Monkey Business - Justin Loke and Samuel Chen

This exhibition is held from 28th July 2016 to 14th August 2016 at Chan Hampe Galleries at Raffles Hotel Arcade.

This exhibition has to do with Chen Wen Hsi's Gibbons and all those fakes floating around. It questions whether authorship is important and  that a good painting/fake is good regardless, and should tagging it really affect its value.

It's a good topic to bring up. And to make the painting more attractive and relatable to the general audience he makes the Gibbons do modern things like take public transport, gambling, queueing for 4d.....

Interesting concepts. Ok paintings I guess. Don't think their ink painting skill level is very high though.

Points for collectors: Justin Loke is a buy rating. We like his other works, but I will give this series a miss. Samuel Chen not sure.

In Silence - Ezzam Rahman, Zen Teh and others

This exhibition is held from 14th July to 4th September 2016 at Pearl Lam Galleries over at Gillman barracks.

Think this is the first time Pearl Lam Galleries is featuring young Singaporean artists. This show's theme was in relationship to Bali's Nyepi day.The artists featured are Golnaz Fathi, Jenny Holzer, Sayaka Ishizuka, Qian Jiahua, Melati Suryodarmo, Tao Hui, Zen Teh and Ezzam Rahman.

And we here at Paintings at the Exhibition, mainly featuring things local, will just talk about Ezzam Rahman and Zen Teh.

Ezzam Rahman showed more of his nasty skin works. This time he painted them and they didn't look so icky. It still looks good and interesting, even alluring in their receptacles. But then how long can he do his skin works? So he showed some photos which were interesting. Presented well with the skin works.

Zen Teh showed more of her concrete works, showing 3 pieces. Think one was shown during art stage. But this time they were hung 3 in a row on the wall. Impressive compared with just lying it on the floor. Think it has to do with the old Tanjong Pagar railway station and the green corridor. The concrete against the small strip of photograph inlayed into the concrete. She also showed a new piece Dual|Duel, three pieces of perspex cut into triangles, with a mirrored surface and the back of it a photo of water/sea. It has to do with Schizophrenia and mental health, and looking into the mirror you see fragment images, reflections of the sea and yourself. Very interesting work. Zen Teh is mainly a photographer, and I think she is not familiar and hasn't worked too much with these materials. You can see certain faults, stuff and issues that I have with it. Nothing wrong with the concepts. Pizza Queen loves it and would rate it a 10/10. But just that the work is let down by the quality of the finish.

Points for Collectors: Ezzam Rahman is a buy. He is loved by the art gods and is in the main stream. Zen Teh is a buy too. But we feel that she is overpriced, if not she would receive a strong buy. She is a relatively young artist, born 1988. The works are editioned and not piece unique. A point to support the price is that the material cost is higher and think that the concrete work has to be outsourced. So you decide. But she is definitely doing/ has done interesting works and has interesting concepts. i.e. her photographic scroll featured at Spot Art and works which she did during her residency in Thailand. We are definitely fans of hers.

Emergence - Kayleigh Goh, Raymond Wu, Leow Weili, Doreen Chua, Cassandra Goh and Deveshi Goswami

This exhibition is held from 15/7/2016 to 20/7/2016 at Canvas Gallery by Immagini Gallery.

This exhibition features 6 new graduates from LaSalle.

Kayleigh Goh did painting with concrete. Nice pieces. Not sure of whether the concrete can stay on the canvas or board in the long term. But interesting work.

Raymond Wu produced chemigrams, where he painted on Silver Gelatin Print Paper. And the substances which he used to paint/apply on the paper, affected the silver's reaction to light (promoting it or resisting it) and produced these images, which some say look like watercolor works.

Deveshi Goswami

Kayleigh Goh

Leow Weili

Cassandra Koh

Raymond Wu

Doreen Chua

Points for collectors: Works were priced correctly for recent graduates. Kayleigh and Raymond Wu caught our eyes. The rest were ok, however they are too early in their career to give them a proper rating.

Urban Sense - Tam Kwan Yuen

This exhibition is held from 9th to 24th July 2016 at ChanHampe Galleries at Raffles Hotel.

Tam Kwan Yuen has recently been awarded by the American Watercolor society in their latest show and it's a recognition of his talent.

This series he presented more of Singapore's Urban Landscape mainly around the waterfront/ Esplanade area.

Nice series of paintings. Definitely above average. Have seen better and more meticulous works from him. But still good works though. And he dares to do another big 1x1.8 metre piece, which is very rare for a watercolourist.

Points for Collectors: Tam is a buy rating. Interesting works. But just have to see how he progresses, because when painting scenes, trying to vary it up by changing the focus from the landscape/buildings to people to the mood/lighting can be captivating only for a while.

The World Surrounding an Indoor Plant - John Clang

This exhibition is on from 2nd July 2016 to 4th September 2016 at FOST gallery over at Gillman Barracks.

Am a fan of John Clang's work. Have seen quite a few of works and he is definitely a good photographer and presents interesting works.

This time he presented works about memories/ impressions. He used photographs and projected them, used charcoal to draw the image with the projected image to guide him to create a drawing / impression. Then he photographed it and printed it onto aluminium.

Was an interesting concept. He definitely has good concepts. But he isn't quite a good 'drawer' and the eventual result wasn't really that good. Think as of today only one was sold, think it was the 'Bird's eye view of an eternal sunshine' and this one didn't include any figurative drawing but a landscape. Hence the lack of finesse in his drawing ability isn't obvious.

He also showed video projections onto a postcard size paper. Was ok only. Pizza Queen wasn't too impressed.

Points for Collectors: John Clang is a buy / Strong buy rating. But I would give this series a miss. Another thing is that either the Gallery/ Artist has decided on tier edition pricing. The pieces come in 3 editions and 2 AP. The first is the cheapest and the price goes up as more is sold. Not a fan of this system. Think it's more useful for commercial photographers to earn more money on their nicer pieces. i.e everybody loves photographer A's picture of a rose, so that is in demand and he sells more and because its more popular /nice he can earn more from it. And also sort of limits the run of the work by increasing price and lowering demand.  Anyway you can read a lot more of this discussion, i.e. pros and cons on the net. Interesting read here and another one here about Peter Lik's photography. I don't mind if the prices go up with time as the artist's stature progresses, think this would be a better way to go. It's also the way I feel when an artist prices works of the same size differently. 

PSA - Public Service Announcement

Just to give you a heads up.

30th July 2016 -31st August Mizuma Gallery will be showing Liminal State, featuring Eunice Lim, Wong Kel Win, Lavender Chang, Leonard Yang and Stephanie Burt. Should be interesting - please catch it.

Tam Kwan Yuen will have a show at Chan Hampe Gallery and will open this Saturday.

16th July 2016 - There will be an artist talk for Petrichor at Shophouse 5 at Geylang Lor 24a. (don't go wrong Lorong)

John Clang's show at FOST gallery is also on now.

And in September, FOST gallery will also feature Eric Chan's solo exhibition.

14th July 2016 - Zen Teh and Ezzam Rahman will feature in a group exhibition at Pearl Lam's place.

-End of announcement-

LOL.

Petrichor - Melissa Tan, Ruben Pang, Chong Weixin, Ashley Yeo,Gabriele Dini and Gabriela Butti

This exhibition is held from 1st July to 31st July 2016 at Chan Hampe's Shophouse 5 at Geylang.

This show is curated by Ruben Pang and he gathered some of his peers to produce works and critique each other. And I guess it has to revolve around or be related to the Petrichor theme/title.

Ruben Pang produced some small works on canvas, very much like those pieces done at Art Stage. These three were good, but have seen better works from him.

The headliner/show stopper was Melissa Tan's piece Dream Logic in Situ. I felt it was a culmination of her works from "And the darkest hour is just before dawn", "Arc of uncertainities" and similar sculptural forms of the cut outs presented at Art Stage 2015. What to say, it was really a lovely piece with much attention to detail.

Ashley Yeo produced some small format works, a departure from her drawings which was refreshing, but unfortunately drowned by the rest.

Gabriele Dini produced one piece made of bubble gum, colourant and sea-salt. Interesting but like Ashley's works, unfortunately drowned out too.

Chong Weixin did an installation of a print on Silk-Cotton, it was 4.5m long and draped from the ceiling in the centre of the room, people did notice it but didn't catch your attention like Melissa Tan's work.

Gabriela Butti's works were really nice and interesting too. She showed light boxes or works which were back lit. Nice works.

Ruben Pang's works

Ruben Pang's work

Melissa Tan's work

Ashley Yeo's Work

Gabriela Butti's work

Gabriela Butti's work

Chong Weixin's work

Gabriele Dini's work

Points for collectors: Like I have mentioned previously, Melissa Tan is one to watch. Strong buy rating for her. Her work was sold on opening night. Ruben's works were all pre-sold. Strong buy rating for him too. Ashley Yeo is still one to watch, so I give her a buy rating, but we have to see how she develops. Still really love her cut-outs. Chong Weixin is a printmaker, haven't seen much of her works to give her a fair rating. Gabriela Butti I would give a buy rating. Gabriele Dini, I am also unable to give him a fair assessment based on just this work.

Of Cuckoos and Sparrows - Various

This exhibition is held from 16th June to 26th June 2016 over at DECK at Prinsep Street.

This exhibition showed 9 different artists.

1. Allison M. Low
2. Dan Wong
3. Ho Wai Kit
4. Lee Xinli
5. Lim Qi Xuan
6. Mary Bernadette Lee
7. Nur Aida Sa'ad
8. Tay Kaiyee
9. Teresa Lim

The concept of the exhibition is to have the artists 'mimic' each other's work, so it was quite fun to see artists' works with a recognisable style, being reinterpreted by other artists with their own recognisable styles. Some were introspective or commentary-like and made me thoughtful, while others had a sense of humour and made me smile.

Some of the artists are illustrators so it was interesting to see their art. I particularly liked Lee Xin Lee's "World's Best Airport".

Lim Qi Xuan's "Peter Pan" was also really something, because it was initially disturbing but you develop this morbid fascination with it that eventually turns into a positive liking.