she said: Jasmine

Here are some photos which, for some strange reason, are strangely definitive of me (at this very moment in time), and hold some sort of significance to my entire belief in beauty.

Blood Wax

I thought this was an intriguing metaphor to use, because blood brings to mind the idea of life, as blood is what nourishes and defines the living. However, the bloody blots of wax during the Hungry Ghost Festival are a symbol of the dead. Perhaps, in all likeliness, the bloody wax is a sort of false blood, as if to imbue the idea or mortality in remniscence for the dead, or perhaps, to wish them immortality in the other world. Of course, the concept of Blood Wax is an oxymoron, with blood signifying life, and wax, or waxen forms, being that of a cadaver…

Disconnected

I can’t think of anything more apt for this — I don’t simply mean the idea of the the socket unplugged with anything or the wires connecting it to the mains are snipped, but the idea of this socket able to signify and surmount the context of its origin. I came across this in another ruin, one of which is a row of shophouses on the brink of destruction and demolition. The same way this socket is disconnected, the shelter which houses it, too, is disconnected, from our world, and without connection, it is doomed to dust.

Where do All the Lines Lead

Good Brothers are Listening

This is a photo of Getai (chinese, ??, literal characters stand for “song stage”, or a song performance). Pitched against my cultural context, it’s a very grassroots tradition of which song performances are held on a somewhat shabbily built stage, with the main intention of entertaining the deceased (who can only come out from the gates of Hell during the lunar 7th month, according to Chinese beliefs) and giving them leave to enjoy. These performances evolved from wayang, or operas of traditional tales with players with dramatic painted faces and immaculate traditional costumes, to a modern equivalent (the painted faces becoming makeup, the costumes becoming more time-appropriate, and of course, the songs becoming more synthetic and pop-sounding). As ‘modern’ as Getai is, it is still rooted in dialects, and it is significantly enjoyed by the generation of the babyboomers.

I thought that the singer, encapsulated in that moment in all her glamour, juxtaposed against the modest yellow tarp (as a roof for the stage), perhaps many ‘good brothers’ (euphemism for ghosts) surrounding her, listening to her, on the front row (it is a tradition for the first row of seats to be pled with incense and hell notes, or ghost-money) to denote that the best seats are reserved for the dead. However, as the pun goes, most of the good brothers are living, and enjoying the music. Getai entertains the good brothers of both worlds.

On a whim, I decided to look at Impressionist works today. I came across this painting by Claude Monet, depicting his wife in her dying moments. This painting is Camille Monet Sur Son Lit De Mort, also known as Camille Monet, on Her Deathbed. Three things immediately struck me as my eyes roamed over this painting — the beauty of painting a loved one, the bittersweet beauty of the death in the painting, and his portrayal of his wife.

I have always regarded portraiture as an intimacy of relationships, a marriage of presences (that of the artist and the subject), a subjective vision through the painter’s eyes, and of course, a reflection of the secrets that the artist has penned onto canvas through his only means: beauty. And this beauty, is all the more accentuated by the fact that the subject is the most prestigious in status amongst all of the artist’s possible subjects: his loved one. Camille (Doncieux) Monet, Claude’s first wife, passed away in 1879. In many of his paintings, she has recurrently appeared, most famously in a dark Green Dress, and also in his most famous paintings of women in white (his studies of light and colour). Many have considered his paintings of her as a symbol of his love, conveying the depths of his love for her through his other love, art.

Precisely because Camille was so loved, I wondered about the nature of Monet’s intention for the painting. Was Monet attempting to document the last mortal façade of his wife for remembrance — did he intend this painting to lie within his personal collection, for him to uncover and recollect his love for her? Or did Monet intend to immortalise his beloved in his other love of art? Did Monet maintain his belief in observing and depicting truth in light and colour when painting her? — but by the smoky and melancholic greys, could he have slipped into the personal and exquisitely emotional colours of the Post-Impressionists? The many different kinds of beauty in this painting is heightened not only by Monet’s love, but also by Monet’s tremulous brushstrokes, eager to frame and illustrate her, but grew hasty and unmotivated, especially at the lowest edge of the painting, wherein the canvas is stripped bare and exposed; the bitterness is undeniable, that Monet’s love (in all its anxiousness and grief) was punctuated by the onslaught of her death.

(I think my state of mind right now is not too coherent; I am finding it terribly difficult to adequately express my admiration and yet confusion over this painting (why was it displayed in a museum? would Monet have wanted that to happen?).  When I get my wits collected, I might post about some of my other thoughts about the faceless faces in social scenes of some rather significant works.)

I think it is getting more difficult to exist,

especially when our bodies and attentions and souls are distributed and scattered across so many things. Each time eyes travel over our visages and form impressions on people, do our original selves become less concentrated, less saturated, less solid and real and whole? Do we lose some of our tangible self and life to a photograph each time we try to freeze a memory of ourselves and time itself into a frame?

Sometimes, somehow, when the inherent quality of our character begins to change and fade, I suppose the photographs will show the same process and progress of the ominous disappearance of ourselves. We will cease to exist.

self spectre, 2007

erode: josephine, #1, 2007

erode: josephine, #2, 2007

passage of time, 2007

wind in wake, 2007

I chose to photograph in black and white, then treating the photographs with Noise effect to imitate a sort of grainy film noir effect. I thought that by showing a form of corrosion and damage to the subject, and furthermore to the photograph itself, it would show the idea of transience, and hopefully evoke a stirring sense of intrigue and fear in the viewer.

Here are some more portraits.

Tonal Exercise, 2006
This was intended as an exercise to practise our ability to discern between colour tones and monochrome tones in black and white.

Joanna, 2007
This is a recent drawing of my classmate, Joanna. I intentionally took an angle somewhat lower, to capture her eyes looking down at the audience, slanting with heavy-lidded despondence. I used natural lighting from a window on her face (on the work it comes from the upper left). By exaggerating the contrast between the light and the shadows, I carved a defined and hard form upon her face, exaggerating the sharp contours of her cheekbones and lips. As I told her to model (standing up), I told her to focus on the word “hopeless”. Her facial expression, especially her lips, got progressively more unhappy with a frown. I found that this work encapsulated a sort of despair and misery because of the angle of her face — looking slightly down triggers a pained response.

I edited and modified the work by enhancing another light source from behind.

Here are some of my sketches from 2006. If I’m not wrong, I devoted the large amount of art I did in 2006 to fine art, such as sketching. The works done here are quite surreal in nature, and are definitive of my style — a midpoint between observation drawing and imagination. I like even my prep studies and sketches to be composite images, and transcend beyond the mere absorption of visual data. The works here are all original in nature, and not copied from any image sources.

Dripping Clock, 2006
“This is inspired by Salvador Dali’s ‘melting clocks’ in the Persistence of Memory. However, my clocks drip more than Dali’s melting, camembert-cheese-style, on a hot day. The arms of the clock is a person reminiscing (refer to pg. 1, Josephine’s pose). As remniscing brings you back in time, the clock travels backwards — the longer you reminisce, the farther in the time you go.”

In retrospect I felt that the work, with the clock encircling the person in (who are the clock’s arms), show that time itself as a dimension swallows and controls the person, manipulating (his arms) and forcing it to move (like the motor in a clock). The fact that time controls man and life shows futility and transience, too, just like when one remnisces time passes, even if in imagination it travels backward.

Reversed Clocks, 2006
I took the idea of the reversed clock in Dripping Clocks, and decided to put it on a man’s head — which alludes to his mind. I chose this perspective intentionally to obscure the face of a person, as if he is facelessly in deep contemplation. The fact that the clock is on his bed, shows that his mind is turning time backwards, diving into memories, revelling in remniscence. Alternatively, by his darkened face and a view from above, it can be perceived that the audience is a higher power, watching and somewhat mocking this mortal being of a man carrying this burden of time upon his mind.

Fragmented Face, 2006
I like to think that photographs capture a scene in time and freeze it entirely through imagery, so much so that a pure visual memory can be accurately recorded using a photograph. And here, a fragmented face, a memory of a person through multiple photographs, is represented.

So the 90th Anniversary Exhibition — Reclaiming Punggol, has come and gone.

For the anniversary show, I exhibited 4 photographs, taken in the ‘heart’ of Punggol — some in the wilderness, some in the vicinity of the flats. Some artists seek meaning in their works after the photograph is developed, others have their intentions crafted and sculpted to detail before they create. As for Jasmine, she starts off with an idea and tries to slowly stretch her understandings and meanings into the work in progress.

Punggol is a place in Singapore, currently rather remote, its only buildings are labyrinths of silence and a distinct lack of human breath. I thought of Punggol as a metaphor of change, of change about to happen, change happening, change that ironically stays constant and always existent. The buildings will change in the sense that they will multiply, and devour the wetlands and weeds, the wetlands too will change, and disappear. Strangely, it is the natural and organic jungle that should grow instead of turn lifeless, but ironically, the concrete jungle will grow, and turn alive from its original lifeless state. And so I thought, Punggol is a chrysalis of change — a change within a change that cannot be changed.

The old and new in Punggol are warring, the old mansion — the last mansion near the coastline in the Northeast, threatened to be demolished; the elements of man and nature warring again. The new buildings threaten to run upon their pillared legs and plunder the wealth of history and quaint nostalgia, in the deep soil of aged pig droppings, where the farms used to be.

As I tread on my feet and also in my mind, upon a silver thread of reflective thought, I continued pondering my idea of duality (man-made versus nature within change) and onto the idea of a utopia and a dystopia. The current emptiness in the flats, the lack of residents, deeply struck me as a dystopia — the abandoned old town iconotype; but the beauty in the wilderness: the butterflies, the weeds, the beach and the balmy sunshine, the wetlands and mud puddles, the beach and continuous waves, they all spoke of a utopia, a paradise. There, an oxymoron existed. Is Punggol, or perhaps, was Punggol then (I say this because of rapid development) a dystopia, or a utopia? As I mused, I concluded onto my last idea — that Punggol was most definitely then, a utopia for a person seeking some kind of space, public space, personal space, breathing space. But soon it will be a dystopia, upon this idea.

The idea of space soon wove into my thoughts. In a block of flats, a person is entitled to a little slice of space and sky, approximately all that they can peer out of their windows and that little area of corridor they receive. But right now, before the flats wholly swallow Punggol, the people who leisurely fish, or fly their helicopter toys, possess the entire sky and the vast horizons that border Malaysia and Ubin, a person has so much more space. And this has and will change, ironically, to make ‘more space for everyone else’, only to truly reduce space for anyone at all.

But I suppose and lament, Punggol, the utopia, like the large amount of space a person can clutch on to, is transient, as everything else.

***

To speak of my works, I’ll say I intentionally desaturated them, to mute their colours and to disarm them of some sort of vibrancy — I do not want to portray Punggol as serene, or full or life, than a utopia bordering on dystopia. I want this face of Punggol that I capture to appear ominious, to look prophetic, to foretell something that will happen, and also to contrast and juxtapose two opposing ideas or forces, and portray a picture in its duality; whilst speaking depth and story in an object.

Alien

I wanted to juxtapose an icon of the forces of man and nature together (I had this idea firmly plastered in my mind as I squatted to take a shot from the eye level of the idol.) He is Fu, or ‘Fortune’, from the Chinese or Taoist trio of Fu, Lu, Shou (Fortune, Wealth, Longevity). Ironically enough, he certainly will not bring fortune to the stretch of wild weeds he surveys — also, as an idol worshipped by people, we wonder what his business is in the wilderness: is it to devour nature, or let nature (in the form of barnacles) devour him? Did anybody used to come by to pay respect? Or … does the erecting of an idol here, show that people will be coming in the future, in a prophetic twist of fate? Nevertheless, he is an alien to his surroundings, waiting to conquer, or perhaps, seize it.

Approaching/Encroaching

Approaching is the original title — followed by Encroaching. I am sure it is quite evident, subtlety or not, as to what I was suggesting. A cluster of buildings, temporarily barricaded by a zinc fence, seems to be making its way to conquer the meek grass beyond it. The clouds in the sky, rolling in a majestic, smoky sort of way, similar to the clouds of dust risen as troops kick up a storm across a battlefield, lends a sense of movement to an otherwise eerily still photograph. Do you think the buildings are stealthily uprooting their pillared feet and inching towards the grasslands?

Deeper/Noise

Deeper is its original name, to depict a core to the nature within Punggol — its river. As the saying goes that a river is the source of all great civilisations and water to all life, I thought this photo epitomized the natural life within Punggol (after their old farms were removed). However, before the exhibition, I changed the name to Noise, paying tribute to the real situation as I took the photograph. I approached the river out of a sheer devilish din that echoed from a far distance away — it sounded like ducks, or some mad ranch of animals. I treaded onto the rocks upon the river and squatted to take the photo out of pure curiosity, attempting to capture the mystery of the noise within. Through the lens I caught a few glimpses of dogs (Punggol’s wild dog population is shockingly large). Upon reflection, the noise of the dogs probably arose from a fear and a resistance to the footsteps of humans approaching, another collision between man and nature, and our (my) inexorable attempts to conquer it, even if out of curiosity.

Frontline

Frontline juxtaposes the old building of the mansion with that of the high-rise flats in the distance. I used the word, ‘frontline’, as a metaphor for a war, between old nostalgia and impending change. Visually, not only does the two subjects’ ages differ, their textures, their shapes, their exuded airs differ, the amount of space they connote differ. This mansion, is hollow, with its doors demolished and space spilling in and flowing within it. The flats in the distance, they are sequenced and divided spaces, almost looking enviously at the — ruin –, almost wishing to be like them, but out of jealousy and rage, attacking to remove them.

At the Moulin Rouge (2005)
Poster paint on canvas

Scattered Face (2005)
Acrylic on canvas

Reminisce (2006)
Acrylic on canvas

Damaged (2007)
Acrylic on canvas

I have a strange affinity and love for portraiture. Portraiture intrigues me, especially in how the artist chooses to render and portray the sitter. With broad, charismatic, stylistic strokes, the artist can evoke a sort of soft, fuzzy impression  — a caricature — the essence of a character. The power lies in the artist to portray, to distort, to enhance, to beautify — the mother of the artist, when drawn, always seems a little kindlier, less naggy, and younger by a decade.

Mother (2007)

Brenda (2006)

Josephine (2006)

Now for the, distorted, or more abstract, portraits:

Grisly (2005)

Head arch (2006) — guess who the model is

I have more portraits, probably all lost, of many other people. I need to go back and dig.

I’ve decided to showcase all the doodles I’ve done (that I’ve actually scanned), my scanner is dead at home and I have nothing to showcase but stupid things I doodle. I’m not as fantastic as Josephine at doodling, but I assure you I have my fair share of repetitive work.

mathnotebook.jpg (too large to be shown)

septra.jpg

The last entry I talked about “automatic abstract” art. And since the last entry I’ve been doing some reading, one in particular regarding Surrealist Art. It deeply fascinates me that the art of surrealism began as a literary movement, seeking a deeper meaning to art, breaking away from the peak of anti-art (Dadaism). As the founders, Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, and Louis Aragon advocate that surrealism is an intoxication of images, a vice of addiction, a losing of self-consciousness, and a superior reality; I find that surrealism is actively seeking material from the inner self, and that it is a revolution amongst art movements: it does not intentionally choose a visual language to differentiate itself from other styles (like Impressionism vs. Cubism), but much more so a poetic understanding of the state of mind, maintaining the artist’s personal style and rendering for a similar depth in art.

The early surrealists believed in the “automatic abstract” that I talk of, believing that by transcribing any image that came (unconsciously) to their mind. Of course, images cannot be drawn at such great speed to retain their divine unconsciousness, so the surealists invented a game, Le Cadavre Exquis, or The Exquisite Corpse, of which a circle of artists would somehow doodle a portion of a picture and the next artist down the circle would continue, so much so the product would be a product of a “lack of consciousness”. This game also applied to words, and much surrealist poetry has evolved from it. (The surrealists also believed in the power of film, of which it could flash images, similar to the brain, at high speed).

The last key thing that I found particularly inspiring is the profound effect that the surrealists had on art as a whole, especially contemporary sculpture. The surrealists urged the intrinsic worth of an object, be it created from human hands or a natural apparition, and believed that it was a medium of which the artist could take and assemble to create (like paint, or a collage). By juxtaposing it with more objects to form an interpretation, it brought new meaning to an object, and gave a sculpture an entire new collective meaning. This applied to the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, and the assemblages of Andre Masson. The idea of object-collage speaks of the idea of the incorporated object, wherein the canvas itself has objects attached to it, it becomes a sculpture and a painting. And at last, the phantom and dream objects, which are not like the others (real things and ideas, unconsciously made into things that resemble unreal) but instead, unreal things and ideas translated into reality. The sculptural ideas of such wealth and creativity have never before been seen in any other art movement. Surrealism is a revolution of the role of the artist as a creator, to seek the esoteric and primordial beyond the flatness of Symbolism or the incoherent rage of the Dadaists.

Of all the artists I’ve been reading up on, (Joan Miro, Victor Brauner, Tristan Tzara, Valentine Hugo, Max Ernst …) I have been particularly struck by the art of Man Ray. The idea of a “rayogram”, to leave an imprint (both literally and figuratively) is deeply thrilling. I love his photographs — they are iconic, they are definitive of the genre of Fine Art photography, and most of all, for their flights of fancy and their whimsical juxtaposition.

Here is an example: