Exhibition period: 2nd October – 25th October 2014
Artist Talk: Saturday, 11th October 2014 – 11:30 a.m (Open for Public)
Venue: iPRECIATION (誰先覺) 50 Cuscaden Road HPL House #01-01 Singapore 249724 Tel 65 6339 0678
This October, iPRECIATION is staging Tay Bak Chiang’s solo exhibition titled “Cleavages Fractures Folds.” This is his eighth solo exhibition after previous ones such as Fa Zi Hua Sheng《法自画生》(2003), Between Breaths《呼吸之间》(2010), Ingenuity《天工》(2011), Hear the Wind Sing《且听风吟》(2012), The Breath of A Blade《剑气》(2013) and 《石頭記》The Story of the Stone, where themes of his work have been predominantly inspired by nature.
Cleavages Fractures Folds debuts Tay Bak Chiang’s first-ever complete solo exhibition featuring Chinese ink and pigment works on canvas instead of the traditional rice paper. Merging the historical genre of ink painting on contemporary canvases creates a significant exploration and breakthrough, and Bak Chiang is the first Singapore artist to experiment and successfully present a contemporised style of the traditional 3000-year-old Chinese ink painting through a clever manipulation of ink, pigments, canvases and raw linens. He has developed an innovative technique of using powdered colour pigments to produce distinct texture in traditional Chinese ink painting. This set of works also marks his progressive attempts to move away from representational forms and introduce new perspectives in the portrayal of nature with minimalistic simplicity. Stones, to him, are not lifeless objects, but are bestowed with worldly experiences and personal expressions. This which, he expresses through his unique visual language that is in synch with current contemporary art ideas.
iPRECIATION is proud to collaborate with the artist in this endeavor. Cleavages Fractures Folds is supported in art analysis and essay writing by industry veteran Kwok Kian Chow. The show reflects the artist’s spirit of consistently reflecting, questioning and experimenting with new ideas within the traditional Chinese painting medium in today’s contemporary art world. It will begin new dialogues in this art genre amongst local artists.
Tay Bak Chiang
A graduate from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore in 1995, Tay Bak Chiang (b. 1973) also studied at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China, in 1997. In 2002, he received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore. He was awarded the First Prize in the Chinese Painting category in the 19th and 22nd United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year Competitions (2000 and 2003 respectively). He has since been prolific in creating new ideas and works, developing a new visual language, and boldly pushing boundaries of Chinese ink painting from working on rice paper to canvases.
Press Release:
Cleavages Fractures Folds debuts Tay Bak Chiang’s first-ever solo exhibition featuring pigment and acrylic works on canvas. Formerly trained and known for his works in Chinese ink on traditional rice paper, current works show Tay folding the spirit of historical Chinese ink painting over the modern convention of acrylic painting on canvas. This merge indicates a significant breakthrough for the artist, as he consistently reflects, questions and experiments through the synthesis of the tradition and contemporary. The current works activate the painted surface full of distinct textures and representational paradoxes. Not only does Cleavages Fractures Folds provide us with a contemporary perspective on the philosophy behind nature, it also stands for a visual survey of ontological nature – materializing nature as a canvas fold and pigments that surface out of it.
