The title of the exhibition ‘Singapore Sensation’ is inspired by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who posited that visual sensation runs through a painting like rhythm runs through a piece of music. The “logic of the senses” is irrational; it is what determines instinct at a particular moment. The painter would then attempt to make a kind of “original unity of the senses” appears visually.1
Urban, 2016,
Acrylic, Ink, Fabric, and Paper on loose canvas
Singapore Sling, 2016,
Acrylic, Ink, Fabric, and Paper on loose canvas
Through the process of painting, these works are conceived as investigations into the idea of excess, sensation, and vitality as potential in the emergence of rhythm in a painted image – how the seemingly contradicting qualities, such as diverse cultural motifs, colour, and gestures are weaving together, forming complex interactions, and moving toward new rhythm that is radical in nature as they depart from tradition. The intention is to harvest the energy pulsating from the richness of Singapore’s tapestry of cultures and give a work of art the intensity that is open-ended, tempting the viewer to experience disorienting or familiar/ unfamiliar sensation.
At the beginning each painting, nothing was decided except the fabric collages acquired from Little India or China Town laid and glued onto the surface of the canvas, connecting the artist to her surrounding world. Painting then become a process of free mark-making, applying paint from different angles, and at different speed, overlapping colour fields, erasing, scrapping, and layering through the method of painting on horizontal planes. As the painting progresses, the need to reconsider and the possibility of change remains. Seeing, feeling, and thinking happening simultaneously during this process. Each step is a contingency and every decision is a response to the previous decision made. Throughout this process, incidental marks and possibilities emerge. These are exploited as the process brings forth excess, order, and rhythm through development and lingering at the final stage of painting.
Sensation, vitality, and emergence are fundamental to this painting process. Out of all this emerges an image, that is both within and beyond the artist’s control.
1.Gilles Deleuze, Painting and Sensation in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. trans D. Smith (London: Continuum, 2003), 31-38.
Exhibition at INSTINC, 26 March & 27 March 2016.
