ART SG 2023: Advisory Selections
The inaugural edition of ART SG (12–15 January 2023) is billed as the largest art fair in the Southeast Asia region. Coinciding with Singapore Art Week (6–15 January 2023), the fair presents over 150 Singaporean, Southeast Asian, and international galleries and art spaces.
Below is a selection of artworks that spiked our interest ahead of the fair, from an exceptional example of Robert Rauschenberg's work, to a painting by 90-year-old March Avery, both showing at Waddington Custot.
Robert Rauschenberg at Waddington Custot
The first work Robert Rauschenberg made in the year 1989, New Year's Wall (Urban Bourbon) (1989), is a mesmerising example of the revered artist's mastery at traversing painting and photography.
Comprised of components often seen in Pop Art, Rauschenberg's composition melds primary colours, energetic brushstrokes, and silkscreened images from the American artist's personal photograph collection.
Rauschenberg's iconic oeuvre masterfully connects the mechanical with craft processes. This sentiment is exemplified in New Year's Wall (Urban Bourbon), a vivid painting made from expressive manipulation of paint and transfer of photography on aluminum plates.
Presented by Waddington Custot, Rauschenberg's distinct work is a primary example of the artist's forward-thinking and comprehensive approach to art-making in the 20th century.
Olafur Eliasson at neugerriemschneider
It's hard to walk by Olafur Eliasson's kaleidoscopic installations without feeling in awe of the immersive environment of light, colour and movement the Icelandic-Danish artist creates.
At ART SG, neugerriemschneider will present Eliasson's work entitled Mirror my orgasmic journey in me (2022). The colourful metallic discs of Eliasson's installation command viewers' participation by confronting them with reflections of themselves and the world around them.
Centring his practice around the way we engage and interpret the world, the Berlin-based artist's work manipulates reflections and symmetry. His chromatic installation creates an infinite space where visitors can expand their understanding and experience of life.
Gallery Baton brings Towards to Singapore, Kim Bohie's vivid snapshot of Jeju Island's tropical landscape, in a presentation that spotlights the work of a number of other prominent Korean artists including Song Burnsoo and Bae Yoon Hwan.
Born in Seoul, Kim has since settled in Jeju Island, South Korea. The move prompted Kim to focus her attention on the island's tropical scenery resulting in a portfolio that boasts the vivid colours and luscious plantations that the island has on offer.
In 2023, Baton Gallery will be host to a solo exhibition of Kim's work in their Seoul gallery. The solo show reflects her ever-growing presence on the South Korean art scene, with prominent works sitting in the collections of the Seoul Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul.
William Kentridge at Goodman Gallery
William Kentridge's exhibition showing at the Royal Academy in London over the last few months, left no doubt as to the South African artist's brilliance.
Now Singapore has a chance to experience his spell-binding world, as Goodman Gallery brings a selection of his animations, sculptures, and charcoal drawings to ART SG.
Flip book film is a discipline he has perfected throughout his career, characterised by drawings and text in ink and charcoal, that dance on book pages.
Sonnets (2012) is one of two of his flip book films showing in Singapore. Offering an alternative to his traditional black and white drawings, kaleidoscopic blocks of colour flicker across the pages, accompanied by a soundtrack of Kentridge's voice reading three British poems, including William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.
March Avery at Waddington Custot
'I knew I would be a painter. It never occurred to me that I would do anything else.'
As the daughter of the celebrated 20th-century colourist, Milton Avery and artist Sally Michel, March spent her life between winters in the family's New York home, and summers in scenic locations such as the Green Mountains in Vermont.
Continuing the colour sensibility and intuition that her father so confidently forged, her paintings frame the friends, family, and landscapes that have populated her life.
Now 90 years old, March still paints nearly every day in her New York studio in Greenwich Village.
This year has seen a number of galleries spotlight her work in solo exhibitions; Waddington Custot and Blum & Poe hosted her first solo exhibitions outside the United States in the summer at their respective London and Tokyo galleries.
Philippe Parreno at Esther Schipper
Phillippe Parreno's Speech Bubbles (Fuchsia) is guaranteed to be a photo favourite among fair-goers, consisting of helium-filled pink speech bubble balloons.
The series (ongoing since 1997), is designed to hover along the ceiling of the space that it occupies, in a continuation of Parreno's quest to place the exhibition experience at the heart of his creative process.
Under this vision, the French contemporary artist plays with the temporal and physical boundaries of the space, encouraging the viewer to question the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Arguably a career highlight for Parreno, the summer of 2022 saw Paris' Bourse de Commerce host his weightless worlds in the central Rotunda, showcasing his celebrated video Anywhere Out of the World (2000) and Quasi Objects: My Room is a Fish Bowl, AC/DC Snakes, Happy Ending, Il Tempo del Postino, Opalescent acrylic glass podium, Disklavier Piano (2014–2022), among others.
Main image: Philippe Parreno, Speech Bubbles (Fuchsia) (2015) (detail). Fuchsia Mylar balloons, helium. 68 x 109 x 29 cm each. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Photo: © Andrea Rossetti.
