Saturday, September 20, 2003
A Fine Day After Rain
Chua Boon Kee
Recycled Chairs
Singapore
Showing: 01 Sep 2003 (Mon), 10.00 AM - 28 Sep 2003 (Sun), 10.00 PM at the Concourse
Like sunshine after the rain, this established sculptor’s fun installations reflect his positive outlook in life. See how he transforms old discarded chairs into a poem of form and fluidity. Creativity can breed from anywhere so don’t discard your old furniture! Admission is Free at the Esplanade.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
"My Universe" - An Exhibition of Ink Works by Irene Chou
Event Name : "My Universe" - An Exhibition of Ink Works by Irene Chou
Event Type : Visual arts
Dates : 31 October ~ 9 November 2003
Venue : iPreciation
The Fullerton Singapore (Fullerton Hotel)
1 Fullerton Square #01-10
Singapore 049178
Tel: 6339 0678
Fax: 6438 2080
Website: www.ipreciation.com
Gallery hours : 10.30 am ~ 7.00 pm Monday – Friday
11.00 am ~ 5.00 pm Saturday, Sunday & Public Holiday
For the first time in Singapore, iPreciation presents a solo exhibition of works by Shanghai-born artist Irene Chou. Regarded as one of the most innovative artists of New Ink Painting in Hong Kong, 79-year-old Irene currently resides in Brisbane, Australia, where she continues to work tirelessly, after suffering from a stroke in the early 90s. While she recovered from her stroke quickly and began painting again in less than six months, a condition she has had for a long time, atrophy of the cerebellum, continued to worsen. But physical disability has not prevented this determined artist from producing her best works yet during the last ten years. This exhibition will feature rare works produced by Irene from 1993-1996. Some of her important works from this period are also collected by the Queensland Art Gallery, Museum of Fine Art, Boston and Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Greetings from iPreciation!
Some of you might already know that Saraswati will be in Singapore for a couple of weeks from 15 September.
We would like to extend an invitation to you for a simple wine & cheese evening to catch up with her. Details are as follows:-
Date : Wednesday 17 September 2003
Time : 7.00 pm
Venue : iPreciation @ The Fullerton Hotel, #01-10
You are cordially invited to the
opening preview and reception of
STILL LIVES
Paintings by Susie Wong
Guest of Honour: Philip Jeyaretnam
Senior Counsel and Partner, Rodyk & Davidson
Thursday 18th September 2003 7.30 pm
Utterly Art Exhibition Space
208 South Bridge Road 2nd Level, Singapore 058757
Tel: 6226 2605 E-mail: utterlyart@pacific.net.sg
Mon-Sat 11.30 am - 8 pm Sun 12 noon - 5.30 pm
The exhibition runs to Sunday 28th Sept 2003.
In Singaporean painter Susie Wong’s last solo exhibition Corporeity in 1999, we glimpsed her concerns with flesh, in all its glorious Lucien-Freud tonalities, its impermanence, its fragility, its mortality. Still Lives continues her development along this inquiry into the transience of our bodies. In her series of portraits, she paints old people. But old people objectified, as subjects for a still life painting. In addition to the standing poses of Corporeity, she now includes seated half-bodied portraits and large heads, hair graying or whitening. An intense preoccupation with the orangey-pinkness of flesh, its translucency when old, the veins and organs under its skin-tight wrapping, liver spots, mottling, wrinkles… It’s not so much growing old that Susie is concerned with, it’s the texture of growing old. She endeavours to capture the fullness, the ripeness of old flesh.
Understanding this, the Colander series of fruits in bowls is a logical progression. Full, ripe red and green jambus, yellow starfruits, mangoes… Susie now examines the corporeity of fruits. Jambus and starfruits are particularly succulent, with their translucent flesh – they are the objects of Susie’s desire to transcribe the texture of ripeness. And they are liberating to paint; the pressure of capturing the likeness of people, the expectation of seeing a relationship between artist and sitter is absent. And fruits do not move. They lie still in their translucent bowls while Susie suggests the shadows of apples and oranges behind a milky barrier.
As fruits have still lives, and the serene countenances of the aged may convey slow, quiet existences, so may the recumbent figures of the Dreamsleeper series imply wanton lassitude. Stretched and sprawled on an armchair, the young girl targets supreme relaxation, but may be as unsettled as all teenagers are, since we see her in several tangled poses over many canvases. Hers may be a still life of momentary boredom, as she temporarily quenches her restlessness by lounging on a lazy afternoon. It is curious how transient her situation seems compared to the stately serenity of the old – their days may be numbered, but their gaze is haunting, calm, eternal.
As one of the major female painters of her generation, we observe in Susie’s output a very serious commitment to the genre of painting, calmly unaffected by postmodern media experimentations, conceptual rationalizations and catchy gimmicks. In the three main series of Still Lives, we discover an unflinching honesty, intense scrutinization and objectification of her subjects – they are no longer father, grandaunt or daughter, they are beings of their age and fruit of their ripeness.
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