:: Digital Photography & Imaging

It was quite a tiring experience to travel from one end of the exhibition at the Singapore Flyer to the other end at the Central Promontory Site near the Collyer Quay. I spent the whole afternoon at the exhibition. Although feeling very tired after the trip, I feel that the experience is worthwhile and very enriching. The art installations as well as the art pieces presented at the event are really marvelous and of a high standard.

I set off my tour at the Raffles City Shopping Centre, down to the Singapore flyer, then the Esplanade, and along the Esplanade Bridge, finally to the Central Promontory Site at the Collyer Quay. I came across various outdoor exhibitions such as the Fantasmas (Phantoms) by Isaac Montoya, where a single art piece can be view from two different viewpoints behind the red and blue filter, the appearing and disappearing ‘Fog’ by Fujiko Nakaya, ‘Daing’, the fleet of bamboo pole with slippers, by Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan, ‘Manas’ by Ilya & Emilia Kabakov and many more. To my astonishment, some of the installations were so huge that it is almost impossible to be created without the help of machineries to build it. An example is the ‘Containart Pavilion’ by Shigeru Ban.

Below are some of the photos that I have taken during the tour around the exhibition.

(Fantasmas (Phantoms) by Isaac Montoya)

(Daing by Alfredo Juan Aquilizan and Maria Isabel Gaudinez-Aquilizan)

(Manas by Ilya & Emilia Kabakov)

Successful artwork: Location (6) by Hans Op de Beeck

I feel that the most successful exhibition for the event is Hans Op de Beeck’s art installation named Location (6). The artist presents his art installation by leading audience through a long corridor into an alternate-universe where everything is white in a lofty igloo-like dome that will then reveals the content of the work which is a small observatory for fictive panoramic vista of a imaginary desolate snowy modeled landscape bask in artificial fog and bright white lights. Efforts can be seen into making sure that everything stays white in this installation, as even the bedroom slippers they prepared for audience to enter is also white. Thus I feel that the art installation fully fulfilled the theme ‘wonder’ of the Singapore Biennale 2008. We can tell from the melancholic vision of Op de Beeck’s landscape that such scene is only available to the Europeans. Therefore when it appears in Singapore, a country that enjoys a tropical climate all year round, it is a scene that cannot naturally exist, that creates novelty in audience and a real treat for the eyes to gaze into the near-nothingness.

The installation not only allows the audience to experience the visual of winter atmosphere, but also to experience the feel in such condition and answer to the imagination of being in an igloo, thus emphasizing dislocation. The artist wants us to move between inside-looking out and outside-looking in, to be in spaces where not everything is in place, even when we are tricked into illusionistic fineries. With these, I feel that it clearly gives the audience a strong sense of wonder and answers to it when one looks at it in details.

Unsuccessful artwork: Wonder Wrap by Gary Carsley

I feel that the most unsuccessful exhibition is the Wonder Wrap by Australian artist Gary Carsley. His work is featured within the Pavilion in the form of functional tables and chairs decorated using veneers, which has floral prints from Little Guilin in Bukit Gombak and the Chinese Garden. From a distance, it looks interesting; raising the question as to why these chairs and tables are all standing in the middle of the room, but that is not the intention. The focus of the art installation is on the Draguerrotype laminates, which are digitally-edited photographs that are glued over chipwood to give the impression of a real timber. But the large open space at the Containment Pavilion seems to reduce the impact and makes it less engaging.

The theme of the Biennale is ‘Wonder’ but the intent of the installation seems somewhat confusing and messy to me and I can’t really relate it to the theme until near inspection. My first impression of the installation is that it would portray the theme ‘wonder’ strongly and anticipated that the chairs would somewhat do some wonders instead of just the imprints. To me, I feel that the layout does not seem to be in place and the intention of the artist is not transmitted successfully to the audience. Overall, it is a decent piece of art, except that the meaning behind it wasn’t as clear, and that begs the question whether does random arrangement of objects contribute significantly to the art installation? Also, the rationale behind how the different parts of the chair were selected is also not clear from the art installation.

On the whole, it was really an enriching experience as well as an eye-opener for me as this is my first time visiting such a grand event. This exercise gives me an opportunity to learn how to analyze the various artwork and view them in more details which somehow enlightened me in one way or another.