Singapore arts guide (Sept 16 to 23): Indian master M.F. Husain leads AstaGuru’s first S’pore sale

AstaGuru exhibition

India’s leading online auction house AstaGuru is on an aggressive expansion path.

It opened its first international office in London in May and Singapore is its second outpost, before the US branch opens in the first quarter of 2027.

As its first event, the auction house, which commands about 40 per cent of India’s auction market, is holding a public exhibition of four modern Indian masters.

More than 20 works offer a capsule introduction at AstaGuru’s new offices in Winsland House II in Somerset. The quartet is M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Krishen Khanna – a key trio in the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group – and South Indian artist Thota Vaikuntam.

AstaGuru is betting on them resonating with collectors here. For Khanna, it has selected his series of bandwallas, or Indian wedding brass-band musicians. Depicted faceless and downcast, they immediately become easy points of emotional sympathy.

There are other points of unexpected resonance.

Gallery assistant Sneha Chaudhury theorises that the colourful rural figures by Vaikuntam, with their intricate hand gestures, colourful saris and bindis, are instantly recognisable to Singaporeans because of the large South Indian community here.

Vaikuntam’s figures are both sinuous and statuesque, redolent of temple deities. Yet, his mask-like segmentation of their faces, adorned with impeccably expressive eyes, imbue each with a unique liveliness. They are wont to grow in appeal the longer one looks.

There is also an earthy 2m-tall painting of Buddha by Husain, given its own niche.

At the turn of the millennium, the artist’s Theorama series depicting 10 major world religions was embraced by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a symbol of world peace, with two pieces displayed at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Here, the Buddha is armless and extends beyond the frame – a trunk of enlightenment that mirrors what looks like the essence of a Bodhi tree behind.

Sneha says: “All of these artists, in some way or other, have been inspired by their lives in India. India is a microcosm of lived realities where we coexist every day with gods and our demons, the most enlightened person and the common man.”

Where: 07-04/04A Winsland House II, 163 Penang Road
When: Till Oct 23, 10am to 6pm, by appointment
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/wQMYL

Pulse 2

Some of the most exciting approaches to art in the region can be discovered at Haridas Contemporary in Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

Pulse 2 is the second instalment of the art gallery’s biennial exhibition spotlighting understated and new artistic practices here and in South-east Asia.

One to watch is the 26-year-old Indonesian artist Suliswanto Urubingwaru, whose paintings have a morbidity to them, peopled by slender, stretched-out figures not out of place in the world of Japanese author Haruki Murakami or American film-maker Tim Burton.

As efforts at parsing his own psyche, they are mythologically rich, from a shadow figure looming over a dead snake – a bright orange cube behind him insisting upon the viewer like a mini-Mark Rothko – to girls gazing into each other’s eyes, which he says is an expression of his anima, or inner feminine. Each bears a ruminative quality that is the intriguing side of self-indulgence.

The Singapore artists include Dana Lam, who at 73 just held her first solo exhibition at arts space T:>Works, and Aiman, whose heartfelt paintings of layered scraps are bundled up into gifts of memory. Other works include Genevieve Leong’s assemblages of found objects like brooms with her own ceramics, Farizwan Fajari’s enmeshed organs of alien botany, and Joey Leung’s stitching of market charts into atmospheric Chinese-style landscapes.

On the floor is Singapore-based Indonesian artist Cynthia Delaney Suwito’s potted plant towers, with leaves made from cut photographs of abandoned plastic pots. It is the artist’s jibe at Singapore’s attempts to tame nature in its high-rise buildings. Yet stacked like this, they resemble a different kind of hybrid tower – “permanently brown yet perpetually flourishing”, the artist writes in a statement. Whether this limbo state is laudatory is up to the viewer.

Where: 4-01F Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 37 Keppel Road
When: Till Oct 11, Thursdays to Saturdays, noon to 7pm; Sundays, noon to 5pm; closed on Mondays and Tuesdays; Wednesdays by appointment only
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/7YFU

Ye – Echoes Beyond Time

The Singapore Chinese Dance Theatre presents a one-night-only double bill at the Drama Centre Theatre. Both are tributes – the first to Ah Ma, or Grandma, and the second to the Chinese craft of paper cutting.

Ah Ma is conceived by creative director Benedict Soh and is an ode to the silent women whose love and labour held their families together.

Cut: Through Shadows And Light is choreographed by artistic director Neo Jenny, honouring the forgotten artisans who never shouted about their craft.

Soh says he wanted his dancers to simply be human onstage in Ah Ma. “The gestures are drawn from everyday life – the way a grandmother folds clothes, the way she waits by the door.”

Ye – Echoes Beyond Time is part of the 12-year-old group’s 2026/2027 season centred on the Chinese character “ye”, denoting the resilient flame that burns in each person.

Where: Drama Centre Theatre, 03-01 National Library, 100 Victoria Street
When: Sept 19, 7.45pm
Admission: $35 and $45 (eligible for Culture Pass credits)
Info: str.sg/BmMe