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Exhibition at Plastique Kinetic Worms (of which I've forgotten its name)

Date of Visit: 27/1/07

Like many of the works presented in the Singapore Biennale which dealt with issues regarding beliefs in icons and myths, the artist here takes a similar approach in handling the issue of "myths", juxtopositioning the idea of photography with a certain literary work (which I've forgotten the name) and several historical elements. Photography succeeds in capturing the moment, more so than what the Impressionists tried to achieve, but with a heightened sense of realism that leads one to sometimes question the reality of the scene and the actuality of it in the photograph, as such, sometimes requiring both artist and viewer to take a leap of faith when perceiving the work. Disclaimer: My understanding of the work.

What I enjoyed was the presentation of the work (only the one in the main section). The main screen was a slideshow of photographs of an alldressedupin18thcenturyattire guy posing amidst the forest, with another man playing photographer with his tripod. There was a certain duality in perception that I quite liked of it, the idea of a photo with a photo.... which was further taken upon with placing the same camera and tripod found in the image in front of the screen in the middle of the exhibition space. Within the camera, was a small screen with the same photographs being projected onto it. (For a moment I had thought that the ancient looking camera was some high end projector that was projecting the images onto the big screen). On the right, were three videos being projected on to the wall. Each was a repetitive sequence of a strange looking vase that was presented as a temple, a huge ancient looking book, and the "alldressedup" man's hand nearing a flame and moving away from it. The interesting bit about the videos was that each had a static object (be it the vase, book, or flame), with its staticity re-emphasised with having a foam board cut-out of the individual objects shapes, resulting this objects not just having existed in the video, but also in the immediate environment of the gallery.

There were several woodboards with the images of these objects printed on, and the gallery sitter told me that I could put it up and put it down, but I couldn't quite see the point. Also, the piece presented in the next door space was quite irrelevant, if not troublesome to look at . Capturing several dark shots with streaks of light to present signs that look like letters in the alphabet, the artist then prints each one out and inverts them clockwise (or anti-clockwise), such that one has to re-orientate them to figure out the strange sentence he's trying to make. I gave up halfway, cos it's really quite annoying.

The most amusing bit about the exhibition though, was looking at the guestbook, and realising that a certain art teacher happened to be there on the same day too, and perhaps the one just before me- it was a good thing that I had come later, if not a parent teacher meet (with interrogation) would have occurred, especially when one has such notoriety as I do. Oh, and there was this cute looking painter with short hair flaring sideways and a very clean shaven face cleaning his works on the upper floor. His series of paintings were of dark cityscapes with streaks of pschedelic yellows, reds, whites and greens, painted in a subdued sort of expressive manner. He just looked at me and smiled a little when I walked up to take a look. I was too shy to say hi.

Lastly, I liked the nice aroma of curry and rotiprata in PKWorms, coming from the whole range of indian eateries residing just outside. Not many gallery spaces can boast of being able to smell yummy.