ALTHOUGH Singapore Art Week is over, there’s still lots to see if you want to get your fix. Here are two — or is that three? — ongoing exhibitions to check out if you find yourself in Singapore.
Immortality Project 1
Sam Jinks
Ongoing till Feb. 12
Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore, 5 Lock Road, #01-06 Gillman Barracks, Singapore
Australian artist Sam Jinks presents three offscale hyperrealistic sculptures of human beings at Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore. Titled Immortality Project 1, the solo exhibition approaches the uncanny valley without falling into it.
Reunion and Carcass Bearer, full-length figures made from silicone, fiberglass, resin, and human hair, are a shade smaller than life-sized but are perfectly proportioned. “The change in scale allows you to examine the work carefully without being self-conscious. If it were life-sized, it would be an impediment to exploring the work. You’d constantly be comparing it to another human being, a bit like Madame Tussauds,” said Mr. Jinks.
His fervid attention to the effects of physics on human anatomy shows in the way he depicts the translucence of skin, the pull of gravity on a woman’s breasts, the flex of the arms in an embrace, and the indentations written by another’s fingers on the body.
Immortality Project 1 also includes Medusa (Beloved). The spitting image of his wife, Emma, only bigger, Medusa (Beloved) is an oversized head crowned with a den of snakes instead of hair (as is proper for a Gorgon).
“In anything I do, I often obsess over subtleties,” Mr. Jinks said. “The human body is like a puzzle. It’s a whole bunch of conflicting textures. You’ve got bones wrapped in meat, fat, and skin. It’s extraordinary.”
Presence of Whiteness
Zhu Jinshi
Ongoing till March 5
Pearl Lam Galleries, 15 Dempsey Road #01-08 Dempsey Hill, Singapore
Ongoing till April 30
Pearl Lam Galleries
9 Lock Road , #03-22 Gillman Barracks, Singapore
Presence of Whiteness by pioneering Chinese contemporary abstract artist Zhu Jinshi is the first dual-space solo exhibition presented by Pearl Lam Galleries.
On view at the recently opened gallery in Dempsey Hill and in Gillman Barracks, Presence of Whiteness was conceived, according to gallerist Pearl Lam, as “a single exhibition with two arcs.” Where Dempsey Hill focuses on “conventional” wallworks — almost-edible impasto paintings in delicious colors — Gillman Barracks is dedicated to installations made from wooden frames, palette knives, and similar tools.
The latter space presents a new work composed of five “tables” made from squarish canvases covered in two inches of black paint, demonstrating his use of paint itself as an object. “Not many artists can do this,” said Ms. Lam of Mr. Zhu’s practice, adding that the richness of texture is “a prime example of Chinese and Western abstract influences converging together onto the canvas.”
According to the gallerist, Mr. Zhu’s mode of application “expresses the spiritual idea of ‘non-abidance’ that is central to Eastern aesthetic theory.” Asked if future exhibitions at Dempsey Hill and Gillman Barracks would always feature one artist, Ms. Lam replied that she sees the spaces as working in tandem: “While they may each feature unique concepts and ideas, they will always be in dialogue with one another.” — SLM
