Ultimate by Wee Aik Chuan is my favourite. I voted for it enthusiastically, partially because I wanted to express my appreciation and a ‘smaller’ part fuelled by hopes to win $500 Dome Café vouchers. (Keeping my fingers crossed!)
Now into its 3rd edition, the biennial Singapore Art Show showcases the diversity of visual arts in Singapore, featuring outstanding art created by local and Singapore-based artists. The theme of this year’s exhibition is ART BUFFET SINGAPORE! Before you get the wrong idea, stop thinking about food, because it isn’t entirely on it! Rather, it is a collective term to express the variety of themes featured; Food, Material, Ritual, Spectrum, Signs, Gesture, Craft, Body, Time, Space, Order and Humour.
Today, my visit to Singapore Art Museum exposed me to four of the 12 themes. As the museum doesn’t allow cameras, this post will not be as visually attractive as I would liked, sorry guys!
Blink by George Wong Yung Choon, an Archival Piezographic print, ought to resonate with most Singaporeans, yet my first impression was; two blinding white lights amidst pitch-black surroundings. Well I was certainly mistaken! Anna (a friendly trilingual gallery sitter – as SAM calls them) explained that the white spots were in fact floodlights of National Stadium. Perhaps it was meant to express how after nearly two years of announcing plans to replace this national icon, it still stands tall, magnificent and untouched, with floodlights in good condition of course!
Courtesy of http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/
Jason Wee’s No More Tears depicts a portrait of MM Lee Kuan Yew through thousands of white bottle-caps. Great, creative use of the Johnson & Johnson bottle caps! (otherwise, how do you explain No more tears?? Kudos also to J&J’s marketing team for hammering their tagline into me since I was a kid) Ok, there can be other ways to interpret the title and I’m sure other readers out there will have a comment or two to add.
Courtesy of http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/
Imagine 5000 white bottle caps like this forming a potrait of MM Lee
The next installation reminds me of how I should avoid the corporate trap as far as possible. Imagine an office, white and black Ikea furnishings, screensaver that reads ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ and a picture of a Ferris wheel going in circles in a repetitive, never-ending routine. He’s Satisfied from Monday to Friday and on Sunday He Loves to Cry by Chun Kaifeng shows exactly this depressing situation. Kaifeng seems to understand the office life pretty well, that’s why he is in the creative industry I guess. Taking cue from the recent teacher-stabbing incident and to express the tension that people face daily, Kaifeng cunningly placed not one, but THREE weapons in the office, namely an axe, a 10-inch chopper and a fruit knife.
Finally, the most amazing work of all, at least in my opinion, it’s Ultimate. Rarely do I like a black piece of art (yellow is my favourite). But this blends simplicity and sophistication in one strong single stroke. Looking at it in different angles, you can notice how the tone changes subtly. This essential conveys the idea that matters/issues are as good as you like it or as bad as your perceive it to be, everything has a different perspective. Silly me, but I can almost imagine this art piece integrating seamlessly in my living room, bedroom, kitchen or whatever. Well as every art buyer will say, art that is worth buying is art that you love so much that you can enjoy it for the rest of your life. Yes, I guess I have found one.
Art Buffet
Singapore Art Museum
22Aug to 18 October 2009
Free admission
Visit: http://www.singart.com/current_exhibitions.php?page=sae09
A Lefthander's Writings 