Arts Picks: Three playful art exhibitions that defy the norm
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Cultural Medallion recipient Teo Eng Seng plays with paper and plastic in his solo exhibition at The Columns Gallery.
PHOTO: AHMAD ISKANDAR
Teo Eng Seng: 50 Years Of Defying The Norm
Half a century of Teo Eng Seng’s playful defiance is encapsulated in the first room of the Cultural Medallion recipient’s newest solo exhibition at The Columns Gallery.
His abstract oil painting of Central Park in New York City – already a rebellion against figurative realism – manages to look tame beside Picnic (1981), one of his earliest creations using a dyed and sculpted papier-mache technique he invented to answer critics who compared him with Western artists.
Teo, who has spent his career expanding the possibilities of his “paperdyesculp” medium, says: “If you start on something, you must stretch it. Otherwise, nobody knows what you are doing because there is no development.”
Cultural Medallion recipient Teo Eng Seng works with unconventional materials, including fishnets and dialysis bags.
PHOTO: THE COLUMNS GALLERY
If this show is any indication, the 84-year-old is still stretching his practice. His newest works from 2023 – a series of 12 dialysis bags caked in paperdyesculp and enamel paint – reflect a preoccupation with illness and waste.
Teo, who is creating new work for an upcoming major exhibition, wants to turn dialysis bags into a sculpture. “My next step would be giving the viewer something three-dimensional. I’ll tear it up, hammer it, nail it and screw it.”
Where: The Columns Gallery, 01-35 Gillman Barracks, 22 Lock Road
MRT: Labrador Park
When: Till July 15, 11am to 7pm, Tuesdays to Fridays; noon to 6pm, weekends; closed on Mondays and public holidays
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/i3Mj
While You Are Sleeping… at The Culture Story
Works by Singapore artists Sookoon Ang, Tang Da Wu, Darren Soh and Sufian Samsiyar are on show at The Culture Story.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
Surrealist techniques may be standard fare in art-making today, but what of surrealist methods of curating an art exhibition?
A new show organised by independent curator Charmaine Toh at The Culture Story puts that to the test.
Instead of the usual historical or thematic exhibitions, While You Are Sleeping… displays artworks based on a dream-like association of shapes, colours and sensations.
Ms Toh, a former National Gallery Singapore curator, says this is the first time she is curating in this unusual manner. She compares her method with the early 20th-century surrealist technique of the “exquisite corpse”, where formal features in one work lead her to select the next.
Thus, two fleshy pairs of lips – an untitled ink-on-paper work by veteran artist Tang Da Wu that has never been exhibited – led Toh to artist Sookoon Ang’s Immortality V (2018), a flower-shaped floor sculpture resembling the lip’s membrane.
Sufian Samsiyar’s Zut Alors! (2021) at an artists’ group show While You Are sleeping... presented by The Culture Story.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
The motley crew of artists on show is rounded off by artist Sufian Samsiyar and photographer Darren Soh. Both their works offer surreal visions of Singapore’s urban and natural landscapes.
“There is this anxiety where you look at a piece of contemporary art and you are always wanting to know what it means,” says Ms Toh, who wants visitors to focus instead on the sensations in the artwork and not fixate on lengthy walls of text, of which there are none.
The result is an eclectic show which requires the viewer to trust the exhibition’s dream logic. What the viewer gets out of it is what he or she makes of it.
Where: The Culture Story, 03-06 Thye Hong Centre, 2 Leng Kee Road
MRT: Redhill
When: Till Aug 31 by appointment only.
Admission: Free
Info: theculturestory.co
Rainbow Families: Dear Home
A diorama-making workshop invites participants to respond to the idea of home, will take place on Saturday and Sunday.
PHOTO: RAINBOW FAMILIES
Arranged to resemble a tiny apartment equipped with a living room, kitchen and a study, Rainbow Families: Dear Home is a thoughtful window into different understandings of home that LGBTQ+ Singaporeans have and want.
Queer children, parents and social workers are brought together to discuss various forms of familial acceptance in a 30-minute documentary film titled Conversing Acceptance, which plays in the living room.
Visitors are invited to pen letters to themselves or their family members in the study, where a bedroom aroma by indie scent-maker Crys Knick Knacks wafts.
A note on display by someone anonymous to his parents says: “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have moved in with my partner, who is a guy, and we are happy living together and sleeping in the same room (yes, the same room).”
Mr Koh Zhi Kai, project lead at advocacy group Rainbow Families, says: “Acceptance, like gender and sexuality, is not binary. We want to create spaces where LGBTQ+ individuals and their families can navigate meaningful conversations on love and acceptance.”
On Saturday and Sunday, between 3 and 5pm, visitors can participate in a diorama-making workshop that responds to the idea of home as part of a community art installation, It Takes A Kampung.
The exhibition is ongoing at Projector X: Picturehouse, where the indie cinema’s annual LGBTQ+ film festival Pink Screen is on show.
Where: Projector X: Picturehouse, 05-01 The Cathay, 2 Handy Road
MRT: Dhoby Ghaut
When: Till Sunday, 4 to 9.30pm, weekdays; 1 to 11pm, weekends
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/i3My
Correction note: An earlier version of the story said that Tang Da Wu is a recipient of the Cultural Medallion. This is incorrect. We are sorry for the error.
