
Critical Spatial Practice: Reconsidering the Art-Architecture Interchange
Shirley Surya, Associate Curator, Design and Architecture, M+

4:30-6 pm
An Ocean Archive
MAP Office, Artists & Educators, Hong Kong

Thursday 24 Mar

2-3:30 pm
A Balancing Act: Nonprofits in the Arts
Yeewan Koon, Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, HKU & Michelle Wong, AAA Researcher

4-5:30 pm
2015 Yishu
Award for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art Ceremony & What China?
Keith Wallace, Editor-in-Chief, Yishu

6-7:30 pm
New Pacific Geographies, Collaboration, and Patronage
Katherine Ann Leilani Tuider, Co-Founder, Honolulu Biennial Foundation

Friday 25 Mar

2-3:30 pm
Paper Voices: Artists’ Books and Independent Publishing in Greater China

Josef Bares, Artist, Hong Kong, Beatrix Pang, Artist/Publisher, Small Tune Press, Hong Kong & Yuling Zhong, Editor, M+

4-5:30 pm
Archive Between Present and Future
Mia Yu, Art Historian & Pan Lu, Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Culture, PolyU

6-7:30 pm
Taking a Good Hard Look at What Art Does
Binna Choi & Michelle Wong, 2016 Gwangju Biennale Curatorial Team

Saturday 26 Mar

11:30am-1pm
It Begins with a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia
Sneha Ragavan & Chuong-Dai Vo, AAA Researchers

2:30-3 pm
New Body Politics: Art or Dance?
Alice Rensy, Choreographer Performance

4:30-6 pm
Cardboard Lives

Tintin Wulia, Artist, Melbourne

Tuesday 22 March

New Body Politics: Art or Dance? | 3–5pm
Performance by Alice Rensy in collaboration with Nathalie Rothkoff | 4:30–5pm
Host: Susan Sentler, Faculty of Performing Arts in Dance, Lasalle, Singapore
Participants: Anna Cy Chan, Head Artistic Development in Dance, West Kowloon Cultural District,
Hong Kong, Ingrid Chu, AAA Public Programmes Curator Siddharta Perez, Assistant Curator, National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum, Singapore Alice Rensy, Choreographer, Hong Kong, Bala Starr, Director, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Singapore

A look at art and the body as a medium to explore how dance works within gallery and museum spaces. The session questions the architecture and historicity of the spaces themselves, and asks how the form can ‘fit in’ or challenge the spaces based on the specific needs of the body.

Front Room Conversations: Paul Chan | 5:30–7pm
Hosts: Ingrid Chu, AAA Public Programmes Curator & Hammad Nasar, AAA Head of Research & Programmes

A discussion with the Hong Kong-born New York-based artist, writer, and independent publisher on his recent projects and Badlands Unlimited imprint.

Wednesday 23 March

Front Room Conversations: Ko Sing Tung, Sara Wong & Wong Wai Yin | 12:30–2pm
Hosts: Jane DeBevoise, AAA Chair of the Board of Directors & Anthony Yung, AAA Senior Researcher

A conversation among an intergenerational group of women artists living and working in Hong Kong.

Critical Spatial Practice: Reconsidering the Art-Architecture Interchange | 2:30–4pm
Host: Shirley Surya, Associate Curator, Design and Architecture, M+
Participants:
Ute Meta Bauer, Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Nikolaus Hirsch, Architect, Curator & Editor, Frankfurt
Betty Ng, Architect & Founder of COLLECTIVE, Hong Kong
Kacey Wong, Artist, Hong Kong
Sara Wong, Artist & Landscape Designer, Hong Kong

An attempt to articulate what constitutes a truly reciprocal interchange between Art and Architecture beyond the token ‘inter-disciplinary’ cause through the framework of Critical Spatial Practice. What conceptual-formal manifestations exemplify the exercise of social critique and reflection on existing conditions through architectural design? What are the motivations, methodology, and effects (even trappings or necessity) of such disciplinary engagements?

An Ocean Archive | 4:30–6pm
Hosts: MAP Office (Laurent Gutierrez & Valerie Portefaix), Artists & Educators, Hong Kong
Participants:
Mariana Hahn, Artist, Berlin
Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Contemporary Art, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu
HG Masters, Writer and Editor, Istanbul
Jesse Mc Lin & Julie Progin, Art Director & Co-Founders, Latitude 22N, Hong Kong
Pelin Tan, Sociologist and Art Historian, Mardin

With a performance by Mariana Hahn, MAP Office extends their residency project Atlas of AAA to rethink the present map of Asia through a compilation of islands, archipelagos, and what is left in between. They navigate the continent to explore the potential specificities related to Asian territory with the ocean, and to determine how the dissemination of land directs a new reading of contemporary art in the region.

Thursday 24 March

A Balancing Act: Nonprofits in the Arts | 2–3:30pm
Hosts: Yeewan Koon, Associate Professor, Department of Fine Arts, HKU & Michelle Wong, AAA Researcher

Employing a ‘speed dating’ model, eight invited speakers are asked a series of questions within ten minutes by students from the Hong Kong Art History Research Workshop, an AAA and Hong Kong University course collaboration. The session asks how non-profit organisations shape public discourses on art in the social, political, and educational spheres during a period of increased attention to the art market.

2015 Yishu Award for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art Ceremony & What China? | 4–5:30pm
Host: Keith Wallace, Editor-in-Chief, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vancouver
Participants:
Stephanie Bailey, Senior Editor, Ibraaz; Contributing Editor, LEAP; Editor-at-large, Ocula
Dong Bingfeng, Artistic Director, OCAT Institute, Beijing
Ingrid Chu, AAA Public Programmes Curator
Julie Chun, Art Historian, Royal Asiatic Society China, Shanghai
Diana Freundl, Associate Curator, Asian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
Lesley Ma, Curator of Ink, M+, Hong Kong
Zheng Shengtian, Managing Editor, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art

Key issues including ethnicity, nationhood, political will, globalisation, cultural investment, and the art market enter into a discussion on the complexities inherent in attempting to describe, discuss, and challenge a definition of contemporary Chinese art. How has the designation of ‘Chinese’ in contemporary Chinese art become a generalisation that sidesteps the acknowledgement of differing, and at times contradictory, histories not only within mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, but also its extensive diaspora?

New Pacific Geographies, Collaboration, and Patronage | 6–7:30pm
Host: Katherine Ann Leilani Tuider, Co-Founder, Honolulu Biennial Foundation
Participants:
Aileen Burns & Johan Lundh, Executive Directors, Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane
Ioana Gordon-Smith, Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, Auckland
Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Contemporary Art, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
MAP Office, Artists, Hong Kong
Amna Naqvi, Co-Founder, AAN Foundation & AAN Collection

A holistic examination of the state of patronage in the Pacific; the rise of emerging art centres in the region; and shifting geographies of new contemporary art centres internationally, with a particular emphasis on Hong Kong, Sydney, Auckland, and Honolulu.

Friday 25 March

Paper Voices: Artists’ Books and Independent Publishing in Greater China | 2–3:30pm
Hosts: Josef Bares, Artist, Hong Kong; Beatrix Pang, Artist/Publisher, Small Tune Press; Yuling Zhong, Editor, M+
Participants:
Erik Bernhardsson, Publisher, Modes Vu, China/EU
Craig Cooper, Artist/Editor, Madame Wang, Hong Kong/UK
Feng Junhua, Publisher, Fuben Books, Guangzhou
Kit Hammonds, Index Art Book Fair Mexico; Vernacular Institute; Independent Curator, Taiwan
Lee Wei-I, Publisher, Voices of Photography, Taiwan
Amy Sherlock, Reviews Editor, frieze
Yan You, Publisher, Jiazazhi Press, Beijing
Joseph Yiu & Max Tsoi, Designer/Publishers, MAJO Design, Hong Kong
Zhu Jianlin & Feng Waiking, Artist/Publishers, Fong Fo, Guangzhou

Artists, curators, and small publishers weigh in on recent developments around the ‘artist book’ and its popularity among a younger generation of artists in greater China. While opening up an autonomous zone of creative freedom that is off-line, yet networked, the development also brings up an old dilemma between creativity and control.

Archive Between Present and Future | 4–5:30pm
Hosts: Mia Yu, Art Historian & Pan Lu, Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Culture, PolyU
Participants:
Nikita Yingqian Cai, Curator, Guangdong Times Museum, China
Lee Kai Chung, Artist, Hong Kong
Christopher Phillips, Curator, International Center of Photography (ICP), New York
Shen Ruijun, Artist & Curator, Guangzhou
Pelin Tan, Artist & Sociologist, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Teng Chao-Ming, Artist, Taiwan

Artists, curators, scholars, and activists whose current practice creatively engages archives and archive-making gather for discussion to unpack key questions centred on their activation and display, and explore divergent modes of artistic, curatorial, and historiographical strategies.

Taking a Good Hard Look at What Art Does | 6–7:30pm
Hosts: Binna Choi & Michelle Wong, 2016 Gwangju Biennale curatorial team

A discussion taking a ‘good hard look’ at what art does by conversing with those who make it, teach it, show it, and write about it. If art offers a way to engage with what lies ahead of us in generating ‘new pasts’, how do we articulate what art does? How does the mediation of art help make sense of surrounding realities as contexts shift, transfer, and transform?

Saturday 26 March

It Begins with a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia | 11:30–1pm
Hosts: Sneha Ragavan & Chuong-Dai Vo, AAA Researchers

An exploration of the periodical from which discourses on modern and contemporary
art are produced, contested, and reconfigured. Looking at popular, cultural, and literary magazines, as well as self-published zines, artist-run magazines, and journals,
this session examines how artists write about art; how artists and writers draw on myths, religious texts, fictional stories, and folktales; and how the figure of the artist is imagined by novelists and poets.

New Body Politics: Art or Dance? | 2:30–3pm
Performance: Alice Rensy, Choreographer in collaboration with Nathalie Rothkoff

Cardboard Lives | 4:30-6pm
Host: Tintin Wulia, Artist
Participants:
Riza Arnesto, Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), Hong Kong
Reizel Arnesto, Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), Hong Kong
Brian Choi, Co-Owner, Hing Li Collection Point, Hong Kong
Terry Choi, Co-Owner, Hing Li Collection Point & MA Environmental Engineering Student, Hong Kong
Anneke Coppoolse, Street-level Trash Collection Researcher, Hong Kong
Mary Ann Riego, Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), Hong Kong
Dinah Teruel, Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), Hong Kong
Wong Lik Wai, Urban Studies Student, Hong Kong
Wong Siu Hung, Owner, Man Chang Long Waste Paper/Metal Collection Point, Hong Kong

Various parties from the different nodes of the cardboard waste trade around Central in Hong Kong gather at AAA’s booth. A follow-up meeting entitled Cardboard Lives On will take place as part of Wulia’s upcoming solo exhibition ‘Trade/Trace/Transit’ in July 2016.

Use our hashtags to engage with AAA on Social Media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AsiaArtArchivePage
Twitter/Instagram: @AsiaArtArchive
#AsiaArtArchive #OpenPlatform2016

Presented by Asia Art Archive
Supported by Wendy Lee & Stephen Li, Lavina & William Lim, and Elaine & Anto Marden
Design Partners: COLLECTIVE, Hong Kong
Construction Partner: EDM Construction Ltd., Hong Kong
Advisory Committee: Prof. Colin Fournier, MAP Office, SKY YUTAKA
Media Partners: frieze and Ran Dian
Special Thanks: The AAA Team, Iftikhar Dadi & Elizabeth Dadi, Nathalie Rothkoff, and Uniplan

AAA is a Cultural Partner of Art Basel in Hong Kong for 2016.

Extending from Tan’s previous solo exhibition titled And The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn (2014), Arc of Uncertainties displays further visual exploration inspired by the formations of lost asteroids and minor planets; remnants following the formation of the solar system caused by Jupiter’s gravitational pull in which asteroids are prevented from merging with each other, thus breaking into minor pieces.

The process adapted by the artist for these new works consists of delicately cutting pieces of painted watercolour paper that have been applied with traces of iron oxide and layering the cut sheets in between laser-cut powder-coated stainless steel structures that formally echo the shapes of the watercolour pieces. This process mimics the activity or compression in the creation of metal-rich asteroids. The reflective metal surface, when juxtaposed with paper, introduces a complexity that waves the different media together, thereby enhancing the illusion of layering and density.

In Tan’s previous works, The Secret Life of Rocks (2012) and The World is Full of Distance (2013), her explorations were based on her studies of crystal formations, in which the delicate drawings were aimed to document the process of growing crystal clusters as well as the formation of tectonic plates. She used paper as her primary material to stimulate the compression of rock layers and burning the edges as a mark-making technique to illustrate the intense heat conjured by the forceful pressures. Her interest since then has shifted from the terrestrial rocks on earth to floating rocks in outer space.

This recent body of work focuses on lost asteroids, in which the paper-reliefs are formed after lost minor planets that were recorded throughout history. These asteroids have a predicted orbit that is either too large or indistinct to be traced, rendering it impossible to predict their exact location in the future. This series contemplates the intriguing note that even objects as large as planets could get misplaced and eventually forgotten; and that a fresh discovery of a new intergalactic object could actually be just a rediscovery of a previously forgotten one.

Melissa Tan (b. 1989, Singapore) is a visual artist based in Singapore and received her BA (Fine Arts) from Lasalle College of the Arts. Her works are based on nature, themes of transience and beauty of the ephemeral. Her recent projects revolve around landscapes and the process of formation. Interested in geography and textures of rocks, her explorations translate the visual language through different mediums. Employing methods such as paper cutting and silk-screen techniques, she is interested in materiality and how the medium supports the work. Though trained as a painter, she also works with video, sound and objects.

She recently had her first solo show titled And the Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn at Richard Koh Fine Art in 2014 and has since participated in group exhibitions at The Singapore Show: Future Proof, Singapore Art Museum at 8Q, Singapore, CNEAI, Chatou, Ile des impressionists in Paris, France and Strarta Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery in London, UK. She also participated in the National Arts Council and Dena Foundation Artist Residency program in Paris, France in 2013.

At STPI, Lee moved away from abstraction and painting to discover print and paper. “This show is about being free” says Tony Godfrey, one of the contributor’s for Lee’s catalogue. “Jane wanted to make work that was di erent from what she normally did. She has not done anything with paint in the show – and if there is paint, as on the side of the acrylic works, it was applied by someone else.”

Lee actively stretched the possibilities of the medium of print and paper by combining unconventional materials to produce dynamic installation works that fully immerse the viewer, as she considers themes of entrapment and freedom, using new visual metaphors such as birds and nature. “I wanted to work around a good narrative. I thought about paper, paper—tree, tree—birds. I’m exploring the idea of freedom and imprisonment using images of birds,” said Lee in an interview.

The exhibition will run from Sunday 17 January until Saturday 20 February 2016.