Page 57 - The Venice Biennale 2001 issue of World of Art Magazine

49. Biennale di venezia rePUBLic OF SinGaPOre

the republic of singapore has been contemporary Singapore. ironically, this diachronic experience of
invited for the first time to participate in Matthew ngui’s practice hinges image/representation and the real, is used
the 49th biennale to be held in venice from on the investigation of the production of to return focus on the composite elements
June 2001 to november 2001. Organised meaning, testing modes of representation to that make an image. The formal sensibilities
by Singapore Art Museum and co-organised problematise monocular perceptions of the of each mark or sculptural form are retrieved
by PDg Arte Communications of venice, the real and to surface the relativity of subjective in the mien of modernist aesthetics. The
Republic of Singapore will be represented experience. Much of his works are sited anamophic image is for ngui a metaphorical
by four artists, Chen Kezhan, Salleh Japar, on installation and performative strategies, device to surface the ‘false and incorrect’
Matthew ngui and Suzann victor. Singapore’s where real and virtual spaces become the in monocular representation of meaning.
contemporary art is presented through a playground for interactive dialogue between his latest work to be featured in the venice
myriad of forms comprising installation, artist/artwork and viewer. A representational biennale is undertaken with the sensibilities
painting and video, addressing issues of device most persistent in his recent works is and craft of an illusionist to underpin his
identities, examining relationships of self the anamorphic image (such as Chair, 1997), interest in interrogating the dynamics of
and the physical and social environment, captured by means of the single lens camera representation and cognition within visual and
and responding to the urban condition and produced via video projection elsewhere. linguistic communication. The work does not
and city-life of the city-state in global ngui confounds viewers with insensible deny the potential for miscommunication of
context. The exhibition, titled sinGaPore, distortions before surprising them through meaning inherent in dialogic representation. it
attempts to articulate cultural vibrancy in recognition of the anamorphic image revealed. surfaces directly and patently its potential for

loss and misconception. Perhaps in confessing spices, and the other, salt. For Salleh, these Chen kezhan who is known for his
itself as such, it obviates the illusory falsehood series of materials provide a metaphor of vigorous experiments with the medium of
of monocular representation by offering the engagements between colonial powers and Chinese ink painting will introduce for the
immediacy of direct testing and result. the colonised. The references to the history venice biennale a site-specific 12-metre
salleh Japar’s works may be defined of venetian and european trade, the rise of painting that will stretch across the main hall
by a broad interest in the problem of knowledge West and its colonisation of the east, and of the exhibition, on a wall behind a series
and the limitation of rationalist inquiry. the West’s conception of its history and of arched columns. As the hall is a former
While the theme of science affords him the achievements, are some of the conceptual chapel, the project is a challenging one. As
discursive platform to negotiate the precarious issues being addressed by Salleh. Salleh seeks a site-specific painting, the artist uses the
nature of rationalist positions, the artist also to address the West’s assumption of its own architecture of the former chapel to create
identifies and locates the problematic project history, as well as its ownership over that and highlight complex relationships between
of history in his latest work in the venice history. he dislocates and dislodges historical art, site and audience. The painting will be
biennale. For the venice biennale, Salleh fragments so that they can be opened to strategically positioned to take advantage
will create a series of three spaces that are multiple inquiries. Salleh also identifies of the spatial structure and the audience is
sequential and experiential. The audience fragments - marginalised or forgotten texts, coerced to study the painting from varying and
will first encounter a large metal-clad wall. materials and experiences - that can provide extreme vantages. The work, from afar, may
The wall connects the two other spaces; broader and richer meanings to an otherwise only be seen in parts, concealed partially by
one dominated by the presence and smell of static and stable picture. the columns, however upon closer inspection,

the atmospheric and brooding painting Since the early years of her practice piece in the centre stand for the colonised
presents itself as material phenomena that is in the late 1980s, suzann Victor has tackled subject. This spectacle of violence creates an
dynamic and evolving, aided by the fluctuations tropes of sexuality and female identity through anxiety augmented by the brittle fragility of
and tonalities of colours and their densities. painting, installation and performance art. born the central piece. For the violence it suffers,
Together, the painting and the space it inhabits in post-colonial Singapore, the post-colonial the colonised subject bleeds drops of red
signal to its audience the problem of seeing. identity becomes for her a natural extension glass, as if punished by anxiety of destruction
This seeing is affected by the lack of a whole, of her work on the female subject. For the of her misguided state.
being able to see only parts at a time, whether venice biennale, she will install her site-specific the works presented in the Venice
from a distance or up close. Seeing becomes a work comprising three chandeliers juxtaposed Biennale address the processes of meaning
meditative and speculative exercise, requiring in a row at human level. The two pieces formation, communication, generation of
multiple references to be made to the chapel flanking the central hand-built piece are knowledge, heritage and post-colonial,
and its architecture, the internal and external readymade 1950s victorian-style chandeliers gender and diasporic identities linked to
spaces of the exhibition site. The result purchased from antique shops. Oscillating the experiences of singapore.
is a series of readings that ventures into toward the centre handbuilt piece, almost The exhibition is supported by Ministry
multiple trajectories, opening up a string threatening to collide into it, the ready-mades of information and The Arts and Singapore
of variables that allows for differentiated are intended as signifiers of the glory and Tourism board.
encounters and meanings. pomp of the colonial era, while the handbuilt

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