Dear Painter by Sundaram Tagore Gallery

G A L L E R Y

M I S S I O N

Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.

DEAR PAINTER

Specially Produced Work by Artists of and from Singapore June Yap Encountering the daguerreotype in 1839, French painter Paul Delaroche purportedly remarked, “from today, painting is dead.” As the range of media used in art production continues to expand, such a claim would appear to have a ring of truth. Regardless, painting has avoided attempts at burial or end, and even Delaroche surmised then that the advent of the daguerreotype would prove advantageous to painting in producing subject studies. Certainly its evolution in the photograph has contributed to the development of the syncretic Nanyang Style which grounds Singapore’s art historical narrative. Combining Western painting techniques with Eastern—or Southern Seas— subjects, the Nanyang approach is recognized as having ushered in the modernist turn for the art of Singapore. Thus at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the nation’s independence, the exhibition Dear Painter is a reflection on how far art has come.

The exhibition draws its title from a 1981 series of paintings by German artist Martin Kippenberger, Lieber Maler, male mir (Dear painter, paint for me), that the artist commissioned of a billboard painter. Intended as a challenge to the limits and assumptions of the aesthetic act, Kippenberger’s series questioned the singular agency of the artist, to reveal painting’s truth as the product of a network.1 Within Dear Painter, this network is comprised not merely of the relations of inspiration, production, exhibition, absorption and patronage that in unison produce the work of art, but also of histories, concepts and ideas. For, just as a nation’s independence is achieved not by a single hand or act, but through the concerted efforts of many individuals and a convergence of myriad conditions, the work of art, as much as the cultural heritage that contextualizes it, emerges from confluences2 beyond immediate view. In 7

looking at art from the present in relation to that at the threshold of the nation 50 years ago the subject of identity would appear, or is read as, less urgent. Perhaps on firmer ground... or is it? Nevertheless in their “innovative interpretation” of the aesthetic form and field these contemporary artworks may be counted amongst the descendants of an aesthetic heritage from the 1950s and 1960s.3 Surveyed in Dear Painter are thus formal, conceptual and material developments exploring the subject of contemporary aesthetics as defined through painting, and in continuation of a lineage of experimentation that has been produced in a spirit of influence and exchange. Post-Nanyang, painterly experimentation ventured in abstract and expressionist directions, and even in the contemporary era such quests of the limits of surface and form would not seem to have been exhausted. Exploring materiality and surface, Warren Khong’s series uses light and reflection to produce the elemental effect of a painting: of color conveyed or the scene of color. Within Khong’s artwork “painterly plasticity”4 is reduced to its logical end, as it was in the aesthetic approach of the Russian Constructivists before, though, it goes further to abbreviate 8

its effect such that its color comes across as unattached to any surface; instead it wafts from the bare wall upon which the artwork is hung. Where Khong’s approach abstracts painterly color, the opposite occurs in Jane Lee’s deconstruction of paint to a sculptural end. Lee’s Solid Turn Liquid encapsulates the formal explorations found in her earlier artworks while focusing on the subject of the transfiguration of paint. Manifesting art historian and critic James Elkins’ description of paint’s metamorphosis—where “the means are liquid and the ends are solid”—in this installation, another transfiguration familiar to painting also occurs. Featured in Solid Turn Liquid are two draped canvases of enmeshed paint that allude, in their saturation and through a connecting puddle, that the color of one has travelled across the floor to arrive at the other. With the celebration of nation as its backdrop, Solid Turn Liquid, in form and color, may be assumed to reference an emblem of state, though this is not the artwork’s intent. For minimalist and post-minimalist experimentation, the fundamental subject has been an aesthetic logic. However, in seeking formal extremes, the interpretations of these artworks, as well as their inferred or imbued symbolism, have resulted in an “extraordinarily

charged mise-en-scène” of oppositions.5 Intensity of interpretation and reception aside, the scrutiny of painting that produces the abstract and minimal “reorientation” of “perceptual consequences”6 paradoxically reinforces the fact that it is not in form that painting exists. On the heels of the daguerreotype was the development of the moving image, a medium quite distinct from painting, excepting the possibility of citation. Chun Kai Qun’s The Wait Without Waiting presents taxis signaling their availability as they drive through the night, edited to juxtapose two states of being: of satisfaction and frustration as well the tipping point when, in excess, one state turns into the other. In composition The Wait recalls Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942), of an after-hours scene in illumination, as much as it also brings to mind Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963). However, it is in the idiom of video that the artwork speaks most vividly to the painterly form. In what may be read as an inversion of Gerhard Richter’s photo painting,7 within The Wait the brushstroke central to painting is cited in the red and green taxi light that repeatedly washes—or one might say, brushes—across the screen.

A similar translation of medium is presented in Martin Constable’s citation of painting’s analog mode in the digital. Incidentally, the films that typically have employed visual effects are those with drastic plots of momentous circumstance and overwhelming forces producing historic change,8 rather like technological advancement. In A Matter of Life and Death, excerpts from a tracking shot of a film of the same name from 1946 depicting a burning cockpit and its miraculously surviving protagonist are digitally stitched into a painterly panorama within which the artist has seamlessly blended digitally animated elements in order to achieve the repletion expected of painting. Continuing the meditation upon the event horizon between the painting and its digital counterpart, in two paintings Constable attempts to re-image filmic and digital photorealism in painterly form. Respectively a tranquil landscape in Operation Flashlight that is revealed as the unfortunate aftermath of a human-initiated obliterating event that sets off the post-apocalyptic film The Quiet Earth (1985); and the illumination of a lit match in Explosion of Heat, In My Dark Siberia, its title quoting Charles Baudelaire’s Afternoon Song, layering painterly mediation upon an already mediated digital photo source. Given 9

that the tools of production in film and painting are clearly different, the translation of their idiom in citation is inevitably imperfect.9 Yet, as observed through Chun’s and Constable’s artworks, in evocation the citation is complete resulting in the painting as understood through the moving image and vice versa. In Constable’s A Matter of Life and Death the supplementation of the filmic image produces the effect of painting’s idiom, and the reason for this may be said to be related to an expectation of painting’s revelatory purpose. Appearing to perform just such a purpose is Jeremy Sharma’s Melatone 4S_16S_-139_-120 (far side) that brings into view the occluded side of the moon as seen from 55 kilometers above its surface. Melatone maps the remote lunar terrain, first sighted in 1959 via a Soviet space mission, in polystyrene foam that is “painted” with heated zinc particles to produce the look of its powdery surface via a monochromatic tint. But for all its realism this palpable sight is also a mediated one—via data from space orbiters—and as such an illusory and distant quality remains, serving as a reminder that the painting is after all a representation. Intimated in a reference to melatonin in the artwork’s title, just as the earth is unlikely to escape its 10

tidal lock with the moon, there is no running from this schism between representation and its reality, and this fact of the impossibility of representation is broached as well in Kai Lam’s series of paintings. Redolent and even appearing expressionistic, it is not made immediately apparent to the viewer that the series embodies a history of performance art reproduced by the artist in memory and sensation as opposed to the conventional document of its occurrence in photographic form. The paradox of performance documentation is that, for all its apparent realism and fidelity, the image inevitably falls short of fully apprehending the work’s complexity, to which these paintings may be said to represent the performance’s other “sides” through visceral memory and relic. This subject of thwarted sight continues in Kai Lam’s installation Behind Blue Eyes, as the audience’s attempt at observing the painting within the installation finds parallel in the painting’s subject, of a politician who likewise did not get to see his vision of the nation realized. In Behind Blue Eyes vision may have been impeded, but not necessarily its ability to persuade, and thus in representation, the projected or imagined assume similar standing as the revelation.

Reveling in fictive fact, half-truths and elaborate hoaxes, Shubigi Rao’s series of works of ink on paper are inspired by writers and their writings. Referencing seminal literature, such as Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea and Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist, the paintings’ intertextuality is presented via the tangential and metaphorical intersections of text and figure. For example, Lehrer—for whom Paul Cézanne’s postimpressionist style was the first to fathom the subjectivity of our experiences10— comes into focus in Fictioneering for Jonah, his controversial exposition of scientific discovery by aesthetics assuming the shape of a whale. Whereas in Biblical reference it is Jonah who is swallowed, in Rao’s visual polysemy the aquatic mammal is dissected in a search for the truth of whether Lehrer too had been carried away by his own subjectivity, producing revelations even when there were none.

local and urban living. Diverse as these elements may be, their common reference—and Chun’s aesthetic interest—is the miter joint. A diagonal seam that skillfully conceals two abutting parts, this bond surfaces within the installation in the tips of the arrowheads of a signage regulating vehicular entry; is reflected in chevrons of bent, elongated cans; and morphs into corners of barrier mesh and three-quarters of a watermelon (its missing quarter featured in an earlier exhibition). Produced as visual syntax the sigil of the seam in its recursive reference resounds across the installation, mapping its space in a manner suggestive of the pictorial organization of Renaissance figural action, or its “mime of meaning.”11 Though, substituting the elements of bodies, faces, eyes and gestures, within Chun’s installation this “choral” effect is one of tip and joint, point and angle, in a gesticulation drawing the eye to particular axes of the space that in turn recall for the viewer an integral characteristic of painting in its organization: the Contrasting Rao’s approach where aesthetic framing of sight. forms arise from texts and their subtexts, within Chun Kai Feng’s installation it is the visual The form of the frame that dissolves in Khong form that produces the syntax. Declaring its and Lee’s artworks at the start of this essay, semantic play within its title, In other words, thus returns at its end, with Francis Ng’s After put it differently, that is to say, the elements of Fontana. Assuming the frame as definition of Chun’s repartee are the fixtures and features of painting, Ng’s After Fontana both summons and 11

counters the proposition made by the abstract and avant-garde artist. Evoking Lucio Fontana’s punctured and cut paintings meant to rupture painting’s two-dimensional illusion, Ng would appear to fulfill, via scale and material, Fontana’s utopic vision of the painting’s “integration into real space.”12 But in its spatial occupation After Fontana also reinstates painting’s scheme. As in an earlier artwork, Framing Device (2008), where architectural feature and photographic gesture doubly frame a physical space, having assumed Fontana’s motif of the breach, After Fontana is set to reabsorb into its painterly space signaled by its literal frame, the space of the artwork’s own setting captured in the dissenting cut as a secondary aperture, or, the gallery. The premise of Dear Painter has been an exploration of the contemporary aesthetic horizon in artworks read through the subject of painting. Historically constituting the definition of aesthetics, this canonical relation is suggested as contributing to the contextualization of these artworks. While the dissolution of the painting into form, material and concept would appear to challenge the medium’s historical authority, via transmutation, citation, translation, revelation and composition or its frame, it might be said that painting’s outlook would in fact still be rather promising, its impact hardly diminished. 12

As for the aesthetic horizon observed via these artworks, even as contemporary practice intrepidly enlarges its orbit of visual subjects, methods and forms, its aestheticising reference would seem to inevitably lead back to painting, where, in an explicit visualisation13 at the juncture of the nation’s semi-centennial, as it was at the nation’s inception, such a historical relation might be said to be quite dear. August 2015 ___________ June Yap is a curator and art historian based in Singapore. She was previously Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative Curator for South and Southeast Asia, Deputy Director and Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore and curator at the Singapore Art Museum. She researches and writes on contemporary art in Asia. Selected curatorial projects include No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia at the Guggenheim Museum; The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; Das Paradies ist Anderswo/Paradise Is Elsewhere at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany; and Bound for Glory at the National University of Singapore Museum.

1. 2. 3.

David Joselit, “Painting Beside Itself,” October, Vol. 130, Fall 2009, pp. 125– 134, 125. Kwok Kian Chow, Channels & Confluences: A History of Singapore Art, Singapore Art Museum, 1996, p. 9. Chia Wai Hon, “Innovation and the Singapore Artist,” paper for the 4th ASEAN Symposium on Painting and Photography, 1985, in Bits and Pieces: Writings on Art, Singapore: Contemporary Asian Arts Centre, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, 2002, pp. 44–45. “Kasimir Malevich: Suprematist Manifesto (1916),” 100 Artists’ Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists, Alex Danchev (ed.), London: Penguin Classics, 2013, pp. 119–120. Referring to Michael Fried’s essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967), “Theories of Art after Minimalism and Pop,” Discussions in Contemporary Culture, Number One, Hal Foster (ed.), Seattle: Bay Press, 1987, pp. 55–56; Robert Pincus-Witten, “Naked Lunches,” OCTOBER 3 (Spring, 1977), New York: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, pp. 101, 104. Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996, p. 38.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

Rosemary Hawker, “Idiom Post-medium: Richter Painting Photography,” Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2009), pp. 263, 265–280, 273. Kristen Whissel, “The Digital Multitude,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Summer 2010), pp. 90–110, 97, 110. Hawker, ibid., p. 275 Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, p. 119. David Rosand, “Raphael and the Pictorial Generation of Meaning,” Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 5, No. 1, Essays in Honour of Howard McP. Davis, (Fall 1985), pp. 38–43, 40. Anthony White, “Industrial Painting’s Utopias: Lucio Fontana’s ‘Expectations,’” October, Vol. 124, Postwar Italian Art (Spring, 2008), pp. 98–124, 123. Joselit, ibid., p. 125.

MARTIN CONSTABLE Martin Constable (b. 1961) teaches digital art in the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He works with computer engineers, researching ways in which the aesthetic attributes of paintings may be defined by computational means. As an artist, he frequently works in collaboration with other artists, being an active member of the Singaporean creative collective Grieve Perspective. He has also produced digital art under the pseudonym Jack Youngblood, an alter ego he no longer maintains. Despite this non-traditional background, he maintains a strong interest in traditional Western Old Master painting. Constable has participated in numerous international group exhibitions and festivals including We Who Saw Signs, 2011, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; The Floating Eternity Project, 2013, at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Grief Meister, 2015, as a finalist in the screenplay category at the Miami International Science Fiction Film Festival; and the Jeonju International Photo Festival, 2015, Korea. He was the winner of The Discerning Eye Award in 1991.

Explosion of Heat, In My Dark Siberia 2015, oil paint on medium-density fiberboard, 27.6 x 23.6 inches/70 x 60 cm 15

Operation Flashlight 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 26.4 x 47.2 inches/67 x 120 cm 16

A Matter of Life and Death 2015, digital composite video, 1 minute looped, edition of 3 with 1 A.P. 17

CHUN KAI FENG Chun Kai Feng (b. 1982) is an artist, curator, exhibition designer, educator, writer and co-founder of artist-run space LATENT SPACES. He is a Master of Fine Arts graduate from The Glasgow School of Art. Chun is interested in mapping the day-to-day. He regularly makes works based on ordinary urban elements that exist in the background of a city. The works are made with industrial techniques and materials and cohere to a personal formal sculptural regimentation. These abstracted urban objects are composed to form a space charged with narrative potential. Chun’s recent projects include The Measure of Your Dwelling: Singapore as Unhomed, 2015, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Berlin; Paradis sans Promesse: Singapour, Ateliers Internationaux, Frac des Pays de la Loire, France; Singapore Survey 2015: Hard Choices, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore; Rendez-vous, 2015, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore; Conditions of Production, 2015, and Pictureshow, 2015, Curating Lab Phase 3, National University of Singapore Museum; Absolving the Object, 2015, Materialised Time, 2014, and Nameless Forms, 2014, LATENT SPACES; The Art Incubator 5: From When We Last Met, 2014, Praxis Space & Project Space, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore; What Happens When Nothing Happens, Art Stage Singapore 2014: Nowhere Near, 2013, FOST Gallery, Singapore. Works in public collections include Nothing to Wait For, 2013, M+, Hong Kong; Not Much to See, 2013, ¥ € $, 2010, He’s Satisfied from Monday to Friday and on Sunday He Loves to Cry, 2009, and Parklife, 2008, Singapore Art Museum.

In other words, put it differently, that is to say (installation) 2015, dimensions variable 19

In other words, put it differently, that is to say (installation) 2015, dimensions variable 20

In other words, put it differently, that is to say (installation) 2015, dimensions variable 21

CHUN KAI QUN Chun Kai Qun (b. 1982) is a Singapore-based artist who is interested in the study of object biographies to better our understanding of how they texture and inform human identity. He examines everyday objects as a reflection of personal tastes, attributes, moral principles and social ideals. This research drives his artistic practice and materializes mainly in the form of sculptures and installations. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from The Glasgow School of Art. In 2011, Chun was awarded the prestigious NAC Arts Scholarship and the Arts Creation Fund from the National Arts Council, Singapore. Chun has participated extensively in art exhibitions, residencies and collaborations. His work has been shown in the Singapore Art Museum, the National Museum of Singapore, Esplanade Concourse, Esplanade Jendela (Visual Arts Space), Art Stage Singapore, Singapore Management University, FOST Gallery, Valentine Willie Fine Art, POST-Museum, Singapore; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; the National Taipei University of Education; and The Glasgow School of Art.

The Wait Without Waiting 2015, 2-channel HD video, 90 seconds looped, edition of 3 with 1 A.P. 23

WARREN KHONG Born and based in Singapore, Warren Khong (b. 1984) situates his practice primarily in the field of painting. Previously dealing with the aesthetics of beauty in the artificiality of its creation, he now contemplates concepts of painting and its relation to surface and materiality—from selected metal surfaces to light, color and reflection. Khong graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with two solo exhibitions in 2011: A Collection of Shapes in Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black and White (I still don’t remember the name of the girl I saw that day) at Marcuard Heritage, Singapore; and Warren Khong: A Solo Exhibition (in partnership with Whisky Live Paris 2011 and La Maison du Whisky) at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, Paris. His third solo exhibition Same Same But Different was held at the Reading Room, Singapore, in 2013. His works have also been used by La Maison du Whisky for their Artist and Karuizawa whisky labels. He is a trained draughtsman and worked on the Sol LeWitt wall drawings at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

#087 2015, acrylic, wall paint, aluminum panel, wood and plaster, 19.5 x 59 x 9.5 inches/49.5 x 150 x 24 cm 25

#088 2015, acrylic, wall paint, aluminum panel, wood and plaster, 35.5 x 35.5 x 4.1 inches/90 x 90 x 10.5 cm 26

#090 2015, acrylic, wall paint, wood and plaster, 31.5 x 72.4 x 3.9 inches/80 x 184 x 10 cm 27

KAI LAM Kai Lam (b. 1974) has proved an active innovator since his artistic involvements began in 1995 as a student majoring in sculpture studies at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. In 2001, he was awarded a study grant from the Lee Foundation and an education bursary from the National Arts Council. He graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture. Kai Lam practices a form of inter-medium art, in which he explores and combines diverse mediums in his art process. He is versatile and prolific in the skills of drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed-media installation (video and sound), sonic art and performance art. He also collaborates in multi-disciplinary art productions and co-organizes art-related events. The organization of public art platforms is a crucial part of his artistic productions. As president of the Singaporean alternative art group The Artists Village he initiated Artists Investigating Monuments in 2000, presenting installations and performances at various public sites. Artists Investigating Monuments was presented again at the Singapore Art Museum in 2004 and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2005. In 2003, he co-organized Future of Imagination, an international performance art festival that showcases and focuses on performance-art practice. In 2009, he initiated Rooted in the Ephemeral SpeakÂ a platform to explore new ideas and in sonic art, time-based and performance art-related practices.

Behind Blue Eyes 2015, painting installation, 90.5 x 81.9 x 20.7 inches/230.5 x 208 x 52.5 cm 29

Banish Art Laws 2015, collage and mixed media painting on wood, 26 x 13 inches/66 x 33 cm 30

Teach Yourself Exile 2015, acrylic on canvas, 19.9 x 16 inches/50.5 x 40.5 cm 31

Untitled (Belief) 2015, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 40 inches/61 x 102 cm diptych 32

Untitled (Fist) 2015, acrylic on canvas, 23.6 x 20 inches/60 x 51 cm 33

JANE LEE Jane Lee (b. 1963) is best known for her inventive techniques and innovative use of materials. She explores the very nature of the way paintings are constructed by treating the components of a painting—stretcher, canvas, and the paint itself— in new ways. In the process, she is re-examining the significance of painting and the relevance of contemporary art practice. The surfaces of her paintings are highly tactile and sensuous, often dimensional enough to be considered sculptures. In some cases, Lee dispenses with canvas altogether extruding acrylic paint directly on wooden stretchers, which results in a hollow, three-dimensional object, with the paint at the bottom seemingly giving in to the force of gravity. Another of Lee’s techniques is to create works that appear to move: they fall, unroll, hang or droop, suggesting, in the process, everyday objects (a hose, a carpet, a door). The paintings are mounted on the wall, the floor, and in the corners of rooms. With this strategy of activating the spaces in which her works are being presented, she uses space itself as a medium. Jane Lee has won numerous awards, including a Celeste Prize for painting in 2011. She was a finalist for the 2007 Sovereign Asian Art Prize and was the first recipient of the Singapore Art Exhibition International Residency Prize in 2007. Her work Raw Canvas was showcased at the Singapore Biennale 2008, Collectors’ Stage at the Singapore Art Museum in 2011 and in the Southeast Asia Platform, a curated exhibition of cutting-edge work organized by region, at Art Stage Singapore in 2014. In 2015, her work was selected for Prudential Singapore Eye, one of the largest surveys of Singapore’s contemporary art to date, held at the ArtScience Museum and Medium at Large, a year-long exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum. Lee’s work is currently on view in Frontiers Reimagined, an official Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice, Italy. In 2015, Lee also completed a residency at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. Jane Lee has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Diploma in Fashion from LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries in Asia and Europe, among them the Singapore Art Museum, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Solid Turn Liquid 2015, mixed media on fiberglass canvas and poured enamel, in three parts, dimensions vary with installation 35

FRANCIS NG Francis Ng (b. 1975) strives to stretch the potential in his art and to engage his audience in an intellectual dialogue through conceptual works that are installation- and photography-based. His wide repertoire has been showcased internationally, including platforms such as the 50th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, 2003; the 5th Gwangju Biennale, 2004; Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves, 2007, at the Zentrum f端r Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Germany; and Showcase Singapore 2008. The artist has been celebrated globally for his thought-provoking pieces, winning accolades for his photographic and three-dimensional works. He was the winner of the Grand Prize in the 2001/2002 Philip Morris Group of Companies ASEAN Art Awards, and in 2006, he received the National Arts Council Singapore Young Artist Award. Since 2008, he has served on the Arts Resource Panel of the National Arts Council Singapore. Ng currently manages WOWWOWWOW, a conceptual platform that champions creative discourse through consultative, academic, mentoring and curatorial processes.

AFTER FONTANA 2015, Plaster de Paris reinforced, 78.7 x 59 x 19.7 inches/200 x 150 x 50 cm 37

SHUBIGI RAO Shubigi Rao (b. 1975) is a visual artist and writer whose interests range from archaeology, neuroscience, 17th to 19th century scholarship and exploration, language, libraries, historical acts of cultural genocide, contemporary art theory and natural history. She is particularly interested in unfashionable branches of knowledge and epistemology. Her complex layered installations comprise handmade books, text, drawings, etchings, pseudo-science machinery, metaphysical puzzles, ideological board games, garbage and archives. Her work has been exhibited and collected in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Denmark and India. Notable exhibitions include solo shows The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul and Useful Fictions in 2013; and group shows Shubigi Rao: Exquisite Corpse, 2015, National University of Singapore Museum; Singapore Survey 2010: Beyond LKY, Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore; Found & Lost, 2009, Osage Gallery, Singapore; New Contemporaries: New Art from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, 2005, The Second Dance Song: New Contemporaries, 2006, and Modern Love, 2014, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore; and Still Building: Contemporary Art from Singapore, 2012, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia. The artist was also selected for the 2nd Singapore Biennale 2008 for which her commissioned work The Tuning Fork of the Mind was later shown in Beijing in 2012 and Copenhagen in 2013. Awards include Artist-in-Residence at the Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (October 2015 to January 2016); the National Arts Council Singapore Creation Grant, 2013; the National Arts Council Singapore Presentation and Participation Grant, 2012 and 2013; and the SIA Award for Excellence in the Arts (Bachelor of Fine Arts, First Class, 2006); and the LASALLE Award for Academic Excellence (Master of Fine Arts, First Class, 2008). Other awards include a commission by the Land Transport Authority, Singapore, for a public artwork for the Stevens Mass Rapid Transit Station (2012â&#x20AC;&#x201C;present); The Winston Oh Travel Award, 2005; and the Student Development Award, 2006. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in English literature from the University of Delhi. Publications include Historyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul, 2013; three pseudo-art history books No Cover No Colour, 2006; Bastardising Biography: An Extraordinary Initiative, 2006; limited-edition artist books as well as numerous essays and reviews. She was also a featured author at the Singapore Writers Festival 2013. Rao is currently visiting collections, libraries and archives for Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, a film, book and visual arts project. 38

For Hugo, fabulist, from Gessner, confabulist 2015, ink and DECAdry on Tiepolo paper, 27.6 x 39.4 inches/70 x 100 cm 39

Left: Q.E.D., relatively speaking 2015, ink and DECAdry on Tiepolo paper, 39.4 x 27.6 inches/100 x 70 cm Right: Solipsisms for Descartes, from G. W. B. 2015, ink on Tiepolo paper, 39.4 x 27.6 inches/100 x 70 cm 40

Left: For Borges, with love and liver spots 2015, mixed media on Tiepolo paper, 39.4 x 27.6 inches/100 x 70 cm Right: For Kafka, lachry-morose, I suppose 2015, ink on Tiepolo paper, 39.4 x 27.6 inches/100 x 70 cm 41

Fictioneering for Jonah 2015, ink on Tiepolo paper, 27.6 x 39.4 inches/70 x 100 cm 43

JEREMY SHARMA Jeremy Sharma (b. 1977) works around ideas of aesthetics and production. His practice investigates various modes of enquiry in the information age, addressing our present relationship to modernity and interconnectivity in the everyday and our place in an increasingly fragmented and artificial reality. Over the past nine years, he has had a number of solo presentations that includes MODE CHANGE with Michael Janssen Singapore; Terra Sensa at the Singapore Biennale 2013; Exposition, 2013, at Grey Projects, Singapore; and Apropos, 2012, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. He has also done projects with the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Berlin, 2015; Fundación Sebastián, Mexico, 2015; the Busan Biennale 2014, Osage Gallery and the City University of Hong Kong; The Tokyo Art Book Fair, 2011; the 14th Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh 2010; the 5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, 2008; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2005. His work has also been shown in numerous group exhibitions in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, England and the United States. The artist’s work has been the subject of critical discussion in various print and online publications including Asian Art News, AsiaArtPacific and Wall Street International and is part of a number of public and private collections. He also teaches with the Faculty of Fine Arts at the LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.

Melatone 4S_16S_-139_-120, 2015 zinc bonded onto high-density polystyrene foam, 83.9 x 48 x 9.1 inches/213 x 122 x 23 cm 45

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES new york new york hong kong singapore

547 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001 • tel 212 677 4520 fax 212 677 4521 • gallery@sundaramtagore.com 1100 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10028 • tel 212 288 2889 57-59 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong • tel 852 2581 9678 fax 852 2581 9673 • hongkong@sundaramtagore.com 01-05 Gillman Barracks, 5 Lock Road, Singapore 108933 • tel 65 6694 3378 • singapore@sundaramtagore.com

President and curator: Sundaram Tagore Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey Director, Hong Kong: Faina Derman Designer: Russell Whitehead Contributing editors: Kieran Doherty and Esther Bland Exhibition curator: June Yap

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Text © 2015 Sundaram Tagore Gallery Photographs © Sundaram Tagore Gallery All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Cover: Francis Ng, AFTER FONTANA, 2015, Plaster de Paris reinforced, 78.7 x 59 x 19.7 inches/200 x 150 x 50 cm