|
|
| |
|
osage kwun tong : 23.01.2010-28.02.2010
:: Biography
Participating artists: Hu Xianqian (Guangzhou), Li Ming (Hangzhou), Li Mu (Shanghai), Tang Dixin (Shanghai), and Zhao Zhao (Beijing)
Curated by Biljana Ciric and Khim Ong
A new generation of artists in China today occupies a peculiar position. Weary of academy traditions, the overkill of political pop and cynical realisms, yet keenly aware and critical of contemporary phenomenon, these artists often possess strong individual expressions whose works create small waves, albeit contained within a close-knitted art circle and are less talked about nor circulated. The emergence of artist groups such as Shuang Fei, Shufu, and Observation Society; and collective activities such as Small Production, and Jump seem to suggest a need for a stronger collective voice, which are not taken seriously or which some may dismiss as being 'comfort zones' for the insecure.
Biography is a selective examination of these 'individual expressions'. The artists included in this exhibition--Hu Xiangqian, Li Ming, Li Mu, Tang Dixin, and Zhao Zhao--belong to a new generation of artists whose works are arguably symptomatic of the youths in China today: alternately personal, rebellious, indifferent, absurd...
Opening Reception: Friday, 22 January 2010, 6:00pm
|
| |
|
:: Jane Lee | Lee Kit | Donna Ong
Jane Lee's works examines painting by pushing the limits of the materials and techniques used in painting. Her paintings highlight their processes to draw attention to the way the paintings have been made or constructed, and in so doing re-examine painting's significance and relevance for contemporary art practice.
Lee Kit's hand-painted cloths have been used on different occasions: as a towel, a tablecloth, curtains and bed sheet. These striped or grid-pattern cloths are mounted on the walls, accompanied by a photograph documenting how they have been used. They were washed, sullied or felt. Every touch, every trace of the event are recorded.
In Donna Ong's latest installations, which follows from her Crystal City installation (first shown at the National Museum of Singapore in 2009), glass bottles, jars, cups, bowls and decanters are used to create the skyline of a glass city. The configuration of these delicately assembled glass towers and interstitial space constructed a cityscape of a familiar yet unknown metropolitan.
|
| |
|
Osage Soho : 16.01.2010-28.02.2010
::Soft Death by Louie Cordero
Osage Gallery is pleased to present Soft Death by Louie Cordero at Osage Soho, following the exhibition's debut in Osage Singapore in November last year.
Louie Cordero's works are all filled with imageries like dismemberment, mutilation, brain, blood, intestines, membranes, or capillary. Yet more than just gore and the grotesque, Cordero's works, which draw inspirations from the streets, idiosyncratic semiology of various subcultures, popular culture, myths, and mass media, is reflective of a contemporary fascination with both the refined and the lewd. In Soft Death, which showcases a series of new drawings and paintings, ornate savagery appears alongside jovial or otherwise indifferent characters, often critically wounded or in a state of physical distortion--perhaps hinting at the contradiction underlying contemporary culture. Repulsive yet strangely captivating, Cordero's works are an ingenious manipulation of the sick pleasure one derives from the abject, and a direct confrontation with contemporary society.
|
| |
|
osage singapore : 14.11.2009-07.02.2010
:: Jompet | Java's Machine: Phantasmagoria
Java's Machine: Phantasmagoria explores syncretism as a strategy to reconcile dispersed and disparate points of reference in Javanese cultural history. This is exemplified by Java, the War of Ghosts, the centrepiece installation, which also underscores the other works in the exhibition. Java, the War of Ghosts features 'invisible' soldiers made flesh by their uniforms--amalgams of the Dutch and Javanese military attire--and equipment. Suspended from the ceiling, each plays a different sound, synchronised into an electronic orchestra. A discordant yet strangely harmonious combination, the installation is a representation of Java's patchwork heritage. Jompet's soldiers do not serve a military function; they stand in formation, aloof, rather than tangled in battle. They are literally held down by the very things that constitute them, the sheer bulk of a civilisational parade. However, this is not intended as a criticism. Jompet's syncretism can be read as a discourse on post-colonialism and globalisation, a celebration of unruly beauty. As with Java's heritage, harmony can be negotiated in the multiplicity of patches that make up today's global community.
Opening Reception: Friday, 13 November 2009, 6:30pm
|
| |
|
osage shanghai : 29.11.2009-31.01.2010
:: Wilson Shieh: Fitting Room
Fitting Room, Wilson Shieh's latest body of work, which takes the form of a solo exhibition at Osage Soho in March 2009, a two-person show at Osage Singapore in July 2009, travels to Shanghai this November.
Shieh is one of Hong Kong's most established and significant contemporary artists. His works engage with issues pertinent to our contemporary societies. In his Fitting Room series, Shieh extends these concerns through icons of Hong Kong popular culture to explore identity issues that have risen from the transition of which societies such as Hong Kong are currently undergoing.
Shieh considers clothing as a 'space of appearance' in which subjectivity gains presence. Thus if clothing extends to the screen by way of costume or to edifice through facade, it is but part of the logic of change. The movies, literatures, and songs are possibility for selves and others to alight and to be experienced. And the artist's disposition towards a technique that is emblematic of tradition reinforces this thought: adornment becomes an index of becoming, the painstaking making of a fragile and finite fantasy of identity. His works speak of a vital aspect of subjectivity or self making, a technique of materialisation, and the distance from 'identity' through necessary fictions and acts of dissembling.
Opening Reception: Saturday, 28 November 2009, 6:00pm
|
|