Founded in Singapore in 2010, Yavuz Gallery showcases riveting examples of contemporary art with a particular focus on artists and art from the Asia-Pacific region. In 2019, the gallery opened its second exhibition space in Sydney, becoming the first gallery of its kind from Southeast Asia to establish a permanent location in Australia.
Read MoreYavuz Gallery represents prominent artists from Southeast Asia, including Isabel & Alfredo Aquilizan, the husband-and-wife team from the Philippines who often create interactive projects that engage with the ideas of home, community, displacement, and belonging; and Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, whose relational and conceptual practice has centred around the human body and form as a vessel of experience and sensorial perception.
Also populating the gallery roster are younger generations of artists, born in or after 1980. Yeo Kaa creates vividly coloured paintings and sculptures that depict cartoonish characters trapped in scenes of violence; Alvin Ong’s paintings playfully combine diverse visual vocabularies, culminating in surreal bodily configurations suspended between moments of pleasure and pain; Khairullah Rahim presents assemblages highlighting Singapore’s marginalised communities in overlooked spaces; and Zico Albaiquni’s vibrant figurative and landscape paintings play with aspects of Indonesian art history and notions of painterly representation.
Yavuz Gallery is equally dedicated to representing leading Antipodean artists, among them Abdul Abdullah, known for his embroidered works, photographs, and large-scale paintings that consider marginalised narratives and stories of diaspora, displacement, and migration; and André Hemer, whose characteristically bright, abstract paintings examine the relationship between the digital and painting in the contemporary age.
Yavuz Gallery’s programme offers curated exhibitions and collaborative projects. Notable group shows surveying art from the Asia-Pacific region include Antipodean Inquiry (2016), curated by Owen Craven and featuring the work of leading contemporary artists from Australia and New Zealand; and And That Which Was Always Known (2015), curated by Roger Nelson and presenting six artists of international renown based in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Yavuz Gallery represents a diverse group of Southeast Asian and Antipodean artists at international art fairs, among them Art Basel in Hong Kong; Art Dubai; Art Fair Philippines; Art Jakarta; S.E.A. Focus, Singapore; Sydney Contemporary; and Taipei Dangdai.
Ocula Insight Alvin Ong's Paintings Close the (Social) Distance By Tessa Moldan, Sydney These new works were generated from the artist's experience living between two cities, Singapore and London : an overarching narrative that has naturally intensified in recent months, resulting in some of his most recent works linking to current conditions. In Quarantine (2020), anonymous bodies blend and twist around one another against a...
Ocula News Taipei Dangdai Launches Digital Platform With Ocula Taipei, 23 April 2020 Taipei Connections seeks to build a bridge between galleries and collectors separated by COVID-19.
Ocula Report Singapore Lowdown: Shows to See By Tessa Moldan, Singapore Singapore Art Week returns from 11 to 19 January 2020 with a host of island-wide events, at the centre of which is the second edition of S.E.A. Focus (16–19 January 2020) at Gillman Barracks, showcasing the best of contemporary art in Southeast Asia.
Ocula Photolog Asia Now 2019 'Asia Now is expanding and this year will welcome over 50 of the most prominent and cutting-edge galleries presenting over 250 established and emerging artists from China, Korea, Japan, Central and Southeast Asia, who push the boundaries of contemporary art.' –Asia Now, Paris (16–20 October 2019).
Related Press Between celebration and commemoration: Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak on the significance of the N-Peace trophies 17 September 2018, Pinaree Sanpitak Since 2016, I have gifted prints of my Malai collection as trophies for the N-Peace Award winners. Recently I realised how truly fitting these artworks are for the initiative, not to mention the real gravity of the awards' significance.
Related Press 2018 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair: five artists to watch 13 September 2018, The Australian Financial Review The Sydney Contemporary Art Fair has gone from baby to behemoth in just three editions, generating $40 million in sales and attracting 75,000 local and international visitors since it launched (initially as a biennale) in 2013. "It's a tremendous shot in the arm for artists and galleries," says its director, Barry Keldoulis.
Related Press What to see and expect from Sydney Contemporary 2018 28 August 2018, Vogue As Australia's leading art fair, Sydney Contemporary manages to make art critics into art lovers and the unanointed into worshippers, all within the space of three days.
Related Press Jakarta Biennale: A new understanding of contemporary Indonesian art 2 November 2017, The Jakarta Post This year's Jakarta Biennale will diverge from many of the curatorial practices of its predecessors. The Jakarta Biennale, which is set to open on Saturday at Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem in South Jakarta, will this year adopt Jiwa as its artistic concept. Jiwa is a concept that is almost impossible to translate into English, but for this...
Related Video & Audio Collection+: Pinaree Sanpitak 9 November 2014, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation presents works by acclaimed Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, curated by Jasmin Stephens. In this film, Gene Sherman, Executive Director of SCAF, discusses the third iteration of the Collection+ series. SCAF Project 23. Exhibition dates: 17 October - 13 December 2014.
