KHENG-LI WEE - Zen City: Recent Photographic Works
solo exhibition @ Art Forum, 21 February to 13 March 2004
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
The Photographer and The City
"I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think"
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard, Hill & Wang, New York,
1981, p 21
Today, the majority of the earth's population lives in cities. Urban existence
may be the defining characteristic of human existence. The concept of The City,
standing as it does at the juncture of architecture, modernism, industrialism,
history, psychology, and human density, is a distinctive and recent phenomenon
in human history - and the momentous consequences and implications of this shift
in human settlement patterns are being felt in every corner of the globe.
Cities have always fascinated me. As a city boy, born and bred, and as an
artist, an analyst, a poet, I can think of no richer subject. All my personal
work to date has largely been an extended meditation on urban life. There is a
certain joy in losing oneself in a crowd on the streets of a strange city,
exploring, observing, thinking, detached yet passionate. Wandering the streets
alone, watching, absorbing, thinking, distilling, recording.
I trained as a painter. Today I choose to use a camera as my tool for making
sense of the world within which I live. I feel that photography is a unique
process of communication - particularly suited to the poetic discovery and
expressing of that which cannot be expressed and that which escapes ordinary
representation.
There is something magical about the mechanical and chemical process of
recording light, which somehow makes photographs such profound documents of time
and loss. Because photography for me is fundamentally about time - specifically,
lost time. Because the specific moment which is captured in a photograph. Frozen
forever as a slice out of the endless passage of time will never occur again.
Which makes photographs, for me, inherently sad.
It is precisely the beauty and pathos in this sadness which moves me, as a
viewer and maker of photographs. The best photographs have the power to affect
us, to make us think and feel, to make us a little more aware of what it means
to be human.
As such, I would consider myself a documentary photographer: one who responds
directly to the reality of a scene in front of his eyes; one who attempts to see
through the surfaces and understand a little of the truth of human existence;
one who walks the line between journalism and art.
I choose to do most of my personal work in colour as I consider that I respond
most intuitively to the rich, subtle and varied colours of the urbanscape. In
addition, I feel my personal interests in concepts of abstraction and surrealism
are best expressed through the medium of colour. I try to work very simply, with
as little equipment as possible, mostly just a small camera.
This latest exhibition is a collection of some recent photographs I made in
November 2003 during a trip to Japan. I find Japan to be endlessly entrancing:
the incredible density and complexity of the accretions and fragments of
urbanity, the contrasts between the richness and calmness of traditional culture
and the dazzle and speed of modernity, the extreme manifestations of a cultural
obsession with perfection, the visual sophistication of both high and low
culture.
Kheng-Li Wee
February 2004
The Artist
Kheng-Li Wee, Photographer. Born 1971, Singapore. Member of pioneer year, Art
Elective Program, The Chinese High School, Singapore. Studied Asian Studies and
Fine Art at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA. Studied photography in the
highly selective Full-Time Program at the International Center of Photography,
New York, USA. Has exhibited in both the USA and in Singapore. Work is
represented in private collections in both USA and Singapore, and in the
permanent collections of the International Center of Photography, New York, and
the European House of Photography, Paris, France. Personal focus is in fine art
and documentary photography. Clients include The Citigroup Private Bank, The
Association of Banks in Singapore, Singapore Tourism Board, SKA Architects, as
well as numerous private clients.
