Musing Spaces

East & West Series: Globalisation (2008-2009), Justin Lee, Fibre glass

The National Museum of Singapore has come a long way. My faint memories of the museum before its redevelopment and rebranding appear more like ghastly images from a cluttered and badly propped movie set for an ancient horror  tale. It almost reeks of a dusty, antiquated past, with its artifacts forcefully resuscitated from a medieval oblivion, like zombies displaced in space and time.

Museums started out as intensely private, personal collections of curios opened only to a privileged audience. In fact its precursors were the cabinets of curiosities that emerged in the sixteenth century. Even as museums eventually became institutions of public character that documented national consciousness, it has never quite demolished its alienating air of exclusivity, until its belated contemporary update recently. With each gingerly embalmed artifact encased in glass enclosures and protected by all kinds of contraptions, the image of a private, inaccessible vault of prized possessions belonging to some dignitary persisted in many museums for most part of history.

Like many other museums in the world, the revamp of the National Museum of Singapore in 2006 marked a watershed in local cultural history. The newly revamped interiors are the result of a classy melding of the old and the contemporary. More importantly, the extensive usage of new media and interactive technologies as well as the increased emphasis in fostering communal dialogue, have significantly allowed it to shed its authoritarian and aloof facade, to emerge as a fluid and participatory intellectual and cultural space. The museum is no longer just the possessive custodian of national treasures as it does not concern itself purely with the artifactual, but also with the generative possibilities of the human interactions that occur within and beyond its physical boundaries.

Without this context of a more open-ended and flexible museum space, it would not have been possible for the four site-specific art works on display now at the museum to materialise. The exhibition, Lost in the City, features the works of emerging young local artists. The works are strategically situated at various accessible areas of the museum, at times integrating into the museum’s architectural space. The physical, cultural and sociohistorical bodies of the museum are central to our appreciation of the works, particularly since the museum is a repository of the knowledge, experiences and memories of the large city it resides within. The works that leave the deepest impressions are those that articulately interrogate and contest its immediate surroundings, effectively constructing a new understanding of the tensions between a nation undecided about its existence and the museum that assumes its existence and documents its sociohistorical consciousness.

National Columbarium of Singapore (2009), Michael Lee, Bristol board

Michael Lee’s National Columbarium of Singapore confronts us with a particular urgency, particularly against the backdrop of recent political events concerning our perpetual identity crisis as a nation.

This is where most people make a mistake…I have tried to explain that we are different. We are a city. We are not a country.

- Minister for Law K Shunmugam, at the New York State Bar Association International Section’s meeting

The model-and-text installation consisting of constructed models of demolished, fictitious and unbuilt architectural structures suspended from the ceiling incisively highlights our anxieties towards our identity as a nation as constructed by official history and government rhetoric. While “city” and “country” constitutes a physical, geographical and demographic space, the “nation” is entirely an imagined community, perceived as homogenous and as possessing a set of values that are embraced by each individual in the community. These terms are often erroneously used interchangeably and carelessly, often to served various political ends.

The nation is a politically charged concept. Who determines its nature? The people or the establishment? Singaporean nationhood, as articulated by the officials, has been notoriously arbitrary, mutating according to the whims and fancies of those in power, to be brandished as a political instrument whenever the need arises. Consequently, the physical city or country is often employed as rhetorical muscle to legitimatise and concretise the abstract ideological constructs of nationhood. This can clearly be seen in the binaristic ideological categories of the “cosmopolitan” and the “heartlander” so often raised in public rhetoric. The former gains materialisation in the national imagination via images of the iconised city skyline while the latter is intractably associated with the unruffled comforts of the HDB estates. Architectural imagery are central to the conceptions and justifications of these questionably monolithic categories.

National Columbarium of Singapore (2009), Michael Lee, Bristol board

Lee’s provocative installation piece appropriates the reliance on architectural imagery to challenge this pigeonholing of national identity. This is the columbarium of not just a physical city but a nation. Represented in the text and models are the physical structures, demolished, fictitious or unbuilt, that have fallen through the slips of national imagination and official history simply because they do not adhere to the officially articulated constructs of nationhood. Inscribed along the glass atrium stairwell are written records of these architectural structures, which include their lifespans, physical location and an interesting anecdote from various stakeholders. The installation integrates so seamlessly with the museum that we assume these nondescript texts to be, in accordance with the historical authority of the museum, entirely factual until we come across the incredulous. When did Singapore ever have a National Snow Factory or a Singapore Pencil Tower?! This melding of fact and fiction critically challenges the authenticity of official history as chronicled by national museums.

The demolished buildings are represented by 45 scaled models that are suspended from the ceilings like spectral beings making their way to the celestial realm, wrapped in an air of mystery, nostalgia and frustrated possibility. Like the unbuilt and the fictitious, they are the rejects of national history. (Were they too ugly, frivolous or deviant?) Collectively, they represent the death of a nation expressed as a plurality.

Located some distance away are Justin Lee’s fibre glass sculptures in his work, East & West Series: Globalisation. The work could very well have been a part of an exhibition called Lost in the Museum instead. Positioned at the glass passage that connects the old, colonial building with the new extension of the museum, Lee’s sculptures appear lost in the transitory passages of time.

East & West Series: Globalisation (2008-2009), Justin Lee, Fibre glass

There is a small army of stout, diminutive Chinese warriors, modelled after the Terra Cotta Warriors of China. But unlike their derelict, crumbling originals, they are modern and fashionable, tuning in to the latest hits on their headphones. And there are the svelte Chinese court ladies flanking the army of little men. One poses elegantly like the next Miss Universe, while her contemporaries show off their latest purchases – a handbag and a notebook, both coloured red. Their ethnicity is grossly exaggerated. Their eyes are slanted and slit-like, invoking the racial slur of the chink. The facial expressions of the warriors are painfully strained and the rigid angularity of their form conjures the image of a population terrorised into submission. Farther away, two cranes appear lost among disposed Coca Cola cans, trapped within a pool of red, crass commercialism. Red, the auspicious colour of the Chinese is subverted here as the colour of vulgar decadence.

East & West Series: Globalisation (2008-2009), Justin Lee, Fibre glass

These mutated replicas of historical artifacts are cleverly situated at a location of immense architectural and historical significance. The Glass Passage is notably the only “modern intrusion” allowed by the Urban & Redevelopment Authority during the redevelopment of the museum, designed to blend into the old neo-Palladian architecture. With this new structure, one is able to view the exterior façade of the museum’s historic Dome from within the museum walls for the first time, enabling a clear, illuminating view of a historical past via a contemporary lens.

Such interactions between interior and exterior spaces, private and public realms, the old and the new and the East and West in Lee’s work comprehensively capture the intercultural interactions that characterise globalisation, where both provincial and imported ideologies are constantly being reviewed, contested and occasionally, assimilated. The artist’s take is frustratingly ambiguous, but that only serves to reflect our collective uncertainties about the exact value of globalisation.

Full Moon & Foxes (2009), Genevieve Chua, Video Installation

Full Moon & Foxes, Genevieve’s Chua’s sequel to Raised as a Pack of Wolves, continues the artist’s examination of female adolescence. What puzzles me about the inclusion of this video installation in this exhibition is the irrelevance of site-specificity to this work. Situated in the enclosed and darkened room, the work essentially exist in an insular world of its own, bearing little or no association with its exhibition site or the Singaporean city.

The three panel video projection is essentially a montage of photographs and videos of female adolescents in the depths of the forests. References to nature are recurrent in her works, which essentially serve as compelling metaphors of the primitive, irrational and unfamiliar impulses that overwhelm us during adolescence.

Nature, ironically, is presented as uncanny and even artificial. The forest is a dangerous and claustrophobic space, appearing more like a subterranean world in which the girls can find no escape. The video unfolds like a horror movie – the bodily movements, if any, are slow and lobotomising, while the fading into blackness between each image insinuates an implicit, insidious danger. The surreal lighting and colours collectively contribute to an unsettling sense of artifice – the forest is no longer the domain of nature, for it has been transfigured into a theatre of concentrated adolescent awareness.

The brilliance of Chua’s works lies in a precise use of metaphors to articulate the most abstract ideas concerning the unknown. Here, the sinister full moon symbolises fulfilment – a coming of age fraught with fear, uncertainty and terror.

The work as it appears above would appear complete and satisfying on its own. Unfortunately, a set of barely visible arrows along the walls lead us to a hidden part of the installation, where we are invited to put on headphones to listen to a playlist of music that probably belongs to an “emokid”. It is almost akin to shoving teenage angst up our ears. In other words, emotional overload.

From Green to Brown to Black to Brown to Green (2009), Joo Choon Lin & Chun Kai Qun, Stop motion photography installation

Situated at the back of the Baroque staircase is a stop motion photography installation by Joo Choon Lin and Chun Kai Qun. Tucked away in the corner, the work resembles a child’s backyard experiment. In fact, it is this child-like quality in Joo and Chun’s previous works that creates a fascinating and original visual language. Their collaborative piece, From Green to Brown to Black to Brown to Green, which consists of a stop motion animation by Joo and a diorama by Chun, unfortunately, comes across as incoherent and childish. The animation shows the plight of a community of creatures whose homes are threatened by urban development.

From Green to Brown to Black to Brown to Green (2009), Joo Choon Lin & Chun Kai Qun, Stop motion photography installation

While the diorama was used as a scene in the animation, its physical presence in the installation adds little value to the work. The installation is built to resemble a construction site and consequently a safety barrier is erected in front of the work. This proves to be a bad move as it ultimately deprives us of the chief source of satisfaction dioramas provide. We are put at a distance from the diorama and our inner gluttons for the finer details are left utterly dissatisfied.

Lost in the City is positioned as an exhibition in which the artists “play out their responses to the city”. However, it is difficult to conceive of an overarching narrative that the exhibition brings across due to the fact that there are effectively only four highly disparate works on display. Curatorially, the exhibition appears as lost as its title suggests. The collective effort at engaging with the complexities of city life comes across as anemic and this inadequacy stems from the fact that there exists so much more room for more critical and engaging works to be displayed.

Nevertheless, at least three out of the four works are illuminating pieces of art works by themselves. And the dynamic interactions that some of these works achieve with its environment is an encouraging testament to the museum’s potential as a viable site where art, ideas and conversations can be generated.

Lost in the City is an event of the Singapore Art Show 2009 and is currently on display at the National Museum of Singapore from 21 August to 3 January 2010. Admission is free.

The Finer Things

Bathing in the last light of Polaris (2004), Thomas Doyle, Mixed-media sculpture

Size matters. Even the most mundane and insipid object can inspire awe by its magnification. In this sound-bite society where our mental spaces are cluttered by an overload of innumerable, incidental, incoherent and ultimately inconsequential pieces of information, we have become so desensitised to the subtleties of our aesthetic realities that only the spectacular, sensational and scintillating can capture our attention. Given this contemporary condition, going big has become the predominant strategy for practically all fields of cultural production.

At the present moment, the Burj Dubai has dwarfed the Taipei 101 at 818 metres. Several kilometres away lies The World, a man-made archipelago of islands constructed to resemble the world map. At the other side of the world, land artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude are moving one step closer to their ambition of wrapping the universe as they attempt to suspend 5.9 miles of silvery fabric above the Arkansas River. And next month will see the release of Avatar, the film with the largest budget in the history of cinema, directed by budget buster James Cameron of Titanic fame no less.

But as much as the gargantuan thrills us visually and imaginatively, its diametric opposite, the miniature, is similarly able to excite us and inspire awe. And that seems to be the assertion put across by Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small II, the exhibition curated by Michael Lee that is now running at the Jendela at the Esplanade. It presents itself as the antithesis to the ongoing “size fetish” in the contemporary world and unsurprisingly, some of the works displayed are so infinitesimal that they are only visible under the magnifying glass. Works like these inevitably reinforce a personal opinion of mine that these days art can only be horrifically big, or ridiculously small. Nobody bothers about anything in between. This leads to the bigger question – what’s with this perpetual obsession with superlatives of scale anyway?

Essentially, our understanding of scale is an ontological necessity. It is via this cognizance that we conceive of our own relative position within the larger cosmic order. In the same light, we create forms with anomalies in scale as a means of reconciling the tensions that may emerge in our attempts at comprehending our cosmic place.

The Sagrada Família: In construction since 1882 and projected to be completed only by 2026

The monument and the miniature, despite being polar opposites, fundamentally arise from our negotiations with our perceived smallness in the universe. As much as it would be poetically symmetrical for our proclivity to create small forms to emerge from an egocentric perception of greatness and vice versa, contemporary realities point to a dominant consciousness of our pathetic insignificance and our perceived displacement from the centre of the universe, particularly in a time when increasingly advanced space technologies paradoxically only serve to emphasise the sheer magnitude of the unknown. Estranged in the wilderness, we gaze into the canopy of stars with an overwhelming, ineffable sense of awe that is uneasily melded with a latent terror – the terror of an ultimately unknown, formless and boundless universe that is beyond the comprehension of our mortal minds. In the words of Immanuel Kant, it is the sublime which is “absolutely great”.

To cope with these unsettling anxieties, artists either choose to monumentalise or to miniaturise. The former strives for transcendence by attempting to surpass our human limitations and imagined boundaries via an ambitious, vertical conquest while the latter attempts containment, painstakingly reinforcing boundary and delineation. The former sets his sights on the impossible and thus feels perpetually unaccomplished and unfulfilled while the latter emphasises completeness and an immaculate attention to detail. The former is often fuelled by an impetuous anxiety that is coupled by a tentative hubris while that latter is cautious, controlled and calculating. Despite being driven by radically different temperaments and divergent methods of transcendence and containment, these two stereotypes of artists are identical in the way they both attempt to control and author a reality that remains so perturbingly unknown.

Dissolution of entities (2006), Thomas Doyle, Mixed-media sculpture

Perhaps the works that manifest most explicitly this consciousness of our inherent smallness in the cosmic order are the two sculptures by Thomas Doyle. There is a quiet desperation that characterises the intricate worlds of Doyle’s art. In Dissolution of entities, we see an adult and a child being consumed by the ground. They are frozen in time, permanently embalmed in their striding postures. Only parts of their bodies are visible. The child, in fact, remains mostly hidden in the detritus of nature. Meanwhile, in Bathing in the last light of Polaris, an estranged man is in mortal peril, as he clings onto a piece of driftwood to stay afloat in a vast, open sea. The tactile complexity of the surrounding waves renders the man almost imperceptible as he appears consumed by the seething ferment of the waters.

The estranged man actually brings to mind Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where all the powers of the universe have appeared to be concentrated upon the sadistic punitive torment of the guilt-ridden mariner. The works of Doyle represents our most primal and irrational bodily fears pertaining to the caprice of the natural world – the fears of shipwrecks, bottomless pits, being swallowed by quick sand, being buried alive and being crushed by rocks. The miniature size of the work creates a compact image that is all the more intense. It appears like a distant nightmare from our childhoods, utterly far-fetched but profoundly traumatic.

Houses (2006), Suki Chan, Balsa wood and paint

The work is aptly placed in close proximity to Suki Chan’s Houses and Chun Kai Qun’s Nevermind Nirvana, which both possess deep similarities with Doyle’ works thematically. Chan’s work features the similar motif of objects being consumed by their environment. The miniature houses in her installation appear to be sinking into the gallery floor, in an uncanny subversion of the home as a place of familial comfort. In fact, only a tiny edge of the roof is visible for some of these houses. The desolate landscape is deeply reminiscent of the cataclysmic disasters around that world and possesses an almost alarmist caution on the potentiality of an apocalypse.

Nevermind Nirvana (2009), Chun Kai Qun, Diorama installation

Meanwhile, an apocalypse seems to have already occurred in Chun’s dioramic installation. The work is eerily morbid and screams of the expressionistic angst characteristic of Chun’s works. Essentially a forest ravaged by what seems to be a series of disasters, the gore only gets more explicit as you examine the glut of visual details at close proximity. What appear to be the flames of a group of candles are actually miniature human figures on fire. From a distance, the shades of mahogany used on the landscape are uncannily surreal and reminiscent of swollen, infected flesh. The haphazardly rugged landscape also serves to reinforce this image of bodily decay.

Nevermind Nirvana (2009), Chun Kai Qun, Diorama installation

Instinctively, there is an uneasy psychological dissonance as we consider each detail of Chun’s diorama. With each human flame materialised as a physical, tactile object, the miniatures at times gives the semblance of perfectly harmless toys, which coexists disturbingly with the context of abject human decay and violence. At times, the diorama resembles an altar, with the human subjects assuming the roles of sacrificial martyrs – an interpretation that becomes sinisterly accurate when one learns that the work’s inspiration came from the “suicide woods” at the foot of Mount Fuji. This is nature in its most untamed, capricious and violent form.

While numerous similarities can be drawn among the three works mentioned above, the rest of the works in the gallery appear a little lost in a world of their own, as each of them addresses very different concerns.

The Specimen Bottle Series (2007), Tan Seow Wei, Mixed-media drawing installation

Tan Seow Wei’s The Petri Dish Series, previously seen and reviewed at Valentine Willie Fine Art, is seen here with The Specimen Bottle Series. While the human subjects in the former work are unconscious objects of voyeurism, those in the latter are entirely conscious of the public scrutiny and thus appear rigidly inanimate, vacantly suspended in a specimen bottle and devoid of human agency.

Poetic Crime Series - Tomb Raiders (2009), Tang Kwok Hin, Comics’ books, glass, MDF and anti-theft eye

Tang Kwok Hin’s Poetic Crime Series quite simply, poeticises crime. Encased within glass enclosures are miniature cutouts of human figures from comic strips, supposedly bank safe robbers and tomb raiders, in action, valorised like modern Robin Hoods. The use of the enclosure creates the appearance of a human menagerie. With parts of the glass enclosure obscured, one is only able to peer into the enclosure from certain angles and through peepholes. The presence of this restriction in fact further piques our curiosity and excites our latent temptations towards participating in this fictional realm of glamourised crime.

Poetic Crime Series - Bank Safe Robbers (2009), Tang Kwok Hin, Comics' books, glass containers and mirror

Events (2008), Justin Wong, Flash animation

A similarly comic turn can be observed in Justin Wong’s flash animation, Events. Playing on a small television screen, the animation is as deadpan as its nondescript title. The animation features sequences of peculiar face-offs between big and small people, symbolically representing the contestations of power between the dominated and the dominator, the slave and the master, the human and the omnipotent. A particular sequence even shows a “blow job”, with a little man appearing like a phallic object that thrusts in and out of a giant’s mouth, in an ultimate display of emasculation and submission. With the figures all dressed up in corporate attire, the sequences unfold like uncensored, contemporary updates of fairytales and mythologies, with each sequence often ending with a gory twist that inverses the power dynamics between the big and small people. In one of the ten “events” featured, a cavalcade of little men are seen supporting the body of a giant and lifting him away as a hostage, almost like a scene from Gulliver’s Travels. The body of the giant eventually proves too heavy for the little men to handle and comes crushing down upon them as blood splatters. Ouch.

A Sparrow in the Studio (2008-2009), nofearsam921, Digital video

Such a sense of play can also be seen in nofearsam921’s A Sparrow in the Studio. In his video, the artist attempts to recreate Joao Onofre’s Vulture in the Studio, except that finding a vulture to play the part was a remote possibility for the artist who works in Taiwan. Instead, he roped in a sparrow as a surrogate and recreated the studio in a miniature form. The bewildered sparrow finds itself clumsily enormous in the new environment, ricocheting around the room and often crashing onto the invisible fourth wall. The work addresses issues of mimicry and simulation, but for most of us, it was simply good fun and amusement.

The World Unexposition 1945-2008 (2009), Michael Lee Hong Hwee, Model installation: Shown here is Rem Koolhaas' unbuilt Hyperbuilding.

In Michael Lee’s The World Unexposition 1945-2008, proposed architectural projects that were never realised are recreated as white paper models. With each model created according to the same scale of 1:1000, what we witness upon the plinths is akin to a miniature, autonomous universe alternative to our own. We approach the white phantom-like models with a particular ambivalence. We regard the spectral figures with poignancy as they lay elevated on the plinth like stillborns with a quiet indignance at their miscarriage. Simultaneously, we are excited by the “what ifs” that come to mind with the sense of possibility the imagined cityscape provides.

The exhibition succeeds in expanding the ways we consider the notion of the miniature, compelling us to consider beyond the rigid considerations of physical size and proportion, to contemplate it in terms of the “attitude and strategy of detailed representation”. The intricacies of the miniature necessitate prolonged audience engagement, as we slow down our pace and examine each nook and cranny in detail. They demand a unique form of physical interaction that is deeply experiential, immersive and personal.

Seatings (2005-2009), Cornelia Erdmann, Digital drawing on slide film

My only qualm with the exhibition and its direction is how it appears as primarily an aesthetic exercise in regarding the miniature. With the exception of the works of Doyle, Chun and Chan, the comparatively disparate concerns of most of the other works meant that there was hardly any contextual material available for the audience to engage with the broader issues examined in the works. Some of the works exist more effectively as part of an artist’s retrospective than as a singular piece among works by other artists. Chow Chun Fai’s Repainting Infernal Affairs, for instance, may appear esoteric to one who is unfamiliar with Chow’s oeuvre. The artist’s concerns with regards to the myths surrounding image production and urban life, previously seen at a comprehensive exhibition at Osage Singapore, are inadequately surfaced in a single, representative piece. Meanwhile, Cornelia Erdmann’s Seatings and Daily Desires are such enigmatic art pieces that it is hard to regard them as any more than pretty small things.

But of course, such flaws are literally too minuscule to take anything away from a largely satisfying venture into the world of the miniature. We emerge from Lilliputland feeling a little bigger and with a newfound sensibility for the finer things in life.

Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small II is currently on display at the Jendela at the Esplanade from 6 November 2009 to 3 January 2010. Admission is free. Exhibition images courtesy of the curator.

The Menagerie Collapses

Modern Journeys - Flying West (2006), Oil on canvas

He watches on wistfully as the bright, gleaming world of white cumulus clouds passes him by in blitheful indifference. He rests his head on his hand, supporting his massive headgear and the onerous weight that comes with being the “Monkey King”, a title that he had, in the callous hubris of youth, bestowed upon himself. And here he is, still king, tucked away in an airplane cabin as he sets off on yet another journey to the West. He fidgets uneasily in his newly tailored apparel. The seamstress had just realtered them to fit his ever shrinking frame but he still finds them uncomfortably oversized. But his sartorial woes are of the slightest of his priorities when compared with the imperial concerns of this humanoid royalty.

Jaded, he gazes vacantly into the abyss of the world beneath, quietly thankful for such moments of tranquil privacy. He contemplates his future and indulges in a fleeting fantasy of a career switch. But his fatigued mind can no longer accommodate dramatic shifts in his life. It was too troubled by his worldly problems – the pecuniary woes, the unfinished project about the celestial peaches and the recent, puzzling clinical diagnosis of his “anthropomorphism” from the doctors…

The Monkey King is certainly not the only one with the bizarre pathological condition of anthropomorphism, for he has the company of the rest of the denizens at the gallery, all of which are the uncanny creations of local artist David Chan. The show, Hybrid Society – Schizophrenia, appears more like a menagerie of genetic accidents, than an exhibition of contemporary art. The animal-human hybrids on display manifest the most rigid, unfamiliar and unsettling form of anthropomorphism – one not of a seamless integration of man and animal, but a violent yoking together of animal and human anatomy and behaviour.

Androgenie - Baby Rabbit (2009), Mixed media

Anthropomorphism is hardly an original or refreshing concept. In fact, it is so overused in animation today, it is trite to the point of utter banality. But the cute, cuddly critters of today’s animations or the divinely intelligent creatures of mythologies are hardly qualified “anthropomorphs”. Yes, they are visibly animal, but they are hardly human. They are predominantly caricatures, too simplistic for the honorific entitlement to humanity, with their particular animal characteristics singled out for exaggeration, embellishment and exoticisation such that they provide the illusion of humanity.

The works of Chan are decidedly different. They are far from the congenial, smiling mascots of amusement parks. In fact, they strike us as so immediately bizarre and even grotesque that we feel a latent sense of terror. They are so strange not because of their distance from us, but because they are so profoundly human.

Three paintings from Urban Species series (2009), Oil on linen: (from left) Mr Humble, Miss Sincere and Miss Patient

The Monkey King in Modern Journeys – Flying West, expresses an emotion hardly seen even in the most sophisticated of anthropomorphic animated characters – urban existential restlessness. In the Urban Species series, Miss Patient reveals a suppressed ennui and a threateningly imperious dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, Miss Sincere appears simultaneously vulnerable and devious. The serpent gently wipes the tears off the rugged surface of her skin with a handkerchief, in an ambivalent expression of emotional betrayal accompanied by an insidious resilience and an implicit cunning.

The animal-human hybrids in the works of David Chan can hardly be regarded as caricatures, for the range and complexity of emotions expressed are so completely human. They are the true “anthropomorphs”, complex amalgamations of the animal and the human. They perturb the human viewer so immediately and viscerally as they are explicit transgressions of the animal-human boundary that we have tried so hard to magnify and reinforce over centuries of cultural progress. The latent terror lies in how these mutant creatures appear to have decoded the most sophisticated and nuanced of human psychology, and mastered it thoroughly no less!

(from left) Chimerative (2009), Aluminium, fibreglass, hand painted and Centauree (2009), Aluminium, fibreglass, hand painted

Consider the professional feline mother in Chimerative. Dressed in a corporate attire and seated upright in an expression of calm, unwavering regality, the chimera has one hand firmly clasped around her briefcase handle and the other placidly wrapped around her infant child. The polished sheen of the fibreglass emphasises her state of perfection as the monument of female power. She is, disturbingly, the apotheosis of the modern superwoman. Despite being perched at the peak of the professional world, she manages to keep her child in the snug comfort of her arms, effectively demonstrating her mastery of the art of advanced maternity – an art that we thought was exclusively human! Similarly, in Centauree, we see the lion-centaur clearly in a position of dominion and control, with his hands unyieldingly gripping his whip and reins, in an inversion of the slave-master relationship. Here, the beast is the virtuoso of flagellation!

An Inevitable Extinction (2008), Oil on linen

The little freak show that has been assembled at the gallery may at times appear deeply shocking as it destabilises a crucial component of our worldview. Some of the works deconstruct the animal Other and forcefully assimilates the animal and the human. The animal, which we only conceive as physical artifacts divorced from their natural environment (which in fact constitutes a crucial part of their animality), has been historically captured, contained, confined, classified and commodified by a human population desperate to differentiate itself as superior sentients. What frustrates this differentiation even more in the works of Chan is the determination to conflate the two seemingly distinct worlds, or to subsume the human under the animal. In the words of painter Francis Bacon, “We’re just a part of animal life”.

Sweet Suffocating Love (2008), Oil on canvas

In this sense, a process reverse to anthropomorphism can be observed to be happening in some of these animal-human amalgamations. Instead of humanising the animal, Chan is effectively animalising the human, not via the active gesture of projecting animal attributes upon human subjects, but through the passive process of observing the progressive shedding of the cultured facade of humanity, to expose the animal personalities that reside within. It seems that what drive the complex and intricate tapestry of human behaviours are the most simple, primitive and universal animal impulses. As seen in Miss Patient, the human art of hypocrisy is positioned as essentially a sophisticated extension of the animal facility at beguiling and luring the unsuspecting prey.

Sweet Tug of War (2009), Oil on canvas

Thematically, the arguments that the works seem to be putting across, as a collective, are not particularly lucid or cogent. What defines the animal and the human? How are they different or does any differentiation exist at all? Different works appear to offer contradictory explanations to this conundrum.

As the whole, the show seems determined to be slightly more intelligent than it appears. The works are evidently trying to be more than just artifacts that shock and awe. Notably, there are some sporadic inputs of intellectual content but very often, the methods and contents of the amalgamations appear scattershot and incoherent. With the saturated colours characteristic of pop and the repetitive use of kitsch, appropriated imagery, Chan’s works may not appeal entirely to those seeking profound intellectual stimulation. As a comprehensive exegesis on the animal-human dialectic, it is sorely inadequate. Its tactics may even come across as cheap and the imagery unbearably carnivalesque.

CEO of Categories (2007), Mixed media (oil on canvas)

Conversely, the show is a visual thrill for those simply looking for fun, amusement, shock, terror and an exuberant sense of play. Some of the works may appear disturbingly uncanny, but what underlies their creation is an irreverent spirit of appropriation, satire and word play with metaphors. The artist even extracts images from the austere realms of history and religion for transfiguration and experimentation. We see Sir Stamford Raffles with the head of a dodo bird in An Inevitable Extinction. And in Sweet Tug of War, we see two “baby-birds” emerging into existence on a circular canvas that resembles a sacred mandala.

Most memorably, there is also the beloved Ganesha, the Hindu diety with an elephant head, putting his multiple hands to economic use by literally multi-tasking as a “CEO of Categories”. On a fittingly corny note, the elephant tycoon could certainly afford to lend a helping hand to his anthropomorphic neighbours, such as the troubled the Monkey King, who is evidently in worse shape than Ganesha with his delightfully protuberant tummy.

Hybrid Society – Schizophrenia was on display at Art Seasons Gallery from 3 October to 11 November 2009. Images courtesy of Art Seasons Singapore.

The President’s Young Talents: A Review

In the previous article, I’ve touched briefly on some of the works of the artists featured at this year’s President’s Young Talents (PYT) exhibition, largely in relation to the institutional context of contemporary art in Singapore. I think it’s only appropriate to devote a separate piece to the review and discussion of the exhibited works in their own terms, to do justice to the totality of ideas that is examined by the artists.

Donna Ong

I did not mention much about the works of Donna Ong in my commentary as her works are not particularly political, whether in relation to the politics of art or contemporary society. Her works engage with broader philosophical concerns and universal human impulses, particularly, the impulse to collect.

Dissolution (2009), Donna Ong, Found chinese paintings, acrylic, CCTV cameras, 22 inch television screens (Image courtesy of SAM)

The artist’s oeuvre reflect her sensibility as a collector. Ong’s works are effectively collections of everyday objects, assembled into an installation to convey particular narratives. A collector’s preoccupations are starkly different from that of a keeper of historical archives or a social documentarian, as seen more in the case of Felicia Low, another artist featured at this year’s PYT.

Landscape Portraits (In A Beautiful Place Nearby) (2009), Donna Ong, Single channel video, hardware, sewing equipment, metal plates, cork and plasticine

There is an exacting obsessiveness inherent to the seemingly benign act of collecting, which arises out of the intensely private nature of this practice. The collector is often torn by the conflicting impulses to claim her finds as her exclusive possessions and to disclose the magnitude of her collections to the awe of her audience. Through the act of exhibition, the collector embellishes and illuminates her works, attempting to elevate her fortuitous discoveries as mystified beholders of a truth that lies beyond their material exteriors. Through that gesture, she allows stories and anecdotes to emerge organically from the abyss of the thingness of each object.

In Landscape Portraits (In A Beautiful Place Nearby), Ong displays two rows of miniature, intricate metallic objects that flank the visitor walking into the long corridor of peculiar artifacts. The metallic creatures, assembled from screws, bolts, nuts and other hardware appear curiously organic, like sea urchins buoyant with a latent sense of life. Arranged according to scale, they diminish in scale towards the entrance of the corridor, eventually reduced to nothingness, which relates to the spiritual concept of nothingness as examined in Zen Buddhism. The work essentially reflects the artist’s overarching concern on looking at everyday objects with a greater sense of imagination, to conceive an organic but abstract and spiritual idea of objects that lies beyond their material objecthood.

Landscape Portraits (In A Beautiful City Nearby) (2009), Donna Ong, Glassware and lights (Image courtesy of SAM)

This exploration into the physical and spiritual states of existing is similarly explored in another similarly titled piece, Landscape Portraits (In A Beautiful City Nearby), displayed in a room opposite to the abovementioned work. In the work, an array of glassware is arranged to form a sparkling diorama placed amidst the flickering luminance of the surrounding miniature lights and hypnotic sounds of bells. The translucency of the material and their disappearance and reemergence seem to connote the tenuous fragility inherent to the state of the physical.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs

The centrepiece of Ong’s gallery space is Dissolution, an elaborate installation which layers several acrylic sheets, each incorporating cutouts of found Chinese ink paintings, to form a composite image of a “three-dimensional” Chinese landscape painting. Ong draws her inspiration from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel, where multiple narratives are occurring within the same two-dimensional pictorial space. While the assorted characters in the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel exist within the same pictorial world, they are mostly absorbed in the perceived solipsism of each of their insular, private realms. Their physical proximity to one another, exaggerated by the densely constructed composition, further highlights their mutual indifference. To each of the denizens, “other minds” do not exist.

Ong’s Dissolution espouses this ontological conception of perspective as explored in the works of Bosch and Bruegel. Particularly, the artist literalises and materialises the notion of separate worlds unfolding in different planes within the same space through the layering of multiple acrylic sheets to assemble a complete, composite world. Furthermore, she complicates the notion of perspective through an examination of the differentiation between Eastern and Western perspectives.

A surveillance camera (right) capturing live footage of the installation to be projected on the television screen (left).

Located in front of the acrylic block are surveillance cameras that project the footage captured on the television screens opposite the set-up. The two-dimensional realm of Chinese landscape painting is reformatted into a “Western” optical space of three-dimensionality via the layering of acrylic sheets, which are subsequently conflated into a flat image via the lenses of the camera which has a distinctively Western originary. In this light, Dissolution illustrates the contemporary conundrum of ontological confusion that arises as a corollary of cultural mingling. This “dissolving” of cultural parameters jeopardises our worldview that emerges directly from our cultural originaries.

Felicia Low

Gallery set-up for The Stimulus and the Conversation (2009), Felicia Low, Performance workshops (Image courtesy of SAM)

Felicia Low’s gallery space reflects a similar fascination with narratives that emerge out of physical artifacts. But while Donna Ong collects, Low documents and archives. The drawings, writings and other hand-made works seen displayed in the gallery do not constitute Low’s art work, for her piece for the PYT, The Stimulus and the Conversation is a series of performance workshops. The physical artifacts are, instead, the remnants of her art. But as the visible traces of her creative act, they reflect her interests in documenting, coordinating and piecing pieces to form a whole. Unlike the collector, the social documentarian retains the innocence and unassuming quality of her artifacts. They are not prized, exclusive possessions. She does not regard them individually, but instead conceive of each piece as an integral part of a larger tapestry.

In her performance workshops, The Stimulus and the Conversation, Low creates an artwork that she employs as a stimulus for her participant’s art works, engaging participants from varied demographic groups in creating works surrounding the theme of “family”. The stimulus is a light box with photographs of members of the artist’s extended family. Each individual is photographed at frontal full body length. But the family portrait is incomplete, with the missing figures labelled variously as “Estranged”, “Missing”, “Unavailable at the time of shoot”, “Out of town”, “Emigrated” or “Distant”. The unphotographed are represented by black, hollow silhouettes. The labels and silhouettes, while appearing perfunctory and nondescript, add a relatively bleak and dark impression of modern familial relationships.

The Stimulus

This positioning of the art object as a “stimulus” is one that deserves further examination. A stimulus is defined as something that “incites to action or exertion or quickens action, feeling, thought, etc”. It is a trigger or a catalyst towards generating a certain desired response. And it does seem that many contemporary art works today serve more to stimulate than to engage, the latter being a process of drawing in the viewer and the former, one of driving in the audience a particular and specific image or message. The latter is often rich in content, lushly detailed and exists almost as an autonomous universe of its own, while the former is usually visually minimal, conceptually compact and asserts itself without embellishment, like a urinal on a plinth or a print of a Campbell soup can. As in the case of Low’s art work stimulus, there is no glut of visual details as we would find in a triptych by Bosch. The essential content that is of the greatest social utility and that provides the food for thought lies in the “conversation” instead. This fact is further reinforced by the sheer buffet of creative products that emerge from the performance workshops.

The collection of amateur works on display includes innocent professions of patriotism (“I like Singapore very much. Singapore is a good country because Singapore have many thinks.”), expressions of ennui and angst towards school (“I want to leave school behind.”) and other enlightening words of wisdom on life. The works actually bring to mind the community mail art project initiated by Frank Warren, PostSecret, where individuals send in anonymous, homemade postcards containing their deeply personal secrets for publishing. While Low’s endeavour here is not as perturbingly confessional and satisfyingly cathartic as Warren’s more ambitious project, the personalised, self-made nature of the products of her workshops bears deep similarities to it.

As a whole, Low’s work can be considered a form of Relational Art, largely regarded as the new “ism” of the art world.

Twardzik Ching Chor Leng

Twardzik Ching’s gallery space for her work, Lifeblood, is indubitably the most barren. Located around the middle of the generally empty space is a tall, algae-stained, cylindrical column of water and beside it, a wooden staircase. A single light bulb illuminates the water from the base of the colour, creating an eerie, green glow.

Lifeblood (2009), Twardzik Ching, Acrylic tank, PVC pipes, wooden staircase, Singapore River water (Image courtesy of SAM)

The set-up appears to resemble a kind of modern shrine, particularly since the water concerned is not anonymous. The water comes from the Singapore River, the primal site where modern Singapore came into being. Ching’s works have always engaged with the material land in her previous works, literally interpreting the notion of “land” as often used in national rhetoric. The materials of the land in Ching’s works are used as a concrete, physical metaphor for the nation that comes directly from nature, in contrast to the self-made, state-endorsed and artificial national icons that emerge as emblems for an imagined community. These natural objects are, unquestionably, the most representative objects of Singapore simply because they are what literally constitute the physicality of this country.

This attention to the strictly material and physical that Ching displays is one of particular fascination to me. In an artistic and literary tradition where the discourses on “self” often concern themselves with the abstract, psychological and philosophical, the notion of the self as a physical body and the importance of acknowledging and coming to terms with our physicality has been comparatively neglected. Likewise, while so much have been said about nations as imagined communities, there has been less exploration into the concept of the nation as a physical entity. As compared to the Jordan River and the Ganges, in which their physical bodies are vested with a profound, spiritual value, the Singapore River lies on the peripheries of our national consciousness. Nationhood is instead feebly conceived through constructing an artificial communal iconography.

At the top of the flight of stairs is a tap that controls the pipe from with the water flows out from. Above the tap are the words, “You are in control”. The viewer is encouraged to step up and control the flow of water. But despite this element of interactivity, I remain rather alienated from the work. The water remain as it is – a body of liquid without any sense of social or cultural history. Despite the shrine, there is nothing particularly mystical or sacrosanct about that algae-stained cylinder. But perhaps, this is telling of my personal estrangement and our collective apathy towards our nation’s material land and a reflection of the way we conceive of Singapore – a purely abstract, esoteric and imagined entity.

Lifeblood (2009), Twardzik Ching, Acrylic tank, PVC pipes, wooden staircase, Singapore River water

As mentioned in my previous article, the initial plan to pump the water directly from the Singapore River, with the pipes forming a kind of umbilical cord from the womb of the nation, did not materialise. Water from the river was instead transported to an installation of acrylic tanks at the 8Q courtyard to be piped up to the gallery. Interestingly, the tank installation appears like a satire of the bureaucracy that made the realisation of the work so problematic. The water is compartmentalised into a large system of tanks, symbolically representing the bureaucratic machine of the state and its uncompromising systems of hierarchy and control.

Vertical Submarine

Subversion is a game for the artist collective, Vertical Submarine, who sees themselves as pranksters, instead of anti-establishment activists. Their works are delightfully comical plays with language and part of the amusement arises from the deliberate attempt at stoic seriousness.

A View with a Room (2009), Vertical Submarine, Installation (Image courtesy of SAM)

The separation between text, image and reality is the key concern of Vertical Submarine’s work, A View with a Room. The title itself is an inversion of the popular phrase, “a room with a view”. A long, wordy paragraph of text describing a room is imprinted on the wall. Located discreetly among the letters is a peephole that would probably not be noticed by the casual viewer. Through the peephole, we see an image of a room. A view with a room indeed. A walk through a closet would bring us to a physical installation of a room. The room and every object within it is painted in complete monochrome. The communist emblem of the hammer and sickle pattern the entire floor. The clock hands are moving in reverse. A Milo can and a bottle of Borges olive oil can be seen on a grey cabinet. Only a part of a sofa and a television playing Battleship Potemkin are visible, as the remainders have been swallowed by the walls. Like in a photograph, the sofa and television are, literally, cropped.

What a strange, anachronistic communion of puzzling objects of such varied cultural and historical origins! The room screams of Gothic excess and looks as if it could only be the residence of an eccentric cultural polymath from the macabre works of Edgar Allan Poe.

The complex installation by the artist collective is a provocative examination of the relationship between text, image and reality and the autonomy of each of these separate worlds. The eponymous room of Vertical Submarine’s installation represents a reality adulterated by the prescriptive influences of image and text. Text and image are never adequate surrogates of reality.

A View with a Room (2009), Vertical Submarine, Installation (Image courtesy of SAM)

Notably, the image seen through the peephole is not that of the actual installation – it is merely a photograph. The image is an artificial reality constructed through the act of framing. What exists outside the frame, like the other half of the television set, does not exist within the universe of the image. Similarly, the room is painted in black and white as a symbol of the adulteration of reality by the black and white realm of text. The work does seem to propose that words have the most control over the way we perceive a space, particularly with the lengthy paragraph imprinted on the gallery wall that bombards the viewer with a string of adjectives. Words, after all, are signs that have been in existence for centuries. Each word is a loaded repository of cultural significations accumulated over the lengthy passage of history. In that light, describing a place in words involves not just mere description, but the constitution of a new space pieced together by the universe of signs each word carries as its baggage.

As the audience, we emerge from our magical ride into the closet with a renewed consciousness, skepticism as well as a playful sense of imagination towards the reality that confronts us each day.

And there we have it – a comprehensive review of the works of the artists at this year’s PYT. Perhaps, I’ve been a little verbose in detailing my experience of the works at this year’s PYT. And that is usually a sign of a show with substance.

The President’s Young Talents Exhibition is currently on display at SAM at 8Q from 15 August to 27 December 2009. Usual admission charges apply.

The President’s Young Talents: Art and its Contemporaries

This post comes a little belatedly, given that the voting for this year’s President’s Young Talents has just ended. This means of employing the popular vote to determine the winner of the People’s Choice Award is a first for the biennial event since its inauguration in 2001. Incidentally, this year’s exhibition also marks the first time a single artist or collective will be identified as an official winner of the showcase and leave with a bag of cash and a sponsored overseas residency.

Lifeblood (2009), Twardzik Ching, Acrylic tank, PVC pipes, wooden staircase and Singapore River water (Image courtesy of SAM)

I’ve always been a little perturbed by the introduction of competitive elements in an exhibition of contemporary art. And the notion of designating a singular, absolute winner becomes all the more unsettling given the context of a national, state-endorsed artistic talent showcase. The President’s Young Talents (PYT) Exhibition, fortunately or unfortunately, is not the Singaporean equivalent of Britain’s Turner Prize. Affixed to its name is the austere regality of the presidential label, which has also made its cameos at other high-profile national awards and events. The risk here, naturally, is the creation of a national prescription for cultural tastes which is in essence antithetical to the nature of contemporary art in which alterity, criticality and multiplicity are its defining hallmarks.

Such concerns can be said to be the result of my slightly overwrought imagination, since PYT, despite the state endorsement, thankfully does not wield that much influence as a legislator of cultural taste. And if we are to put aside our prejudices towards state-supported artistic fanfare, the works at this year’s PYT are really not as commercialised and ostentatious as feared. In fact, the works by Donna Ong, Felicia Low, Twardzik Ching and Vertical Submarine collectively form a respectable sample of contemporary art in Singapore that reflect and enrich the established discourses surrounding “contemporaneity” in Singapore art.

Locating the Contemporary in Singapore Art

In Contemporary Art in Singapore, the seminal publication by Gunalan Nadarajan, Russell Storer and Eugene Tan, a particular comment on the unique contemporary nature of Singapore by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is highlighted.

Almost all of Singapore is less than 30 years old; the city represents the ideological production of the past three decades in its pure form, uncontaminated by surviving contextual remnants. It is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and randomness: even its nature is entirely remade. It is pure intention: if there is chaos, it is authored chaos; if it is ugly, it is designed ugliness; if it is absurd, it is willed absurdity. Singapore represents a unique ecology of the contemporary.

There is much truth that holds in Koolhaas’ observations of our neatly pruned bonsai city. For authored chaos, check out the Swing Singapore mass parties. For designed ugliness, there’s our national mutant, the Merlion. And as for willed absurdity, we have bar-top dancing. But even within a tightly controlled cultural climate where the vagaries of spontaneity are quickly suppressed, a sense of the contemporary can emerge. As Eugene Tan elaborates, art in Singapore rarely presents itself as “overt forms of political protests”, but functions primarily through the adoption of “conceptualist strategies” and “institutional critique”.

These dual strategies of conceptualism and institutional critique are strikingly visible in the works of the represented artists at this year’s PYT. The fact that some of the artists also exhibit their previous works within their gallery spaces, creating a miniature retrospective of their works, also help largely in creating a broader conciousness of the kind of artistic frameworks they, as well as their contemporaries, are working within.

A Localised Conceptualism

Conceptualism in the West in the 1970s had left an indelible mark upon Singapore contemporary art and its influence persists till today. Evolving within the stranglehold of a culture averse to uncertainty and adventurism, as well as a lack of official funding, conceptualism in Singapore has emerged out of an economy of means and developed via the strategies of dematerialisation, deformalisation and improvisation. It keeps itself understated, unstructured and unspectacular, modelling itself based on everyday activities of walking, chatting, eating, drinking, reading and… stacking.

Conceptualism in Singapore: (from top) Amanda Heng walks the chair in Let's Walk (1999), Lynn Lu practises fortune-telling by reading from the I Ching in A Guide to Life's Turning Points (2009) and Heman Chong attempts the art of stacking in Stacking (2009)

Felicia Low’s performance workshops in The Stimulus and the Conversation has its local roots in the workshops of performance artists such as Tang Da Wu during the infancy of contemporary art in Singapore. The conceptualist positioning of these artworks as “workshops”, or as innocuous everyday events were effective strategies at their deformalisation, as a means to avoid the unnecessary state intervention and sensationalistic press coverage that the official designation of “performance art” invites.

Also of interest is the communal and collaborative nature of Low’s art-making process, which aligns her works with the social sculptures of Joseph Beuys as well as the do-it-yourself installations of Sol LeWitt, in which the artist leaves a set of written prosaic instructions for his audience to create the artwork. But Low’s approach is pedagogical, not instructional. Her background in arts education enables her to work more collaboratively with her audiences without any differentiation in status between the artist and her audience. The sense of experimentation, spontaneity and diversity is consequently more evident in the creative products that emerge from her workshops.

Like the conceptualist artists of the West, the informal, time-specific and site-specific nature of the works also mean that the public can only know about them through documentation in the form of photographs, written texts, recordings or performance artifacts. Low’s works also manifests such a symptom, as her gallery space is effectively a showcase of the physical remnants of her performances.

The issues explored by some of the represented artists, remarkably, also reflect that most of them, whether consciously or unconsciously, are largely operating within a conceptualist paradigm. Issues of the artifactual nature of the art object, as explored by Low, as well as the relationship between text, image and object as examined by Vertical Submarine’s A View with a Room, are notably the constant fixations of the conceptual art movement between the 1960s to 80s.

Inevitably, it does seem to me that the conceptual art movement as well as its subsequent manifestations has been deeply ingrained into local art and subsequently led to the emergence of a localised variant under a particular socio-political landscape. Initial manifestations of this local variant continue to resurface today, in forms such as Low’s performance workshops, in which authored banality, designed informality and willed simplicity are its defining characteristics. But evidently the field today has largely diversified with the nation’s cautious and gradual liberalisation, creating room for conceptual works such as Vertical Submarine’s elaborate installations, which are undeniably louder, bolder and much more complex.

Institutional Critique as Political Gesture

Alongside with conceptualist strategies, institutional critique, defined as a work’s engagement with the institutional structures of art and power that governs it, has become representative of local contemporary art. Given that explicit forms of political protests are bound to raise the alarm for state intervention, political discontent is often expressed as an undercurrent, securely under the guise of the meta-discourse of institutional critique.

Twardzik Ching’s ambitious endeavour in Lifeblood to pump water directly from Singapore river to her gallery at 8Q is immediately reminiscent of one of Singapore’s most emblematic works of institutional critique – Lim Tzay Chuen’s audacious and foolhardy proposal to relocate the eight-metre tall, 70-tonne Merlion sculpture to the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. What a storm it would have started if he had aimed for the bigger fish at Sentosa.

The bureaucratic obstacles faced by Lim is mirrored in the case of Ching’s work and both artists failed to achieve their original intentions. The eventual work that is exhibited at 8Q is a compromise – the water is not pumped directly from the river, but instead transported from the river by vehicles that deposit it into a water tank installation at the 8Q courtyard to be piped up to the gallery. The artist laments that the entire project took six months to materialise, a result not of the work’s physical complexity, but of the impenetrable layers of bureaucracy imposed by the government’s network of statutory boards.

Mike (2005), Lim Tzay Chuen, Singapore Pavillion at the 51st Venice Biennale

In comparison, Lim’s attempt to take our national icon on a holiday did not even result in a compromise. Represented at the biennial instead was a sign that deadpans, “I wanted to bring Mike over”. It may appear a little appalling how this apparent debasing of a state-created national icon can gain the official support to be exhibited at one of the most prestigious international art events. The comparative ease with which Lim sneaked in political commentary into the Venice Biennale can be attributed to the positioning of the work as a form of institutional critique.

Lim’s works have been known to engage in the most questionable and absurd forms of institutional critique even prior to Mike. In an earlier project, Lim presented an eventually rejected proposal to UOB to slightly rotate Salvador Dali’s Homage to Newton, located in front of the UOB building, and subsequently rotate it back to its original position a year later as an artistic “intervention”. Likewise, Mike was positioned as an institutional critique into the workings of biennales and the associated issues of national representation at such events.

Essentially, institutional critique is a profoundly political gesture. But it manages to evade the grip of the censorial society by apparently confining its politics to that of the art world. By positioning itself as a self-reflexive meta-discourse, concerned with the seemingly parochial issues exclusive to the realm of art, it appears less of a threat to the national order as compared to explicit and specific political works. But of course, the reality is that the politics of the art realm can never be divorced from the politics of government and society. Works that are positioned as examinations into the systems of the art world inevitably reflect that tensions and anxieties that characterise the larger society.

In this light, Mike was not just a critique of the politics of national representation at biennales, but of a state’s anxieties towards its own projected image. After all, the Merlion was a deliberately constructed national icon that originated as the logo for the Singapore Tourism Board. It effectively started out as nothing more than an economic apparatus.

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970)

Likewise, while many of Ching’s public land art projects are deliberately designed to contest artistic traditions and to exist beyond the institution of the museum, their concerns also lie beyond the ideologies of the white cube and the art world. Works such as Landing Space, Borrowed Nature as well as Lifeblood may ostensibly bear immediate affiliation to the land art projects of Robert Smithson or Walter De Maria, but they also concern themselves with the broader social-cultural issues of national identity and our emotional estrangement from our physical land, that effectively represents the symbolic nation. Under the guise of institutional critique, Ching has actually managed to put forth a deeply political statement on our national identity crisis. Her works powerfully highlight how our concept of nationhood is so perilously tenuous that it seems impossible to conceive of a notion of “Singapore” beyond its physical land. Is Singapore no more than the sum of its geography?

This can similarly be observed for the projects of Vertical Submarine, particularly with their work created for PYT, A View with a Room. Their installation setup is particularly peculiar as the eponymous room is deliberately concealed from the view of the audience. Instead, the visitor has to open a closet, enter it and walk through a passage covered with paper to reach the installation. The uninformed and unadventurous visitor that dogmatically refrains from touching museum objects would thus never experience the serendipity of discovering the hidden installation. In this light, the work is an intriguing critique of the norms of museum-going, where interactivity and a sense of adventure is suppressed by established codes of conduct.

Moving from one installation into another: (from left) Paper Room (2003) and A View with a Room (2009), both by Vertical Submarine (Image courtesy of SAM)

A View with a Room, aside from its primary concern with regards to the relationship between text and image, is most explicitly a form of institutional critique towards our social conduct within the sanctum of museum spaces. But as with Twardzik Ching’s and Lim Tzay Chuen’s works, the work’s subject of critique extends beyond the realm of art – it is effectively a critique of a socio-political culture that is essentially averse to any forms of subversion, where even the most tacit of social rules have evolved into dogma.

Beyond the Contemporary

Twardzik Ching's previous land art projects include Landing Space (2002) (top) and Borrowed Nature (2003) (bottom).

As I’ve attempted to illustrate in relation to the representative sample of contemporary art at this year’s PYT and as previously articulated by Eugene Tan, contemporary art in Singapore today seems to adopt “conceptualist strategies” and “institutional critique” as its defining hallmarks.

These dual strategies appear to be the most viable modes of subversion within a tightly controlled field of cultural production, because they enable artists to avoid the problematic label of being “Political”, with the capital “P”. But of course, these identified strategies are by no means permanent or representative of all forms of contemporary art in Singapore, particularly given the constantly evolving and diversifying state of art and the social and cultural forces that shape it.

Perhaps many artists are uncomfortable with the notion of grouping their works according to specific categories or movements. But the truth is that the artist is never a free vagabond roaming an unpolluted realm of cultural freedom. They are often susceptible to the broader institutional forces that drive the art world, whether or not to their conscious knowledge. Identifying and validating these broad trends in local contemporary art are, in fact, essential to our understanding of the places that art in Singapore is heading towards, or of whether it is actually heading anywhere at all.

The President’s Young Talents Exhibition is currently on display at SAM at 8Q from 15 August to 27 December 2009. Usual admission charges apply.

ARTiculation: A Conversation with Jane Lee

I started Open Contours because I believe that a healthy arts scene requires cultural dialogue. Singaporeans have an incredible energy for cultural consumption. After all, that’s what Singaporeans do, isn’t it? Consume. At times indiscriminately. But a vibrant arts scene also requires a lively, dynamic culture of conversation, or contemporary art would lose the self-reflexive awareness and cultural-specific criticality that are its most valuable qualities to any society.

And what better way to start a dialogue by hearing from the artists themselves? And thus, here’s our very first artist interview. We have the great honour of hearing from painter Jane Lee, whose major solo exhibition is running at Osage Singapore until 8 November 2009. Do read a review of the exhibition that was posted here some time ago.

Special thanks to Osage Singapore for the contact.

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Open Contours: Most of your paintings possess a set of aesthetics similar to that of gestural painting. But of course we know that the distinction is that the process behind each painting of yours is much more painstaking and labourious. Is the final product is the result of a more spontaneous, experimental approach or one that is more calculated? Did you have an impression of how the final work would look when you first embarked on each painting?

Jane: I don’t plan the final outcome of my paintings. Rather, I allow the process to lead me, picking up interesting things—spontaneous, chance marks—that happen along the way. Marks and textures that occur unintentionally are more interesting.

As for colour, my choices usually depend on the mood of the day. While I work, my mood may change, affecting the colour, such that a painting that began as bright red, for example, could evolve into dark red. Also, I sometimes discard the use of a tool that I initially decide upon. My artistic process is about allowing things to happen, allowing the materials, the paint, to speak.

Open Contours: You have cited Robert Ryman among some of your influences and he is usually identified as a painter. Are there also the works of other artists outside the official domain of painting that have also influenced your work, considering the sculptural and installation-like nature of your works? Do you also draw inspiration from outside the institution of art?

Denim III (2009), Oil on epoxy canvas (Image courtesy of Osage Gallery)

Jane: Ryman doesn’t rush into how the final image ought to be. Rather, he slows down the painting process, breaking down the individual elements of a painting. This approach to painting is what inspires me. I’m similarly unconcerned about final product, and my work is also about slowing down the painting process and breaking down the components and stages to the construction of a painting. At the same time, like Ryman, I seek to bring the white wall—a site often taken for granted in an exhibition—to the forefront of the viewer’s attention, as seen in my Denim III and Bond II paintings.

Although I share Ryman’s starting point and follow his basic principles, I’m not aiming for mimicry in the final visual impact. Whereas Ryman simply dissects painting, I take each individual element and push beyond their usual boundaries, investigating into their full range of possibilities. Whilst Ryman purely examines paint and the brush, I look to materials outside of fine art. Whenever I see paint, I ask if the consistency of the paint can be changed with the addition of other, sometimes unconventional, materials.

One of my other influences is the idea of spiritual surrender to natural forces. This means respect for materials and medium, as demonstrated in allowing them to come to their own, permitting them to speak in such a way that they come to life. This is one quality that many have noted about my paintings. Unlike other painters who compel materials to tell a/their story, I allow materials to just be.

Open Contours: I noticed that the colour red features quite prominently in some of your works. Why the choice of such a strident colour? And some of your works, particularly Status, reminds me of bodily fluids. I was just wondering if your works have anything to do with the bodily or even the sexual?

Jane: My choice of bold, strong, cheerful and vibrant colours is a reflection of my current prevailing emotional state. I’m at the stage of my life where I’m feeling particularly blessed. For me now, there is an overriding feeling of abundance, a sense of celebration, and even courage. This comes forth in the vibrancy of the colours of my recent paintings. It all goes back to my earlier point about colour as reflection of my moods.

Although there is no sin in relating spirituality (joy in being) to sexuality (pleasure in the physical body), I must tell you that I’m not consciously making sexuality a feature of my works. Nonetheless, my subconscious moods do come into play.

Open Contours: Some of your works involve cutting up the canvas into thin strips, almost constituting a sort of violence to the canvas. Some people may even think that they are motivated by a kind of vehement, anti-art streak. What is your opinion on this?

Detail of Turned Out (2009), Acrylic paint on canvas (Image courtesy of Osage Singapore)

Jane: If you look carefully at Turned Out, for example, you will see that the edges of the canvas strips are neatly cut, rather than violently torn off. Also, the canvas strip is gently rolled into a painting. It is certainly not my intention to bring violence into the picture. Contrary to what some may think, I’m actually motivated by everyday, non-violent gestures, such as folding, turning, cutting, pasting, bending, pushing and pulling. I test possibilities of painting by taking advantage of advanced technology available in our time, and I do so in a reinforcing rather than aggressive way.

Open Contours: I understand that you consider yourself to be still in the early stage of your development in painting. What are your plans for the future? Do you think that you have found your signature style yet?

Jane: I plan to travel abroad next year. But there are no concrete plans yet. As for my practice, I’m at the moment still very much concerned about developing my painting; I’m still growing as an artist. I will just let things happen, and wait to see how it will all develop. The unknown future—of my paintings and of life in general—keeps me excited.

No to Rape. No Exceptions.

The No To Rape campaign has been going on for several months now and it surprised me to find out that less than 3000 signatories have been collected thus far. This is less than a third of the campaign’s target of 10000 signatories. But why?

The petition to repeal 377A two years ago amassed more than 8000 signatories within a month. In contrast to homosexuality, marital rape is arguably an issue with far less moral grey areas. While the campaign to repeal 377A faced the strident opposition of religious fundamentalists and chauvinistic homophobes pushing for their definitions of social norms and universal morality, the argument that marital rape is decidedly amoral is comparatively indisputable.

The problem lies in the fact that the issue of marital rape is not something that would rouse the passions of our inner activist (or slacktivist, since supporting the campaign literally only takes a click). In the public imagination, rape lies in the distanced world of sensationalistic tabloid headlines and the fictionalised realm of crass melodrama. While one may intellectually agree with its amorality, the issue of marital rape remains too emotionally alien to stimulate any action. (And it doesn’t help that marital rape has been largely positioned as a women’s issue, thus emotionally disengaging the masculine half of the population.)

While the issue of homosexuality has gained a far greater public visibility with the queer community itself championing for its own rights, victims of rape, particularly marital rape, are silenced by the shame and trauma of one of the most extreme forms of sexual violation and emotional betrayal.

Perhaps a way to emotionally “familiarise” ourselves with the trauma of marital rape is to see it in terms of the more familiar and less particularised notions of tyranny and violence. We may have been victims of everyday forms of tyranny, such as racism, sexism, homophobia or xenophobia. Similarly, we may have faced physical, psychological or institutional forms of violence at some points in our lives.

Marital rape is no different, except that it occurs in the absolute privacy of a home that has been adulterated to become an instrument of oppression and terror. And it inflicts much greater and irreparable damage upon its victims than other more visible forms of tyranny and violence, particularly since the perpetrator is or was a loved one.

Freedom from torture is a universal human right. Shame and trauma are universal emotions which are undesired by all. Don’t allow anyone to suffer silently in the cage that we have kept locked for far too long.

The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

The deadline for the petition has been extended to 30 November 2009. Sign it now at http://www.notorape.com/petition/.

Patriarchal Blues in the Blue Mansion

Wow, when was the last time a whole motley crew of the best Singaporean and Malaysian actors gathered for a film like this? Glen Goei’s first feature film in eleven years, The Blue Mansion, is more than anything else, the fruit of a massive communal effort. The cast list features some of the most celebrated performers of the region while its crew is truly international. And it sure takes a hell of a great story to bring a community of talented artists together.

With a powerhouse of talents and an acclaimed director at its helm, the film can hardly go wrong. Indeed, the piece marking Goei’s much anticipated return to the silver screen delivers as much as it promises. It is top rate entertainment, realised by a clear and pristine artistic vision.

The film has largely been positioned as a murder mystery and black comedy, particularly since the narrative’s central event is the death of a patriarch, but it is much more than that. The comedic moments are aplenty. But we do also see intense moments of familial and psychological drama. There is suspense as well as the horrific. The cinematography brings to mind film noir while the oppressive ambience and undercurrents of morbidity created by the production design appears starkly Gothic. This genre-shifting throughout the film happens a little abruptly at some points, but as a whole, the film will probably keep you thoroughly engaged from start to finish.

The patriarch at the heart of the story is pineapple tycoon, Wee Bak Chuan (Patrick Teoh), who dies under mysterious circumstances, thus throwing the family and the family business into a state of disarray. As the jaded and ailing mother (Louisa Chong) attempts to pull the family together, a bumbling detective (Huzir Sulaiman) comes along and declares the death a murder. Wee Bak Chuan, returning as a ghost, follows the detective as he attempts investigation, only to uncover the most unsavoury details of his children’s private lives.

The distraught matriarch (Louisa Chong) is visibly annoyed by her daughter-in-laws' (Claire Wong and Tan Kheng Hua) flagrant attempts at courting her favour.

While one may be expecting to see devious siblings bickering and conniving to lay their hands on the family business, the children of the Wee family, or at least two out of the three of them, have far too many things on their mind to care less. We learn that eldest son, Teck Liang (Lim Kay Siu) has had two marriages. His present wife (Claire Wong) is the scheming daughter-in-law, carving for her mother-in-law’s attention. His marriage to his first wife, Mei Yi (Emma Yong) ended with her suicide, and there’s much more to the suicide and the marriages than it seems. Second son, Teck Ming (Adrian Pang) is the ambitious businessman, adamant on his right to take over as CEO, an appointment that has been unceremoniously given to his reluctant and disinterested elder brother. And whenever his sexually starved wife, Veronica (Tan Kheng Hua) is not looking, he is away at the stairwell having a tryst with his Chinese mistress. Only daughter, Pei Shan (Neo Swee Lin) is a spinster, virgin and a secret alcoholic. Her previous love affair with an Indian boyfriend ended in face of parental objection. And unsurprisingly, her mother attributes her daughter’s alcoholism to the supposed drinking habits of Indians.

Quite evidently, the script relies heavily on the stereotypes of the dysfunctional, wealthy family, as well as other stock characters of film. Some are trite and unrefreshing, but most of them provide great fun for the audience. And while characters such as the self-righteous, overzealous detective remained just as farcical throughout the film, we see each of the key member of the Wee household move beyond the first impressions they give.

Among the cast, Adrian Pang gives the most sensitive and nuanced performance as the contemptuous, ruthless, rogue-businessman who sees himself as above the family law. His indignation at being sidelined by his father is carefully balanced by a precarious, underlying insecurity and an existential misery with the state of his romantic life. I also adore Louisa Chong’s portrayal of the assertive, wary and ever vigilant matriarch, whose authoritarian demeanour has been ruffled by her husband’s unexpected departure, being the only person who seems genuinely affected by his demise.

The film’s antagonist-protagonist, Patrick Teoh is immaculate in his portrayal of the narcissistic control freak. In fact, the film opens with a revealing sequence showing Wee Bak Chuan, rising fresh from his deathbed, fastidiously adjusting the placement of his personal possessions, ensuring that every object in his spotless room is perfectly ordered.

Despite being dead, Teoh’s character evidently changes the most throughout the course of the film. We see him first as the comically bewildered ghost still in denial of his death, and then as the uncompromising patriarch in the flashbacks, before he is finally consumed by the undercurrents of guilt in the final scenes. The most brilliant part about Teoh is his expressive face – his reaction shots are simply priceless. But there is always something deficient in the presentation of Wee Bak Chuan as the remorseful man with a dark past as far too little of this side of the character is explored.

And this can also be said of the rest of the main cast. There is a great range of character types in the family but insufficient emotional depth achieved for the key members of the family. But perhaps this is only understandable, with such a huge ensemble cast. But there is certainly much potential that is untapped in the daughter of the family as well as in the daughters-in-law. The contrasts between the families of Liang and Ming, in particular, could have been further examined.

The ghost of Mei Yi (Emma Yong) returns to follow her father-in-law's (Patrick Teoh) tenacious hunt for the truth.

Of course, the film is not just a series of revelations of the dirty secrets of the Wee family. The script cleverly interweaves a great deal of satire, poking fun at the various social institutions that govern a multi-religious Asian society. There is firstly, the obvious ridiculing of patriarchy in traditional Asian families, as the ghost of Wee Bak Chuan struggles to come to terms with his children’s perception of him as a tyrant. Ultimately, all the characters of the family, including the tyrant himself, are victims of socially transmitted patriarchal values. His misguided endeavour at parental control alienates his children from him, who perceive his attempts at being a custodian as unbearably authoritarian. “It’s for your own good”, he says.

Besides that, what is most interesting for me is how the film attempts to simultaneously desecrate and destigmatise death. It pokes fun at how death, a natural process undertaken by an individual, becomes appropriated as a religious institution. The conflict that unfolds on the dinner table over Wee Bak Chuan’s religious affiliations is particularly amusing. Was he a Taoist, a Christian or a Pragmatist, as the patriarch vehemently declares himself to be?

The funeral eventually becomes a complete farce involving Christian, Taoist and Buddhist mourners. And perhaps it is all these elaborate rituals and ornaments that mystify death to the extent that it becomes so stigmatised and taboo. The cacophony of chants and funeral songs amount to a morbid excess. And then there is the whole notion of the corporatisation of death. We see a whole company of professional mourners summoned for the funeral and a paper effigy mansion that comes in a commercial package with servants and chauffeurs. Some of these references, such as the paper effigy business, have already been endlessly recycled in local film, but still manage to entertain, largely thanks to the exuberant performance by Sebastian Tan in a cameo as a funeral manager.

The script also explores the long-standing problem of disparities in social class, that continues to trouble modern relationships. Liang’s marriage with Mei Yi was so tumultuous precisely because of the parent’s disapproval of her inferior social background. Shan’s affair with her Indian lover, Raj, is similarly frustrated by social prejudices of a conservative Asian society.

Beyond being an examination of these broad social themes, the film is also a visual triumph, with much credit going to director of photography, Larry Smith and production designer, Ian Bailie. Cinematographically, the exaggerated dimness, the dramatic lighting as well as the surreal mix of blues and warm hues cast an eerie gloom over the entire house, giving a foreboding sense of horror that foreshadows the film’s final revelation. I particularly like the effect of the light reflected from the pool of water in the house. The undulating, shifting movements of the lights appear gothically phantasmagoric.

Much credit also has to go to brilliant production design. The rows of old photographs with its deceased subjects staring at the dining table are uncomfortably uncanny, serving almost as a reminder of the dark historical baggage behind the family. Meanwhile, the elaborate ornamentation and arabesque architectural features that characterise the mansion residence (and not forgetting that ridiculously enormous golden pineapple) appear excessive to the point of morbidity. The oppressive excess of the mansion’s opulence is a compelling metaphor for a family which wealth ultimately becomes an apparatus for patriarchal control and oppression.

These visuals are accompanied by an excellent original score by Oscar-nominated David Hirschfelder, which flawlessly captures the complex nature of the film, as a dark comedy with plenty of the dramatic, uncanny and suspenseful.

The Blue Mansion can be said to be largely a delightful film that doesn’t disappoint at all, but it does come with its little flaws. For one, the family secrets are not as shocking as one would expect. In contrast, the final revelation of the mystery surrounding Wee Bak Chuan’s death borders on the sensational and incredulous, particularly with all the theatrics that come with that climactic moment of horror. The revelation is handled a little clumsily as well. Since it relates to one specific subplot in the tale, it has the effect of rendering the other siblings’ affairs entirely irrelevant to the central mystery.

But the little deficiencies of the script are often saved by the consummate acting by the stellar cast of actors. Like many local films, most of the cast come from a theatrical background. This actually works spectacularly well for a film that is heavy on dialogue, allowing a kind of verbal fencing match to unfold as each actor attempts to dominate the scene with his or her presence. This, however, may not always work for all kinds of film. And if we do eventually want to develop a full-fledged film industry, it would actually be pertinent to groom a generation of actors with a distinct sensibility for the art of film acting.

The Blue Mansion actually brings to mind another local film, Singapore Dreaming, which also involves the demise of a family patriarch. But the latter is a distinctly “Singaporean” film. And being a Singaporean film often means it features the heartlander social discourse and the linguistic mish-mash that is Singlish. And this is why The Blue Mansion will probably be remembered as an important film in the history of local cinema at a time when the notion of “Singaporean film” has become so embarrasingly one-dimensional. After all, as elitist as it may sound, we are not a society entirely made up of middle class heartlanders. But even if the Wee family is thoroughly upper class and Anglophilic, it is hard for anyone to feel alienated from the film. After all, with such a large ensemble of characters, including a dialect-spouting ah beng no less, there is definitely something for everyone.

The Blue Mansion will be released in cinemas on 22 October 2009.

Little Note

It is difficult not be struck by the beauty of Royston Tan’s latest short film, Little Note. The latest piece by one of Singapore’s most celebrated filmmakers is a reassuring and heartening reminder of the filmmaker’s roots in the short film form and a testimony that Tan’s talent for telling intimate, compact and moving narratives has remained intact even after going through two consecutive gruelling feature film productions.

Little Note is a testament to the inherent power of film, relying on the fundamentals of cinema to deliver emotional resonance. There is nothing inventive or boldly original about its cinematic formula – a tasteful blend of poetic cinematography, pastoral landscapes, earnest and convincing performances and a heartfelt original score. But like the titular little note, the power of the film lies in its simplicity. The premise of the film relies on the clichés of familial dramas – the absent father, the indefatigable single mother and the bullied child -, but never once does it descend into the cheap theatrics of melodrama. This is love articulated not in the form of a lengthy, sentimental letter, but expressed within the confines of a little note. It is a story told via the emotional compactness of the understatement.

The story is simple and doesn’t need much explanation. Zhiren (Chen Jing Jun) and his mother (Chue En Jye) live in the country. They are not affluent but are content with their life of rustic simplicity. Zhiren is raised single-handedly by his mother and is often teased in school for not having a father. His mother encourages him to be strong in face of adversity through little notes of encouragement. Zhiren eventually grows up and secures a place in an overseas university. The older Zhiren (Desmond Tan) eventually departs his hometown to pursue his dreams while keeping in mind his mother’s unconditional love for him and bringing with him the lessons on courage and resilience that his mother has imparted to him.

The short is a perfect example of film as the art of visual storytelling. It is the visual poetry of the short that forms the film’s emotional core. The world Tan creates is scrumptiously detailed and thus realistic. But as with all films, it is never a surrogate for reality. For a glimpse of reality, perhaps take a look at the clips included in the short film’s making-of feature. The scorching heat and blinding sunlight of Bentong in Malaysia’s Pahang, where the film was shot, can hardly fit into the director’s vision of a pastoral lyricism.

The countryside as seen in Little Note is a distilled reality, a poeticised landscape where a sense of maternal comfort and warmth is subtly perceptible in every scene. Colour, a prominent stylistic element often employed in Tan’s films, is used with careful discrimination. Scenes are typically washed in slightly desaturated, cool hues, with compensatory doses of bright, warm colours strategically positioned. These spots of lustre sparkle with a brilliant clarity amidst its dim surroundings. The feeling engendered is that of a fireplace providing the ameliorative warmth in the winter’s cold, like the distant memory of a mother’s unconditional love – a memory that gives us the strength to face whatever that comes our way. In fact, there is not a frame in the short that is not beautifully composed and illuminated. The film unfolds more like a series of moving paintings, with each frame delicately infused with a sense of tenderness, nostalgia and quiet bliss.

The story is supported by a relatively strong cast with an impressive emotional depth. Chen Jing Jun, in particular, astonishes with his immense, precocious talent. The tears that trickle down the unblemished, young face of the child are bound to tug at one’s heartstrings. Meanwhile, Desmond Tan’s boyish looks and sincere delivery serve his character of the older Zhiren well by infusing the character’s burgeoning maturity with a sense of innocence and vulnerability. Chue En Jye, on the other hand, pales in comparison to her co-actors. I suspect that she may not be very articulate in Mandarin, for her speech often sounds a little stilted and it’s quite apparent that she’s putting in a little too much effort in enunciating each word precisely. The portrayal of the older mother is also not sufficiently convincing. In the scene where the mother and son are having dinner, for brief moments, I thought that the pair looked more like a husband with his overworked housewife.

However, Chue and the rest of the cast are amazing in their nonverbal expressions. In fact, some of the film’s most powerful scenes come without the spoken word. The shot of the young Zhiren holding on tightly to his mother’s waist with his head against her back and eyes closed is a beautiful portrait of the strong mutual love and dependency that can only exist between a mother and a child. The shot is immediately followed by an equally memorable shot of Zhiren watching his mother from a corner as she does the laundry. The pained expression of the young child immaculately captures a child’s intuitive ability to feel the extent of his mother’s unconditional love for him. We see a similar expression from Desmond Tan later in the film, as the older Zhiren quietly watches his mother at the dinner table on the eve of his departure.

The film’s most unforgettable scene for many people will probably be the part when the young Zhiren sings the iconic song, “世上只有妈妈好” (or “Mother’s Love is the Greatest of All”) on stage during a concert. There is a beautiful shot of tears flowing down the mother’s lined face as she watch in quiet pride of her only son’s performance. Chue is fantastic in her facial expressions here. The song transitions into an original composition made for the film, in a soulful delivery by Desmond Tan. The entire musical sequence is a deeply moving tribute to maternal love.

I also enjoyed the numerous references to nature. Although many of them are rooted in Buddhist philosophy, the messages that are conveyed are secular and universal. The lotus, as a plant that is able to rise above the muddy waters and blossom untainted is a symbol of spiritual resilience and purity. Its hollow stem gives it the flexibility and strength to overcome the toughest of storms. Also represented is the notion of cycles, like those of nature itself. At one of the opening scenes of the film, we see the silhouette of Zhiren and his mother travelling on a bicycle across the rural landscape. Later in the film, we see the older Zhiren and his mother again in a similarly composed shot, except that they are travelling in a reverse direction. Similarly, the scene showing the young Zhiren and his mother at his school gate shown at the start of the film is repeated towards the end, with the camera moving in the opposite direction. The centrality of nature in the film’s imagery and narrative seems to suggest a maternal pantheism, as seen in how the characters seem to draw spiritual strength and wisdom from Mother Nature.

While the defining character of Little Note is its simplicity, it must certainly not be mistaken to be simplistic. In fact, the film is remarkably layered in meaning at many points in the narrative. In particular, the last two notes exchanged between the mother and son are poignantly ambivalent. Do the words express the sentiments of the writer or his or her hopes for its receiver?

Little Note has left me astonished by its beauty and simplicity. It speaks volumes even with the most minimal dialogue. Like the hand drawn heart at the end of each little note, the film possesses an unspectacular, unassuming and understated beauty of its own.

Little Note is now out on DVD and can be purchased at all major DVD stores. The DVD includes the trailer, The Making of Little Note, a photo gallery and 8 postcards.

Life in Excess: The Works of Jane Lee

The best artists are usually compulsive obsessives. They develop their entire oeuvre around a singular, fascinating expression which they painstakingly refine, reconfigure and redefine, ambitiously pushing the parameters of their artistic medium. This monomania would perhaps be a most appropriate diagnosis for Singaporean painter, Jane Lee.

The range of works at Jane Lee’s solo exhibition, now running at Osage Singapore, reflects the adventurous spirit of the fashion designer-turned artist and the sheer intensity of her personal engagement with her medium. Her landmark, monumental spectacle, Raw Canvas, left an indelible mark upon the audience at last year’s Singapore Biennale, with the multisensory feast that excite the most primordial of our sensual cravings. The work, formed by thick, voluminous, colourful swathes of paints made an impact on its viewers as much as it was unfortunately victimised by them. The tactile quality of the works was simply too tantalising for our hands to resist, whether to the philistine or the culture vulture.

Status (2009), Mixed media

The works on display at Osage similarly illustrate Lee’s sensitivity to textural sensations. The intricately layered rivulets of paint obliterates the presence of the canvas to create an autonomous, three-dimensional landscape. In fact, the works of Lee problematises simplistic medium categorisation, crossing the boundaries of painting, sculpture and installation. Paint is no longer a mythical representational medium in her work, but a physical entity in its own right. It demands us to approach it from different angles and perspectives, reflecting a distinctly sculptural aesthetic. The site specificity of most of her works also demands that we consider the physical and architectural space the work is situated in.

Detail of Status

In Status, the centrepiece of the exhibition, streams of red paint cascade in undulating fashion beyond the surface of the wall, spilling over to the floor as a miniature mountainous landscape of paint. However, the work moves beyond being a diorama of paint as it asserts an all-encompassing presence that is larger than life. This breathtaking quality of the work results from a brilliant choice of exhibition space and curatorial direction.

The work, standing at more than four metres high, is situated at the centre of a cavernous space, with the walls stretching to the firmament of the ceiling. The atmosphere resembles that of a cathedral, thus bestowing the work a commanding presence. The stark, saturated hues of red asserts its presence even more in the spatial emptiness that surrounds it. The red appears to spill out of a largely vacant, rectangular space where a canvas is suppose to be hung, appearing to swamp the surrounding white cube with its pulsating energy. The dimly illuminated environment strangely enhances the work’s colossal presence.

Such an interpretation comes across as deeply unsettling and sinister, which is antithetical to what others have commented about Lee’s works, variously describing it as “delicious” or even “creamy”. Herein lies the fascinating power of these layers of paint. Their provocative nature is attributed not only to the richly layered quality of the paint, but the concomitant layers of emotional experience they satisfyingly offer. There is terror yoked with beauty, and the grotesque mingled with the seductive.

Objecthood (2009), Oil on epoxy canvas

Examining the works in closer detail reminded me of an anecdote from Susan Miller’s Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion as I attempted to rationalise the undercurrents of disgust that I experienced. The book highlights a segment of David Denby’s In Darwin’s Wake, which describes the image of hundreds of sea lions on a shore – an image of an “oily, rolling and roaring fecundity”. In the perspective of the writer, the huge company of greasy, identical animals seems to have coagulated into one big, indistinctive and disgusting mass. Apparently, what disgusts us is not life which is base, but life in its “most rampant, creative and procreative forms”. We instinctively recoil from not what is regarded as deficient but what is seen as overly imbued with life.

Fetish VI (2009), Acrylic paint, acrylic gel on canvas (Image courtesy of Osage Gallery)

Lee’s paintings curiously corresponds to this sense of a “superlife”. The organic forms and the dominant use of red relates to the bodily and carnal. The iridescent streams of paint appear to flow ceaselessly with a seething, almost libidinal energy. (And a sexual reading of Lee’s work is not at all far-fetched, considering that one of her series of works is entitled “Fetish”.) Each runnel of paint, with its sparkling sheen, is teeming with its own sense of vibrancy. The thousands of interlocking streams are like micro sites of life that collectively forming a superorganism. The organic, undulating forms also appear to be in a perpetual state of slow, phlegmatic transmogrification, almost resembling uncanny formless organisms with no definite physicality. The overpowering smell of the paint, the irresistable tactile appeal of the surface and other sensual aspects of the works all contribute to create a work that is beyond what we can accept as “life”. Here, we see life in its unbridled excesses, exploding beyond the boundaries of the self that cannot contain its potency – simultaneously alluring and unsettling.

From left: Turned Out (2009), Acrylic paint on canvas, Folded Painting (2009), Acrylic paint on canvas and Bond II (2009), Mixed media (Images courtesy of Osage Gallery)

Lee’s works do not merely just offer satisfying emotional experiences, for they are also intelligent pieces of institutional critique. Works such as Turned Out, Folded Painting and Bond II reflect her dialogue with the institution of painting, as she redefines the utility of the canvas. The canvas is no longer regarded as the sanctified surface upon which another world is created. Lee abandons the notion of the canvas as a surface, demolishing and reconstituting it as a creative object. She cuts the painted canvas into thin strips to be remade into new forms, employing it like a piece of fabric, as structure instead of support. While the works’ captions deadpan “Acrylic paint on canvas”, the canvas that we are confronted with is a highly unfamiliar image. The canvas is still there, but it has been “turned out” and “folded”.

Purple Drape (2007), Mixed media on epoxy canvas (Image courtesy of Osage Gallery)

In other works, the canvas is invisible as it is entirely overwhelmed by the paint. The paint appears like a malleable piece of fabric, particularly with its undulating waves and creases, as seen in Purple Drape and her Denim series. This association with fabric is also reflective of the painter’s background as a fashion designer. She ditched fashion for fine art in 1998, approaching the new terrain of painting with an acute sensitivity of textures and a fresh, open-minded receptiveness towards new definitions of painting.

She cites American minimalist artist Robert Ryman as one of her influences, but I would think that her works are in fact the antithesis of his. For one, her works are the result of painstaking labour and a fastidious attention to textural details. Ryman’s works can hardly even compare in this respect.

More importantly, while Ryman’s white-on-white paintings have often been employed by critics as a sobering sign of painting’s internal exhaustion, Lee’s exuberant pieces celebrate the infinite possibilities of the medium. They are brimming with a life force that cannot be contained and are an affirmation of the fact that the power of painting lies beyond the borders of the canvas.

Jane Lee is an event of the Singapore Art Show 2009 and is currently on display at Osage Singapore from 26 September to 8 November 2009. Admission is free.