ART SG in January 2024

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"Vibrant Visions"

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This time, Art Front Gallery’s theme of the booth would be, “Vibrant Visions.” When the visitors step into a world of vibrant colors and cross-cultural creativity. Our booth celebrates the convergence of 4 artists : Eko Nugroho, one of the most internationally known artist from Indonesia who is known for known for his reinterpretations of traditional Indonesian media and techniques / Teppei Kaneuji, one of the established artist in Japan who uses figures and sundries which contain everyday image / Bunpei Kado, one of the emerging artist from Japan who captures the essence of the subtleties of everyday life and transforms them into works of art with his characteristic sense of humour / Yume Aoyama, a new-comer artist who creates extremely pop paintings by combining Kimono, wedding costumes, banknotes and station markers, images that are unique to Japan. Furthermore, Shinobu Soejima will be presenting her work for the Film Program at ArtScience Museum next to Marina Bay.

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Eko Nugroho

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Born in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Eko Nugroho is one of the most acclaimed Indonesian artists. He creates wall paintings and drawings in collaboration with other media such as books, comics and video animations. He also produces artworks under the theme of social issues based upon his engagement with student movement in late 1990s.

Eko Nugroho (exhibited work) "What I Plant Grows Wilder Than What You Plant", 280x150cm, embroidered painting, 2019

Eko has run his solo exhibitions and presented artworks at Singapore Tyler Print Institute (Singapore, 2013), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Helsinki, Finland, 2008), and Artoteek (Den Haag, the Netherland, 2005). He has also participated in Lyon Biennale (France, 2013) and the 55th Venice Art Biennale (Italy, 2013).

Eko Nugroho "Flowerful Future" 2023 , embroidered painting, 168 x 140cm

Embroidered paintings in progress

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Teppei Kaneuji

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Teppei Kaneuji mainly uses figures and sundries which contain everyday images. His approach of repeating and amplifying ever-lasting reproduced information in the contemporary society has attracted attention. Connecting individual objects by ignoring their original meanings of existence contribute to vigorous expression of his artworks.

Teppei Kaneuji "Games, Dance &The Constructions (Color plywood) #22" 2022, 182x120x4cm, silkscreen print on plywood

The Teenage Fan Club series is a collage of different narratives, scales, times, fashions, rules, and perspectives in the form of phenomenological figures. The motif of hair is one of the most important motifs in the history of sculpture and can be seen as an entity between body and matter.
The fact that I could not get close to the stage at a big concert and was viewing the show from the back of the audience, where I could not even see the top of the stage and only the back of a large number of heads wriggling to a single rhythm, looked like a single fluid monster, also inspired me to create this specific work. (artist's comment, 2022)

Teppei Kaneuji "Teenage Fan club #117" 2023, 18.5x14x6cm, plastic figure, hot glue

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Bunpei Kado

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Kado Bunpei's work is to begin production by creating stereotyped objects using materials at hand. If they were not stereotypical, they could not function as 'signs', but would signify something more.

Another peculiarity is his generation of new meaning by combining objects into forms like jigsaws, and creating a divergence between the original function and the new meaning. The Human Nest series, combining houses and cranes, tactfully expresses the instability of our contemporary urban residential environment. It is fascinating how Kado's work clearly looks interesting as an object as a result of a combination of familiar objects. The oscillation of meaning generated by this method has broadened in scope over the past few years.

Kado is participating ART SG in a row from ART SG 2023.

Reference artwork
(left) Bunpei Kado "Landscape Painting on Folded Screen" 2018
(right) Kaido Yamada and other artists "Landscape Painting on Folded Screen" (only right) 1913-17 Fukui Fine Arts Museum
"Reborn - Update for the Future II invent the future" Fukui Fine Arts Museum 2019 photo by Akifumi Shiino

Kado once said, “I had long been interested in its image as a whole where studs on the wall invites people to climb up them, an action against gravity managing to scale up without sense of gravity. The occasion for visualizing such interest came to me a couple of years ago at the exhibition in Fukui Fine Arts Museum located in my hometown. The exhibition theme was a collaboration between the collection of the museum and the artwork of contemporary artist, to ask the latter to generate a new work inspired with a museum piece on artist’s choice.”

“The line of this prefectural museum is fairly classic, out of which I chose a screen painting, a collage-like-piece composed of many different Japanese paintings. Several landscape paintings have been pasted onto the screen, each representing waterfall along rocks in form of so-called screen painting. This image was, for me, associated with a screen of today if these rocks could be transformed into the holds of bouldering. So, I made up a screen painting in “bouldering style”, modifying the composition of the existent screen.” (artist interview, 2021)

Bunpei Kado "Pilgrims at Kirifuri Waterfall on Mount Kurokami in Shimotsuke Province" 2021, 170x62x10cm, painted on MDF and plywood, iron, bolt

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Yume Aoyama

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Yume Aoyama is a young promising artist who aims to view the modern life from a mythological perspective. She is currently researching the coexistence between humans and nature that repeats healing and destruction. Aoyama is interested in animals that intermingle without boundaries even when disaster strikes, and creates works using the skin and hair of various animals that are about to be discarded.

According to Fumio Nanjo, Yume Aoyama creates extremely pop paintings by combining Kimono, wedding costumes, banknotes and station markers images that are unique to Japan. Her works are comical at first glance, but often develop a cruel narrative, with an interesting gap between the two.
Although only 22 years old, her sincere search for her own expression can be read in her work, and her future potential is promising.

Art Front Gallery’s booth　(BC01) is a celebration of artistic diversity, color exploration, and the global connections that contemporary art can create. It encapsulates the essence of Singapore's art scene while acknowledging the far-reaching impact of these brilliant artists on the world stage.

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[FILM program] 　Shinobu Soejima

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Moreover, ART SG is presenting 2024 FILM program this year, curated by Sam I-shan and co-presented with the ArtScience Museum. Titled Embodied Presence the program presents 20 artist films and videos, that are centered around the body and all its expressive capacities. Highlight names include pioneering video art masters Nam June Paik and Markus Schinwald; acclaimed contemporary practitioners Su Hui-Yu and Korakrit Arunanondchai; to artists on the rise Shinobu Soejima and Siew Hua Yeo. Revolving around three engaging themes: Movement in Space; Voice and Being; The Worldly and Otherworldly, the program will also highlight Su Hui-Yu’s debut feature film, Future Shock: The End of Eternity and will screen at ArtScience Museum’s cinema during the fair.
One of our artists, Shinobu Soejima will be presented as a rising artist. She would exhibit her “Blink in the Desert”.

Sinobu Soejima《Blink in the Desert》2021 10min. 32sec. directed by Shinobu Soejima, Marty Hicks (music), Hisako Nakaoka, Nao Tawaratsumida (sound effect) Tokyo University of the Arts, Film & New Media (distribution)

Soejima said, “The titled "Blink in the Desert," which means "to blink in the desert. I wanted to use a poetic expression to describe the solitude of blinking in the desert with no one there to witness it, like the English phrase "needle in the haystack" (like trying to find a needle in a haystack). I wanted to make it poetic, like the English phrase "needle in the haystack," which is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The blink is a reference to the fluttering of wings of insects, the flickering of candlelight, and the fluttering of shadows and light, which I superimposed on the blinking of the protagonist's heart when it is in turmoil.
Deserts are believed to be places where neither gods nor humans exist, where there is no water, no vegetation, and where death comes to all of us. In the book "Monastery in the Desert," a Coptic monastery in Egypt is mentioned, and they go there to experience a temporary death.（artist interview, 2023）

■ART SG’s 2024 FILM program
https://www.artsg.com/film-2024/

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■ART SG 2024

Booth
[BC01] Art Front Gallery

Artists
エコ・ヌグロホ / Eko Nugroho
金氏 徹平 / Teppei Kaneuji
角文 平 / Bunpei Kado
青山 夢 / Yume Aoyama
副島 しのぶ / Shinobu Soejima

VIP PREVIEW (BY INVITATION ONLY)
Thursday, 18 January | 2pm – 5pm

VERNISSAGE
Thursday, 18 January | 5pm–9pm

GENERAL ADMISSION
Friday, 19 January | 12pm – 7pm
Saturday, 20 January | 11am – 7pm
Sunday, 21 January | 11am – 5pm

VENUE
Sands Expo and Convention Centre
Marina Bay Sands
10 Bayfront Ave
Singapore 018956

https://www.artsg.com/