Synopsis:

There are many expressions that revolve around time—she was ahead of her time; he was behind time; you were having the time of your life while I was having a whale of a time; at this point in time; I have some time to kill; and it's about time we hit the big time.

In this exhibition, Joshua Yang investigates time and the different dimensions of the passing and returning of time. This work challenges the conventional perception that we experience time in a linear fashion and shifts the emphasis towards the volume of time and its "bigness" instead. Not only can time be measured in terms of its length or duration, it can also occupy space.

Big Time is inspired by mortality, immortality, the temporal and the eternal. Yang's drawings are based on the idea of inverting a circle, which is a motif that expresses cyclical time while still conveying linearity. The anamorphic drawings require viewers to navigate their way through the exhibition to discover the vantage point where the images would come together. Completing the installation is a sound piece by jazz musician Chua Kim Chye simulating the movement of a pendulum swinging through the Esplanade Tunnel and the narration of poems written by artist-writer Susie Lingham. Experienced in its totality, the installation challenges us to see the unfolding of time and the passing of seasons in our lives in new ways.

About the Artist
Joshua Yang (b.1974, Malaysia) is a Singapore artist and educator working across drawing and installation within a predominantly site-specific and time-based approach often employing a single-continuous line in his works. He has participated in exhibitions both locally and abroad including the Singapore Biennale 2008 and the Dojima River Biennale 2009 in Osaka, Japan. Yang is the recipient of numerous awards including The President's Young Talents Award 2009 and in 2005, he won first prize in the UOB Painting of the Year for the Abstract category. He is one of the founding members of the art collective, Vertical Submarine.