The Body And The Seed: Mike HJ Chang & Edward Clydesdale Thomson

Synopsis:

With bright hues and hints of play, the gallery presents a new series of watercolours by Mike HJ Chang along with conceptual wallpaper by Edward Clydesdale Thomson that consider the body's orientation within landscape and the environment. The human body is interpreted through forms and perspectives that are uncanny or even tangential. Painting and wallpaper provide the limbs, movements and angles through which a fresh conception of the human body can be glimpsed.

Mike HJ Chang's striking watercolour paintings press the body into jarring corners and colours, as it navigates the interstices between recognisable Singapore and more abstract dimensions. Clashing lines lead into each other, according to an asynchronous rhythm. Cartoons and mismatched contours end in tragic, difficult and awkward points. Figures sprawl over park benches, snakes disguise themselves as humans, and the body is spun around every which way. Thus, Chang pushes the limit of optical comfort, challenging and disorienting the viewer as much as he does the fictional body in his own imaginary spaces.

Edward Clydesdale Thomson's Pattern 4 wallpaper from a series entitled dead-standing, bark-peeled, clear-cut, windthrow, lumber, pulp extends a small format to the large-scale of an entire wall, becoming an environment of its own that wholly encompasses the viewer. Thomson's speculative research on the intersections between domestic wallpaper patterns from the 1970's and the development of modern, industrial forestry in Sweden during the same period evolved into thais triple-layered mono-print pattern. Though the human body is nearly eradicated (the traditional logger replaced by the factory), it is implied and distilled into a seed. It is a simple industrial potting tray used to spread seedling pines that becomes central to this recurring theme, and with this unassuming article, the artist critiques the march of modernisation in overcoming both the human body and its landscape.

Meanwhile, the patterns and motifs that envelope the body and the vision of the viewer give rise to a distinct sense of climate, locale and environment. While Thomson's wallpaper is informed by the cooler mountainous regions of Sweden, Chang's palette emerges from the intense humidity of the urban tropics. Each work affects the body in its own peculiar way according to these climates. What arises from their visual juxtaposition is a heightening of sensations — of wide open space, evergreen trees, the wind and clouds; and then of density, severe heat, the flush of a crowded afternoon.

As the works travel from Scandinavia to Singapore, they also allow the body to inhabit opposing modes of being, even as they flow from the artist's own processes. On the one hand, the mechanical technique embedded into the print of an industrial potting tray and the uniform repetition of Thomson's wallpaper reflect a meticulous, systematic tendency. On the other, Chang's paintings speak less about rigorous patterns than recurring motifs and shapes that surface like musical riffs throughout a composition, an impressionistic methodology that the artist describes as a form of improvisation.

During the opening and closing weekend of the exhibition, choreographer Susan Sentler will respond to The Body and the Seed through live performance featuring dancers Valerie Lim and Shaun Lim from LASALLE College of the Arts.

Exhibition dates: 28 April - 27 May 2018
Performances dates: Friday, 25 May, 6-9PM and Saturday, 26 May, 4-7PM