Artist statement:

My main interest/concern is to question and challenge common visual perception and the shared concept of object and space in the practice of contemporary visual art. How we perceive the natural world and come to believe in it in our own individual ways fascinates me. In my work I tried to articulate the possibilities in the process of “perceiving” and “mis-perceiving” through a more personal and subjective approach, which is ultimately ambiguous and poetic. I create objects that occupy a distorted space within a visible space. As a sculptor and installation artist, I attempt to create a partially indefinable sculptural sensibility of the material world that is “realistic” and “imaginary” at the same time.

A Monsoon Season – An Installation

Title of individual art piece:

1)      #15, A Cloud, Her Shadow, and My Darkness. (Performance/sculpture)

2)      #20, A Cloud, Her Darkness, and My Rainforest. (Installation)

3)      #21, The Rainforest, Her Storm, and My Monsoon Season. (Installation)

4)      #21-a,The Rain of Singapore is Mischievous, a Sun Meets with a Black Cloud in a Monsoon Season, and I lost My Tears. (Performance)

5)      #22, A Sun, Her Shade, and My Mirage. (Performance/sculpture)

6)      #26, Three White Pillars and My Door. (Installation)

Brief Concept:

This would be an installation made up of several individual pieces of artworks. Through the theme of “A Monsoon Season”, I hope to present to the viewers a unique physical and visual experience, whereby my personal imagination of the encounters with objects in this “material” world is re-presented to them. In my own terms, I am making use of the evocativity of shapes and forms, the consistency of monochromes, the poetics of cast shadows, the tangibility and texture of objects, etc., to conjure up this very personal experience for the viewers.

Brief Description:

At the entrance to the installation, which would be an enclosed white space, will be the work #26 Three White Pillars and My Door. The “pillars” here will be made of thousands of white wool strips in which the viewers must literally step into and be immersed in a block of “darkness” before entering the installation “space”. This echoes my earlier concept of “becoming-space of object, becoming-object of space” – an enquiry into the properties of “objectness” and “spaceness”.

At the center of the space will be work #21, The Rainforest, Her Storm, and My Monsoon Season. This centerpiece, with its massive green wool strips, occupies and thus delineates and obscures the existence of the “space” here. It has a symbolic shape that would evoke the feel of the darkness of a rainforest, or possibly something else that is recalled from a viewer’s past memories and experiences. The title, The Rainforest, Her Storm, and My Monsoon Season, however, is a hint for viewers and it shows my wish to share a more personal experience of the rainstorm in the monsoon season in a tropical country. The awesome experience in the darkness of rainforest is especially important to me, and I therefore would like to invite the viewers to go into the Darkness that is contributed by the densely arranged green wool strips – the rain, the “space”, the “object”. I would like to see the viewers being lost physically and psychologically in that tangible ‘darkness’.

Work #21-a, the rain of Singapore is mischievous, a Sun Meets With a Black Cloud in a Monsoon Season, and I lost my tears, will involve a performance where two performers interact with the works as well as the viewers in within the installation space. One of the performers would be #15, A Cloud, Her Shadow, and My Darkness, which will be the performer wearing the “shadow” - a black knitted fabric. The other is #22, A Sun, Her Shade, and My Mirage, where the performer will wear a red knitted fabric. These two rather organic “objects” are to move around, “appear” and “disappear”, “exist” and “extinguish” from within the “objects” in the installation space itself. It is hope that their unexpected first emergence from these “objects”, together with a almost choreographed-like, slow and squirmy movements, will give the viewers a visual and psychological impact, and eventually to evoke a poetic sensibility in them.

#29, Two Porcelain Plates, The Last Supper, and Our Chairs In A Night Of Monsoon Season.

I aim to explore the metaphor of ‘distance’ in contemporary urban life. Man has created objects as implements to resolve the living issues and the problems, these gradually constituted the format of our living methods. In this proposal, the dysfunction of a table as a liquid filled table top, the overlapping of two chairs that are sharing a liquid filled chair top, the constancy of changing ‘distance’ between two floating plates, these are the unique elements of visual illusions that I would like to demonstrate to the viewers. I aim to construct a ‘misleading circumstance’ that goes beyond the accepted phenomena of object-adoption in the human world. The “monsoon season” in the title suggests a set, specific location of the event while the coincidental familiarity of the long table which is reminiscent of Da Vinci’s Last Supper attempt to struck a mental discordant in the viewers mind. The inconsistency of the liquid is psychological disturbing and is a metaphor of the fluidity of human mind, it is the main element which could evoke a sense of “staining” at any time.

Concept Brief:

Two key ideas:

1) Natural Phenomenon and its Relevance to Cosmopolitan Energy

The interaction between Tree/Wind/Rain/Cloud symbolizes the dynamism of natural cycle in the tropical rainforest. The coherence of these organic shapes (Cloud/Tree/Shadow) connotes nature’s transformability. This vigorous interplay between the joyful forms is metaphorical of the vitality of cosmopolitan life.

2) The Lost Tree

The felling of the last Hopea Sangal* tree of Singapore in 2002 was one regretful event in the rival between urban development and natural preservation. I wish to re-erect an eternal Hopel Sangal tree in a modern habitat such as The Sail @ Marina Bay.

*http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/heritage/changi/changitrees/hopeasangal-20nov2002/firstpage.html

Peranakan II

- The Humble Form

(27th Jan - 6th feb. 2005)

NAFA Gallery 1 & 2

Title: #23, two drawers, her blood, and my marriage in a monsoon season.

I aim to explore the idea of ‘mixed blood’ symbolically and poetically. Two drawers have been withdrawn from two red tables and eventually overlapped each other visually. An ambiguous green object is floating on the red oil. I intend to re-create a ‘game table’ that invites the viewers to intervene the current of blood by blowing (monsoon season) the floating object (an ambiguous object that could be identified as cell/ a falling tree/ bubble/ cloud etc.) go through the route of the drawers (memories/culture/etc.) between the tables.

I intend to re-invent a social event through the presentation of a game table. I am presenting a game table that reviews the rules and regulations in cross-cultural issue.


				*cheekiong _Yeo* *My Monsoon Season*



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