Exhibitions

“X represents infinity, and my dream is to showcase most of these extraordinary artworks that embody this ‘X-factor’ so that the audience learns more than they think they see,” said Billy Mork, the founder and chief curator of X EDITION. Realising both his dreams and those of photography enthusiasts here in Singapore, the inaugural X EDITION art fair will showcase sculptures, installations, media art, and allow the general public to have an open dialogue with famed photographers such as Hokkaido-based contemporary artist and photographer Season Lao, New York-based fine-art photographer Stephen Schaub, and many more. An exposure from Billy Mork…

Having travelled across multiple American states and covering a distance of more than 6,000 kilometres along the China-North Korean border, the first Singaporean Nobel Peace Prize photographer, Sim Chi Yin, tells her compelling story through a series of photos of our time today on nuclear weapons. Titled “Most People Were Silent”, her solo exhibition juxtaposes nuclear sites in North Korea – the only country to test nuclear weapons in the 21st century – with the United States, the first country to have ever tested and used them. The front of the exhibition. Working with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear…

The Singapore Night Festival (SNF) 2018 returns with Bring On The Night, a nine-day long festival celebrating Singapore’s arts and heritage scene. The eleventh edition of this spectacular light festival sees the best of Singapore’s artists, with a range of exhibits that promise to dazzle and delight. Running from 17 to 25 August, this fiesta includes a melange of performances and programmes, as well as the much-anticipated Night Lights, one of the highlights of the festival. An extravaganza that encapsulates the pulse and vibrancy of the city’s arts scene, the famed Night Lights comprise a variety of interactive light installations…

Conventional ways of thinking about art, science and engineering would typically lead us to conceive of them as separate, mutually exclusive realms. Dutch artist Theo Jansen, however, seamlessly straddles their boundaries with his world-famous sculptures and inorganic life – the Strandbeests. Conceptualised initially as a solution to global warming, the Strandbeests are synonymous with the iconic PVC pipes that they’re made of. The unique form of artificial life is birthed from an artistic application of engineering principles. The Strandbeests posses a looming grace especially when they’re seen in movement, walking in unique gaits reminiscent of real-life animal behaviour. Aided by…

Private art collection and commercial art galleries are definitely not the first things that come to mind when we consider art culture in Singapore, mainly due to the prohibitive costs of pursuing art ownership. Often associated with snobbery and ostentatious bourgeoisie tendencies – no thanks to popular culture – private art collection and commercial art galleries are thus often given neither attention nor understanding in the public domain. The question remains however: just what kind of place do they have Singapore’s art culture? Mazel Galerie Singapore’s director, Kevin Troyano Cuturi, demystifies this and more in an exclusive tour of the…

Serious photography in Singapore remains relatively nascent in the public consciousness and still suffers from a lack of mainstream recognition as art. This isn’t surprising given that the average Singaporean either associates it with high-brow culture consumption, or doesn’t deem photography to hold enough intrinsic value to be recognised as art. Anyone with a camera can take a photo – so why should it be art? Such obtuse views are repudiated with X EDITION, Asia’s largest hotel photography art fair, through its specially curated exhibition: Marang: The 1950s in Colour and Monochrome. Co-presented in collaboration with Canvas Gallery, the exhibition…

The theme of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was thoroughly explored with two ingenious exhibitions – A-DROYX and Human Version – which were exhibited for the Voilah! French Festival Singapore 2018. A-DROYX by Mathieu Briand was an exhibit that showcased his assembly of androids in his laboratory studio. It is a testament to the fact that the story behind creation can be more interesting than the final product itself. To call the space in A-DROYX messy would be an understatement – the circuits, tools, and makeshift limbs strewn all over were an immediate indication to viewers of the nature of the undertaking.…

The human mind continuously seeks self-expression: this is an enduring desire that has only strengthened in tandem with the evolution of technology as new forms of self-expression are invented. Visual mediums, in particular, catch on especially fast and the invention of photography has seen its meteoric rise towards occupying an integral part of everyday life in the 21st century. Most of us would likely assume that fawning over celebrity Instagram Stories and be making duck faces in our selfies are relatively modern phenomena, gaining recognition as cultural cornerstones with the prevalence of youth culture in the modern global society. The…

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” – C.S. Lewis There’s this famous French song by Édith Piaf titled “La Vie en Rose”, which translates to “life through rose-tinted glasses”. The singer croons about how falling in love has made everything around her seem beautiful. Singapore-based French artist Claire Deniau’s new exhibited work, Senses and Lenses, is poetically entwined with the plight of the modern painter. She has incorporated flawless mineral glass pieces that act as lenses in her paintings: looking…

Heads up! Hotel G’s latest art installations are enclosed just beneath, or rather, above your noses! When we first visited Hotel G, we were initially unable to find the gallery. After some clueless wandering, we were amazed – and mollified –to find the exhibition right before our eyes the entire time – up on the walls, hidden in plain sight. Perhaps it was the heat of a Saturday afternoon, or the fact that the gallery seemed to fit in with the hotel’s aesthetic so well that caused us to miss it. Either way, it was difficult for us to stop…