Silence By Tung Yue Nang

This exhibition runs for ten days from the 21st of June 2014 to 30 June 2014 at the Cape of Good Hope Gallery.

It's been a while since Tung Yue Nang has had an exhibition, the last one being in 2003. I think that was another showing of his realistic Baba & Nonya series. Afterwhich he was in the wilderness, doing photography and travelling. He did a series on Saigon for White Canvas gallery which wasn't very impressive. I felt it was more of experimental works.

In 2011 and 2012, he started repainting the Singapore River / Chinatown scenes similar to the 2002 Chinatown My Chinatown series. This time, the few works that he did had less colour and more dark wash and darker ink strokes. From there I think he went on to do pure Chinese ink, brushing and washing. And this series was painted en plein air, spending many early mornings on the streets of Chinatown and the Singapore River. He also did alot of research about Chinatown and how people lived there and he absorbed the whole hustle and bustle of Chinatown. He also managed to capture the tranquility of the Singapore River and the activities of Singapore, as opposed to the earlier series where his emphasis was on how Chinatown is modernising and the juxtaposition of the old and new is more obvious.

The result is this brilliant series of paintings; mainly 97x97cm or 49x97cm. There was a big 97 x 180cm and 2 small vertical pieces of 97x49cm.

His ability to work in this way with Chinese ink is unique, he has good understanding of visual perception principles and good compositional skills. If you look carefully at some of Tung's paintings you can catch some of his quirkiness.

Very Very Versatile artist, able to do this series and at the other extreme, the realistic series of Baba & Nonya and his One series. Great photographer too.

And if you were lucky to be at the opening, the generous Mr Terence Teo gave away free copies of the Silence Book, a hard-cover 136pg book to all present.

Bliss

Simple Life 

In the flesh the painting is much better, painting's emphasis here was the lighting in the painting

Artist talk (L-R) Terence Teo, Tung Yue Nang, Choy Weng Yang, Lim Tze Peng

Points for Collectors: Tung Yue Nang is a Strong Buy rating. He has sold many of his previous works, like the Baba Nonya series. However, this was placed with many galleries and till this day some of those works are still available. But under the guidance of Mr Teo (a painter himself and someone who knows about the fine art market), Tung has been pointed in the right direction. At the VIP preview last night, quite a lot of works have been sold already. And many of his pieces not at this exhibition but featured in the book, had already been sold since the 2nd half of last year. Mr Teo is good as he is not directing Tung to paint to sell but to paint to challenge himself and to produce brilliant works and that's all. Further with the Cape of Good Hope having access to serious art collectors who are able to recognise these non-commercial pieces, he has managed to help place some of the pieces into these collections. This is the precise reason why an artist should stick to a gallerist who will help develop him. Tung's exhibition managed to be featured in Business Times, Lian He Zao Bao, and also a radio interview with 95.8fm.

This Weekend and next

Rather a slow weekend. But went down to Gillman Barracks to check out

1. Italian Arts - Partners and Mucciaccia. It runs from 4th June 2014 to 2nd Sept 2014. It's a mishmash of their artists and their art from previous exhibitions. A few good works to see. You can catch a couple of Ventrone pieces there.

2. Sebastio Salgado - Sundaram Tagore Gallery (20th May to 3rd August 2014). The Gallery is showing a mini retrospective of Salgado's works spanning the last 25 years. Including works from his Migration, Genesis and Workers series. The works were picked by Salgado so that they don't mirror any images at the Genesis show at the National Museum.

3. One Afternoon -Zhou ZiXi Solo exhibition - Shangart Gallery (24th May to 7th July 2014). I think the gallery is showing about 8 - 10 of his pieces. Found the paintings to be ok and interpretation of subject matter ok only.

 4. Simplicity: A solo exhibition of Zhu JinShi - Pearl Lam gallery (28th May 2014 to 13th July 2014). At show is this giant installation of Xuan Paper rolled up and stacked to form a 'mini great wall' in the gallery. There are also paintings done in his style where he uses the Impasto painting techinque, but he layers them on really thick (few inches thick). Don't think the paint is fully dried yet as the oil paint smell permeated the gallery. His colour palette doesn't quite sit with me, as I found it jarring rather then harmonious. Thus the first piece the you see, the mainly black Di/Triptych, is the nicest one. Mainly black but with little spots of colours here and there enough to please the eye/mind.

Xuan Paper Installation

5. King For A Day - Equator Arts Project - This weekend it was May Lim's turn to turn the project room into her space. We managed to catch her beautifying the wall. Her drawings are much better and more impactful when drawn on a larger scale.

Anyway looking forward to next weekend.

Tung Yue Nang's Opening of Silence at the Cape of Good Hope Gallery next Saturday 21st June 2014 at 1530hrs. It's been over ten years since he has held an exhibition.

Terra Incognita - Valerie Ng

This exhibition by abstract artist Valerie Ng runs from the 6th of June 2014 to 21st June 2014 at Maya Gallery.

This body of work is different from her older works where the palette of each piece is in tonal harmony. Currently these body of works are much brighter, with bolder colours and with more focus on composition rather then pure abstract expressionism.

Good advancement of works by Valerie Ng. Her works could still benefit from some tonal adjustment because for some of the works you have to squint(to let less light in) to fully appreciate the painting.

The two best works are:

Air Bark and Geo Strata.

Air Bark

Geo Strata

Doesn't look very impressive here, because the pictures bring the saturation down but they look very much better and appealing in the flesh. So some of the brighter /bolder paintings look better in the website then in the flesh because of this.

Points for Collectors: Valerie Ng - Can buy if you are into abstract art. Quite fair price points.

Beautiful Stories: Chapter One - Eric Chan

This exhibition will be held at ChanHampe Galleries from 6th June 2014 to 6th July 2014.

It has been a while since Eric Chan's had an exhibition in Singapore. This series presents a curious selection of narratives - read more here.

This series is typical Eric Chan with blurred images, flowers, animals and the human figure but presented in a fresh light. His current series is definitely not as dark as his previous works. And Eric Chan's unique painterly skills are evident in this body of work. His control of tone is excellent and with his gifted eye and understanding of colours he is able to produce these rich works. Very talented artist.

The two best works of the series are Dream and Voyeur. And the most entertaining would be Death by Earl Grey.

Dream

Voyeur

Death by Earl Grey

Dream (foreground) Shadow and Light (back ground)

More works

You should definitely go and check out his works.The gallerists at ChanHampe are most amiable and welcoming.

Points for Collectors: Eric Chan is a definite BUY. Think a couple of works have been sold and there have been expressions of interest in the pieces. Eric Chan's work has been acquired by quite a few collectors and his pieces have traded hands at auctions. Smallest work is 120cm x 120cm; only big works for serious collectors here.

King for a day - Equator Arts Project

This exhibition runs from 30th May 2014 to 22nd June 2014.

It's a group exhibition featuring 7 invited artists recommended by locally based artists whom Tony Godfrey contacted. The criteria was up to 3 years post graduation from art school, be it Dip, BFA or MFA.

The 7 artists are Filip Gudovic, Kray Chen, Victoria Aravindhan, Godwin Koay, Lau Eng Seng, May Lim and Bach Zainol.

The more interesting pieces would be:

1. Filip Gudovic's painting entitled Humanoid chewing gum. Nice abstract piece. As mentioned in the post on Departure, Filip Gudovic is an abstract artist to watch.

Filip Gudovic's Humanoid chewing gum

2. Kray Chen's video art: I will still be climbing the next time you come back. Kray is a brilliant video artist. This one is from his exercise series. His other 'food' series and the queuing up series of videos are excellent. Definitely passes the one minute test.

Kray Chen's I will still be climbing the next time you come back

3. Lau Eng Seng's series of pictures of new buildings and a negative white space representing the old buildings juxtaposed against the new. To bring to mind urban changes.

Lau Eng Seng's works

In addition to the main exhibits, the 7 artists are given 2 days to use the galleries' project room  to present their own solo project.

Points for collectors: Good to go and see these artists that are just starting out. More an entertaining exhibition for the artists and the art faculties. 

New Sensibilities in Sculpture and Painting

The above exhibition is held at Yeo WorkShop at Gillmann Barracks from the 31st May 2014 till 27th July 2014.

The exhibitions features 4 artists

1. Atsushi Koyama - He presented a series of paintings based on this MetaMachine/ Man Machine series. Basically machine parts or gears painted in multicolour with human hands/parts juxtaposed against it. Interesting; supposed to show his training (BSc) in maths and Art (BFA oil painting).

Atsushi Koyama Undefined #9

2. Haruki Kogawa - Painted brilliant works of abstract. Love the colour palette,depth, impact, rhythm, sequence and the overall feel of the painting. Great abstract painter.

Haruki Kogawa Accumulations of Rhythm II

3. Taisuke Mohri - Another brilliant artist. The works he presented are pencil on paper with overlay of cracked glass to go with the drawing. Very photorealistic. If you didn't inspect it closely, you would just think that it's another black and white photo.

Taisuke Mohri Portrait #3

4. Zul Mahmod - Presented a sound installation which I think is called No Substance (first phase). Made up of stuff you get from a chemistry lab;funnels, pipettes, burette stands, test tubes and these are set up as percussion instruments which are set off by electromagnets against springs and controlled by a central computer/processor. The music is more rhythmic then a tonal type of production. Interesting the way he does it. But the work doesn't look conservable, so it's useful for now i.e. a company buying it for use now. Otherwise only for the serious collector who will be willing to pay a good amount in maintenance and restoration. But loads of effort and the end result is definitely aesthetically pleasing.

Points for Collectors: All four brilliant artists. Go and check it out. No lousy pieces of art here. Can definitely buy Haruki Kogawa, Taisuke Mohri and Zul Mahmod's work. 

No Country: Contemporary Art for South and South East Asia

This exhibition opened from the 10th of May 2014 and runs till the 20th July 2014. It is actually a touring exhibition of what was initially presented at the S.R.Guggenheim Museum NY in 2013. The actual collection is larger then what is shown here. You can view the collection online here. The UBS MAP purchase fund is working on acquiring works from 3 geographic regions - Middle East and Africa, Latin America and South/ South East Asia and as the title suggests this is the South/ South East Asian part.

Norbeto Rodan's F16

The two best works of art that were on display was Norbeto Rodan's F16 and Tang Da Wu's Our Children.

Tang Da Wu's Our Children

You should try to catch this show before it ends since it's free anyway and there is a free shuttle bus from the Singapore Art Museum to CCA at 3pm on Saturdays.

The collection is typical of what a museum will collect and seeing it doesn't spring any surprises. Good works of art though, good blend of video, photos, paintings and installations. But I prefer solo or smaller group exhibitions where you get to see the context in which the art was created and try to understand the art and the artist (not that you can't do that here). Whereas this show is a curated show and you have to get yourself into the mindset of the curator to see how the various art works fit into the exhibition. (and I think there has been sort of a curatorial overload/overuse)

From CCA :
"This exhibition, curated by June Yap, invites audiences to engage with some of the region's most inventive artists. No Country calls for a closer examination of the ways in which South and Southeast Asia's cultures and the relationships between them are represented, proposing a renewed understanding that transcends physical and political boundaries. Grouped according to four themes - relfection and encounter, intersections and dualities, diversities and divisions, and the desire for unity and community- the works in No Country explore the region's complex aesthetic, economic, historical and political territories."

Gillman Barracks as we all know are actually barracks and not recent buildings built specifically for a museum so the acoustics in the CCA aren't every good and as you walk about you can hear the multiple soundtracks from the various Video Art even though they are in separate darkened rooms and that one video art that was in the open. Quite distracting unless the curator wanted to achieve the effect of a noisy native market, then well done.

Points for collectors: Go and catch the art. Interesting to see what the curator is thinking. And with that in mind, your collection should go about with a focus so that you become the curator of your own collection.