Arts Picks: Ideas of home in art; panels paired with Tang poetry

Homeland

Different notions of home by 27 artists are on show at Maya Gallery in Genting Lane for this timely exhibition, spanning traditional landscapes, mixed media, digital and photography works.

There is the intricate watercolour of Yusoff Abdul Latiff’s kampung idyll of a bygone Singapore, but also Maya Gallery co-founder Masturah Sha’ari’s own semi-abstract piece of bleak urban chaos, with lights from skyscrapers seen through a blizzard of black.

More humorously, Singapore-based Sangeeta Charan’s Vista depicts a house lifted into the clouds by balloons, evoking all the pop dreaminess of the memorable scene in the animated film Up (2009).

Then there is Jaleela Niaz’s mixed media on canvas that gives the impression of a luminous opal from afar, which, on closer examination, pulses with life with intertwining coral patterns in a deep blue sea – a less human-centric idea of home.

Masturah says that though most of the artists featured are Singapore-based, they were born in Australia, Brazil, India, Russia and Malaysia.

They offer a visually stimulating journey though different cultural perspectives and personal stories, and imbue the idea of home with love, and a sense of displacement and nostalgia.

As Singapore celebrates its 58th birthday, it is a good time to rethink this fundamental building block of society.

Where: Maya Gallery, 05-00, 57 Genting Lane
MRT: Potong Pasir/Mattar
When: Till Aug 18, Tuesdays to Sundays, noon to 6pm; closed on Mondays
Admission: Free
Info: 

www.mayagallery.com.sg

Ethereal Places

Vietnamese artist Ha Manh Thang, born in 1980, was once a satirist who juxtaposed images of old and new Vietnam.

But since 2016, he has favoured a more abstract style, achieving a sort of peace in his suffusive colourscapes.

His panels, paired with lines from Tang-era (618 to 906 AD) Chinese and Vietnamese poetry, have been curated for a solo exhibition aptly titled Ethereal Places at Richard Koh Fine Art’s Singapore gallery.

Thang’s creations, with personal titles such as Childhood Sweetheart, suspend time, seeking to contain a grander history in flux. Despite initial impressions of their placidity, they can be violently textural to look at close-up.

Where: Richard Koh Fine Art, 01-26 Gillman Barracks, 47 Malan Road
MRT: Labrador Park
When: Till Aug 26, 11am to 7pm; closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays
Admission: Free
Info: 

rkfineart.com/exhibition-location/singapore

Roy Lichtenstein-inspired Pop Art

Franco-Iranian artist Sepand Danesh’s father had an eye and part of his face removed due to cancer. The ordeal led to Sepand’s obsession with monocular vision.

Inspired by American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s flat images, Sepand uses characters that populate his works – from Donald Duck to possibly Lichtenstein himself – in his solo exhibition, In The Land Of The Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is Roy.

These figures are depicted as an assembly of cubes, an act of visual construction that reminds viewers of the conceit of perception, the brain recognising shapes and filling the act of looking with context.

By making the process blatant, the artist is also finding fun ways to escape the body.

He asks: “We are stuck on earth, in the body we inhabit, in the language we speak, in relationships, in jobs, in needs, and in the ideas that define us. We are stuck, sometimes in, sometimes out, whether we want it or not, whether we realise it or not. How to escape from it?” 

Where: Art Porters Gallery, 64 Spottiswoode Park Road
MRT: Outram Park
When: Till Aug 27, 10.30am to 7pm; closed on Mondays
Admission: Free
Info:

str.sg/i5Gs