REFORMATIONS: Painting in Post 2000 Singapore Art

2019

With the turn of the century, Singapore contemporary art of the 2000s has largely witnessed a shift from medium-specific art-making to artists working in interdisciplinary and new media practices. The exhibition Reformations: Painting in post 2000 Singapore Art held at ADM Gallery in Nanyang Technological University is a survey of artists whose works respond to the medium of paint, and are distinct through their investigation of materiality and methodology in painting. At times, they cross into expanded dimensions that encompass installation, sculpture, site-specificity, along with other propositions for image-making. Featuring artists Kanchana Gupta, Luke Heng, Warren Khong, Jane Lee, Ruben Pang, Guo-Liang Tan and Ian Woo, the exhibition is an attempt, and precursor for a proposition towards a successive generation of “post-modern” painting.

The exhibition identity features a bold black box; the abstraction and figuration of the very idea of what a canvas represents. This concept responds to the featured works in this show which suggest a reflexivity and reformation of the ways where meaning and representation may occur within the medium that may yet be a starting point to imagine the forms of progression in Singapore painting.