The Bank Art Fair has introduced a new host of artworks to Singapore for the second time around – in an unique room-to-room experience.
Artworks from both new and established artists were thoughtfully culled from 56 galleries and 15 countries, and made to converge at Pan Pacific Singapore last weekend, taking up temporary residence in their respective rooms across two sprawling floors.
Like a clandestine meeting, visitors would walk into a relatively intimate and isolated atmosphere, instead of the vacuum of a white space in a museum, and come in closer proximity with every piece of work posed across the walls, furnishings, and bathrooms.
Here are some of the intriguing occupants we have encountered during our visit:
Who: Katsu Ishida
Origin: Osaka, Japan, Systema Gallery
What: Like most Japanese artists who have a predilection for “death” or “destruction” as their choice of thematic concern, Ishida’s works are not for the faint-hearted. But he prides himself on that distinctive Nippon-ism – he crafted his own paper and mainly employed Japanese ink to illustrate his disorienting and organic style of painting. Like his 2-dimensional art pieces, his experimentations with mixed-media – a bricolage of recycled computer parts and photographs of harrowing incidents – also inspires one to fear and lament about lost.
Who: Stefano Perrone
Origin: Milan, Italy, Stefano Perrone
What: Titled ‘Faceless’, Perrone’s series of disfigured human portraits is a discourse between the individual and the outside world which brings to the fore the bigger question about an identity lost in translation in a crowded society. While the faces of his subjects are muddled, emotions such as ruefulness are writ large through expressive strokes and palettes. This exchange of human emotions is the heart of his aesthetic, and it was his works’ power to affect audiences that left an indelible impression in our minds.
Who: Lee Dong Hun
Origin: South Korea, Gallery Miroonamu
What: In “A Maze Story”, Lee, a practised framer, brought to bear his skills and complicated 2-dimensional geometric shapes into 3-dimensional installations pieces by implementing layers upon layers of threads in jolts of fluorescent pinks. The result was an energetic web of dialogues between the tangible and intangible from different angles of perception.
Who: Deepa Khanna Sobti
Origin: Singapore, Emptiness Is Full
What: Alongside the quasi-Pollock chaos and confusion in Sobti’s abstract paintings you would find peace and resolution in her poetries, which accompanied each of her work and elucidated on the complications of life at large. As she questioned her relationship between “everything” and “nothing”, she posited an answer. For example in “There is No Need To Know”, Sobti uses decaying shades of burnt umber, brown, and white to allude to the futility of completion. As she wrote: “When does it end?”
The Bank Art Fair was held Pan Pacific Singapore from 20th to 23rd of November 2015.
Visit www.bankartfair.com for more information.
COUTURE TROOPERS MAGAZINE 