Today, I went to various art exhibitions that were held in conjuction with the Singapore Arts Festival with Yeelin and Eileen =) all the pics here are from the brocheres i took at the exhibition.
Azhanti high Lightning @ NAFA campus 1
This exhibition was really cool. It’s basically an installation I would say coz we get to walk through the exhibition. The first part is this room with seven main graphical pieces. Each piece is made up of various smaller photos depicting the same thing from various angles and perspectives. They aren’t connected together, yet I think it’s because of the skillfull arrangement and careful selection of the photos that somehow you can see the big picture and everything seems to fit. There’s 7 different types:
one was on the killing of a pig… tt was rather disturbing. Yeelin says it represents the ‘education process’ u know, how it’s like ‘killing’ us. i think she means it’s sort of restricting student’s creativity due to the rigidity of the education system… Yeelin m i right?
then there’s one with flames. It looks destructive at first sight but if u really observe, the flames are sort of gentle and passionate. Also, at one portal of the actual walk-through exhibition, there’s e flames shown in film and e backgrd music actually seems hopeful and soothing. so in conclusion i think it represents birth.
nxt is an aeroplane. it’s pretty obvious that one represents e military passage part. how aeroplanes are used in warcraft and for training or military pilots etc.
then mmm oks there’s one of 2 nude women… but there’s no age restriction so assume it was ok for us to look at. haha. rite they are like splashing into e water and seem to be having a lot of fun but u can see the ribs individually shown, indicating how thin they were… i dunno what’s e hidden agenda to this but is it sort of saying how love can starve you becoz u forget about everything that is ard u when you r in love. heard of the phrase ai4 qing2 bu4 neng2 dang1 fan4 chi1? yeah means love cannot sustain life. sometimes becoz of love u feel u can give up all the basic neccessities in life even eating becoz love is the most impt of all. m i making sense? is this what the artist is implying? oh and one more thing. im quite sure it’s supposed to represent love coz there’s nothing else that remotely feels like it represents love….but the thing is it’s two women… not one man and one woman so that part i don’t really understand. is it showing homosexsuality? afterall the brochere mentions ’sensibility of love’. Sensibility as in sexual orientation? is it possible? what is the sensible choice? is it only sensible to follow the social ‘norms’ and stereotypes?
next is a horse. horse galloping in a field. perspectives include it’s hooves, it’s face (tt picture is in e center area) its side view, i way its mane flies when in motion… i don’t know what this represents. and there’s one word in the brochere called ‘regression’ that i don’t know what i means. but later i went home and searched dictionary.com:
definition of regression:
-the act of going back to a previous place or state; return or reversion.
-Reversion to an earlier or less mature pattern of feeling or behavior.
- a defense mechanism in which you flee from reality by assuming a more infantile state
-A Freudian concept used by psychiatrists to signify a return to primitive or impulsive behavior after more mature behavior has been learned.
And in the film part of the portal where there’s four screens surrounding you on the four walls (We sat down right in e center and started staring hard at the screens) e one i mentioned earlier bout the flames; the horse is galloping on the field and coz the horses are all ard u, u feel as though they are circling around you or u r the one turning (if u stare hard enough). yeah so there’s this sense of going one round just to return back to original and sometimes it gallops v slowly (u know in slow motion) but sometimes it quickens. i love the optical illusions the film creates so this portal is my favourite. between each part of the film there’s a part where you feel as though u are driving a vehicle down a road and turning corners, going backwards and forwards because the artist films the roads ahead and the scenery zooming past. it’s really cool you actually get to feel it and i think that’s what installation is about; really being a part of the artwork. oh and it’s also my fav coz it’s e only place of the exhibition walk through that has light. the rest u r in pitch darkness with eerie music… anyway back to the horse yup so can’t u feel it aligns to the definition of regression? yeah so it shd be that.
the next one is of people beating up each other in the middle of an empty highway tunnel. that should be ‘equilibrium of justice’ part… it’s amazing how he chose to depict justice in such a form… instead of like a jury or a court… it’s almost as though justice doesn’t really exist…. or maybe the people r beating up someone for revenge in search of ‘justice’?
then is a car crash. that is death. undeniably so. the car is smashed. and i can’t help but wonder how the artist captured that. did he not only sacriface a pig but also a car? (and then u start to think about the women; how did he convince them to let him film that?)
ok in all there’s perpetually this recurring number of 7. 7 portals in the walkthrough. 7 pics that depict 7 parts of life. 7 things in each portal be it 7 paintings, 7 tv sets etc. oh and the 7 medals tt Yeelin finds very cool and says she doesn’t mind having them on her uniform =)
Domestic Bliss @ Sculpture Square
There’s 3 parts to this but shall just talk about the parts I like best coz this post is already very long.
I like the one by chang yoong chia in which she does porcelain painting on porcelain spoons to suit the Chinese folk narrative she wants to tell. They also represent permanance coz it’s also present at a table of traditional chinese meal. there’s 35 spoons in total =) we counted. each spoon has a sentence and a picture. so u have to read e whole line of spoons to know the whole story. it’s beautiful. something so simple yet so meaningful and imagine how hard she has to work on the tiny details… from the first spoon down, the woman gets older and the tree grows bigger. along the way, a woman’s face in the backgrd becomes a mountain then later evolves into crows evolves into the dark sky that later evolves into raindrops. then e tree withers and the boy grows up. it’s about the woman saying how her son has left her but the son says he has nv left her but has kept every spoonful that his mother has given fed him and kept every teardrop formed. and when they fell as rain he has always held a leaf above her head to shelter her. it’s after reading the explanations that i realise they r trying to say its about the mum refusing to accept differences of her child…
The scholarly pursuit of being @NAFA campus 1
This exhibition is not intended to be part of Singapore Arts Fest i think but since i was at NAFA i just went it. it’s mainly all chinese calligraphy artworks. not a bad change =) and the usage of black and white. the idea of space. how leaving blank is not = to empty coz the white space speaks out to you as well. and it’s like u have no idea how many tones of black u can get. it’s amazing. there’s this piece that yeelin likes. it’s of trees but the perspective is rather unusual in the sense that emphasis is on the trunk and branches intertwining and connecting. and bold strokes are used on the tree in the foregrd while the one at the back is painted in faint ink. it’s all so natural and real that i thought the painter had did them in layers on translucent paper and put them together to form one piece…. but we concluded that it shd be done on one sheet of paper but he had to do the back first and wait for it to dry to paint 2nd layer…. then near the bottom if you go closer, you see a few buffallows and pple riding them. =)
the one i like is very simple. ( see pic above) at first glance it’s like just a paper full of etchings. vertical and horizontal. vertical and horizontal. lines each of a single simple stroke. it was so abstract that i didn’t knew what it was at first. then after staring i gave up and looked at the title. after that, i looked at it in a whole new light and suddenly the strokes weren’t just strokes anymore… i saw the water lily pads balanced on their stalks and some tilting as a breeze lifted across. it was beautiful. so simple. and i felt so enlightened. when less means more. pity dont have photo to post… i wasn’t sure if photography was allowed so didn’t bring a camera to the exhibitions. but fransisca has the photo =) yay thanx.
<- this is the actual
