'Recall Reform Remaster' explores the ways in which creative reuse and modes of material transfer... more 'Recall Reform Remaster' explores the ways in which creative reuse and modes of material transfer produces a frisson of unexpected meaning and a tingle of strong emotion. The exhibition looks specifically at three processes: the syneasthetic recollection of one sensation (sound) that is provoked by an experience of a different sensation (sight); the transformation of found material into new physical form; and the transfer of ideas and information from one material substrate to another. These dynamic material transformations are analogous to the fluid conturbations that we witness in contemporary art practices.
NUS Museum presents an exhibition featuring encounters and exchanges between the arts and science... more NUS Museum presents an exhibition featuring encounters and exchanges between the arts and sciences, between practice and research, between the inquiring subject and the object inquired. An interdisciplinary project, “When you get closer to the heart, you may find cracks” is a continued inquiry by the Migrant Ecologies Project into the human relationships to trees, forests and forest products in Southeast Asia – explored in terms of materials, metaphors, magic, ecological resources and historical agency. Beginning with an attempt to trace the origins and stories connected to a teak bed found in Singapore, and set against the macro-context of “cutting of wood” (deforestation) today, the project has evolved into an accumulation of the diverse “aborealities” – connections between the peoples, trees and wood – in Southeast Asia.
The exhibition will feature several new woodprint works from artist Lucy Davis alongside works by photographers Shannon Lee Castleman and Kee Ya Ting. Two tales from “Islands after a Timber Boom” comprise an underlying structure to the exhibition, vacillating between Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (where early DNA tests have suggested as the origins of the wood from the teak bed) and Singapore island (where Davis has been researching stories of the local entrepot timber industry in and around the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate). Fragments of iconic woodblock prints from the NUS Museum’s collection are also reconstructed as animated shadows which weave in and out of the exhibition.
"This year at ArtStage, Jason Wee presents New Black City which features Singapore artists, Khiew... more "This year at ArtStage, Jason Wee presents New Black City which features Singapore artists, Khiew Huey Chian, Jeremy Sharma and of course, himself. Exploring the notion of utopia, the project will culminate in a singapore cohesive multi-media presentation created collaboratively by the three artists working in tandem." - Michelle Neo, Poached Magazine.
"The exhibition takes its title from a much-acclaimed play by the Singapore playwright Haresh Sha... more "The exhibition takes its title from a much-acclaimed play by the Singapore playwright Haresh Sharma of the same name. In it, Sharma writes of Singapore as ‘a dangerously peaceful country’, a country that touts the ways its highly engineered development takes place through ordered urbanization and rapid capital accumulation. Yet the seeds of this peace have germinated other, more painful affects, its urbanization and ostentatious prosperity creating fatalism, resentment and melancholy in their wake.
Through the works of twenty artists, Still Building suggests that this island country remains a knotty conundrum. For all its slick sophistication, the city remains in many ways a place and a culture that is under construction. While the official state narrative of how the country is shaped remains a pervasive influence, these artists have shown how urbanity is lived differently, that the social life of the city takes flight on paths the country cannot plan for."
I have been thinking about the ecology of art spaces, that mesh of exhibition, education and disc... more I have been thinking about the ecology of art spaces, that mesh of exhibition, education and discursive sites and locations that sparks, develops and sustains artistic practices. Museum real estate is certainly booming in Singapore, as in other parts of Asia. What is growing far more slowly are artist spaces as well as nonprofit initiatives that welcome and occasion encounters between artists, without the demands of production, freeing time for artists to nurture a re-imagination of their present.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death of late, as I prepared a new installation for exhibition. Th... more I’ve been thinking a lot about death of late, as I prepared a new installation for exhibition. The idea that so little of our lives lasts, not even for a lifetime much less for an afterlife, drives us to an opposing impulse, to make things persist for as long as they can.
Like over-familiar things, nature appears immediate and self-evident when summoned by artists to ... more Like over-familiar things, nature appears immediate and self-evident when summoned by artists to our attention. Nature seems obvious. Nature is ostensibly inexhaustible, a vein of riches that we can continually tap. But there is another possibility - that what we observe is only sophisticated cinema, a sequence of images on the limits of our knowledge and the extent of our fictions, images that nonetheless continually misrecognize what nature is.
Art history as we most often encounter it, is written to make claims of strong relations between ... more Art history as we most often encounter it, is written to make claims of strong relations between things, claims of significance, radicality, and influence on behalf of artists and art works; history in the major key, so to speak. For these pages, for a brief moment, I’d like to suspend that register in favor of a minor history of decidedly lighter objects, with much weaker relations to each other. Men's underwear, to be specific.
'Recall Reform Remaster' explores the ways in which creative reuse and modes of material transfer... more 'Recall Reform Remaster' explores the ways in which creative reuse and modes of material transfer produces a frisson of unexpected meaning and a tingle of strong emotion. The exhibition looks specifically at three processes: the syneasthetic recollection of one sensation (sound) that is provoked by an experience of a different sensation (sight); the transformation of found material into new physical form; and the transfer of ideas and information from one material substrate to another. These dynamic material transformations are analogous to the fluid conturbations that we witness in contemporary art practices.
NUS Museum presents an exhibition featuring encounters and exchanges between the arts and science... more NUS Museum presents an exhibition featuring encounters and exchanges between the arts and sciences, between practice and research, between the inquiring subject and the object inquired. An interdisciplinary project, “When you get closer to the heart, you may find cracks” is a continued inquiry by the Migrant Ecologies Project into the human relationships to trees, forests and forest products in Southeast Asia – explored in terms of materials, metaphors, magic, ecological resources and historical agency. Beginning with an attempt to trace the origins and stories connected to a teak bed found in Singapore, and set against the macro-context of “cutting of wood” (deforestation) today, the project has evolved into an accumulation of the diverse “aborealities” – connections between the peoples, trees and wood – in Southeast Asia.
The exhibition will feature several new woodprint works from artist Lucy Davis alongside works by photographers Shannon Lee Castleman and Kee Ya Ting. Two tales from “Islands after a Timber Boom” comprise an underlying structure to the exhibition, vacillating between Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (where early DNA tests have suggested as the origins of the wood from the teak bed) and Singapore island (where Davis has been researching stories of the local entrepot timber industry in and around the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate). Fragments of iconic woodblock prints from the NUS Museum’s collection are also reconstructed as animated shadows which weave in and out of the exhibition.
"This year at ArtStage, Jason Wee presents New Black City which features Singapore artists, Khiew... more "This year at ArtStage, Jason Wee presents New Black City which features Singapore artists, Khiew Huey Chian, Jeremy Sharma and of course, himself. Exploring the notion of utopia, the project will culminate in a singapore cohesive multi-media presentation created collaboratively by the three artists working in tandem." - Michelle Neo, Poached Magazine.
"The exhibition takes its title from a much-acclaimed play by the Singapore playwright Haresh Sha... more "The exhibition takes its title from a much-acclaimed play by the Singapore playwright Haresh Sharma of the same name. In it, Sharma writes of Singapore as ‘a dangerously peaceful country’, a country that touts the ways its highly engineered development takes place through ordered urbanization and rapid capital accumulation. Yet the seeds of this peace have germinated other, more painful affects, its urbanization and ostentatious prosperity creating fatalism, resentment and melancholy in their wake.
Through the works of twenty artists, Still Building suggests that this island country remains a knotty conundrum. For all its slick sophistication, the city remains in many ways a place and a culture that is under construction. While the official state narrative of how the country is shaped remains a pervasive influence, these artists have shown how urbanity is lived differently, that the social life of the city takes flight on paths the country cannot plan for."
I have been thinking about the ecology of art spaces, that mesh of exhibition, education and disc... more I have been thinking about the ecology of art spaces, that mesh of exhibition, education and discursive sites and locations that sparks, develops and sustains artistic practices. Museum real estate is certainly booming in Singapore, as in other parts of Asia. What is growing far more slowly are artist spaces as well as nonprofit initiatives that welcome and occasion encounters between artists, without the demands of production, freeing time for artists to nurture a re-imagination of their present.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death of late, as I prepared a new installation for exhibition. Th... more I’ve been thinking a lot about death of late, as I prepared a new installation for exhibition. The idea that so little of our lives lasts, not even for a lifetime much less for an afterlife, drives us to an opposing impulse, to make things persist for as long as they can.
Like over-familiar things, nature appears immediate and self-evident when summoned by artists to ... more Like over-familiar things, nature appears immediate and self-evident when summoned by artists to our attention. Nature seems obvious. Nature is ostensibly inexhaustible, a vein of riches that we can continually tap. But there is another possibility - that what we observe is only sophisticated cinema, a sequence of images on the limits of our knowledge and the extent of our fictions, images that nonetheless continually misrecognize what nature is.
Art history as we most often encounter it, is written to make claims of strong relations between ... more Art history as we most often encounter it, is written to make claims of strong relations between things, claims of significance, radicality, and influence on behalf of artists and art works; history in the major key, so to speak. For these pages, for a brief moment, I’d like to suspend that register in favor of a minor history of decidedly lighter objects, with much weaker relations to each other. Men's underwear, to be specific.
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Books by Jason Wee
See more at http://www.parisphoto.com/agenda/recallreformremaster#Z4kh6cobrM3j6kzx.99
The exhibition will feature several new woodprint works from artist Lucy Davis alongside works by photographers Shannon Lee Castleman and Kee Ya Ting. Two tales from “Islands after a Timber Boom” comprise an underlying structure to the exhibition, vacillating between Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (where early DNA tests have suggested as the origins of the wood from the teak bed) and Singapore island (where Davis has been researching stories of the local entrepot timber industry in and around the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate). Fragments of iconic woodblock prints from the NUS Museum’s collection are also reconstructed as animated shadows which weave in and out of the exhibition.
Through the works of twenty artists, Still Building suggests that this island country remains a knotty conundrum. For all its slick sophistication, the city remains in many ways a place and a culture that is under construction. While the official state narrative of how the country is shaped remains a pervasive influence, these artists have shown how urbanity is lived differently, that the social life of the city takes flight on paths the country cannot plan for."
Papers by Jason Wee
See more at http://www.parisphoto.com/agenda/recallreformremaster#Z4kh6cobrM3j6kzx.99
The exhibition will feature several new woodprint works from artist Lucy Davis alongside works by photographers Shannon Lee Castleman and Kee Ya Ting. Two tales from “Islands after a Timber Boom” comprise an underlying structure to the exhibition, vacillating between Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi (where early DNA tests have suggested as the origins of the wood from the teak bed) and Singapore island (where Davis has been researching stories of the local entrepot timber industry in and around the Sungei Kadut Industrial Estate). Fragments of iconic woodblock prints from the NUS Museum’s collection are also reconstructed as animated shadows which weave in and out of the exhibition.
Through the works of twenty artists, Still Building suggests that this island country remains a knotty conundrum. For all its slick sophistication, the city remains in many ways a place and a culture that is under construction. While the official state narrative of how the country is shaped remains a pervasive influence, these artists have shown how urbanity is lived differently, that the social life of the city takes flight on paths the country cannot plan for."