TIME [re]VISITED
28 Dec 2020 - 26 Feb 2021
Time [re]Visited is a joint exhibition featuring works by four artists from different parts of the world. The exhibition showcases each artist’s exploration of time through his individual art practice.
Shiu Sheng Hung reproduces landscapes of forests and icescapes. Continuing his overarching theme on memorisation, Shiu highlights its ephemeral and changing nature with the use of broad swathes, drips and splashes of iridescent pigments that reflect light in unpredictable ways – much like memory’s changing and fading with time. In Shiu’s work, familiar scenes may be clear, blurred and appear different depending on the viewer’s personal experience, recollection and sub-conscious awareness.
Ha Manh Thang, uses motifs found on antiquities as his source of reference. Whereby these patterns, mostly found on wood panels and furniture pieces, would have been lost to time and modernity, the artist has given them a new life through depicting them onto canvases, thereby transforming them into pieces of thought-provoking contemporary art. Peach blossoms, branches of foliage, butterflies and birds are inscribed - or rather sculpted - into the thick multiple layers of paint. Inspired by colours found at the disused Emperor palace or from ancient temples, the works are striking as much from their historical significance as from their technical execution.
Tan Kent Keong’still-lifes are depicted in his distinctive bold style, infused with a touch of melancholy reflected by the choice of predominantly earthy tones. An artistic departure from his usually large-scale surrealistic scenes, the artist, in these small format works, takes a moment to reflect on life, referencing metaphorically nature’s short-lived beauty and its continuity of the life cycle.
Sculptures of everyday objects by Belgian artist Johan De Wit seem to defy nature’s logic. A deflated pouch rests on two nails, puffed up pillow-like sculptures seem ready burst at the first prodding, or towers of giant Lego bricks slouch tiredly under their own weight - all seem to have been frozen in time.
Seen together, the works of the exhibition Time [re]Visited offer viewers alternatives in which the element of “time” is integrated into divergent art practices, how it becomes intrinsically weaved and anchored into their respective concepts. In periods when many have been physically confined, this sliver of suspended time in our lives prompts each one of us into states of introspection and self-reflection in which, perhaps, we can each find our own absolute meaning.