Sundial Garden

Sundial Garden

The Dilapidated House

The Dilapidated House

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Looking ahead to 2012

I am currently working on two different series of drawings. I look forward to producing new and inspiring works in the new year.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Notes

Akutagawa. A world in decay. My drawings too.

I aspire to draw like the manga masters and Chinese painters rather than the European masters.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Cafe Sessions




Work in progress: my latest drawing.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Zine Mosh 3


DX talking to Troy Chin, artist of The Resident Tourist comic series. Troy Chin is my hero and idol.


Zines for sale.

Zine Mosh 2



Some performance artists and musicians doing a performance with interesting projections and sound.

Cool people. (See right)

LD player.

My book with other zines. The comic with red cover is done by Jon, Theresia's friend.

Cool LDs.

Zine Mosh


This lady seems to be the character Mint in The Resident Tourist.

My friend Theresia (lady in blue) and her friend DX.

A blur picture of my work.

Some illustrations.

More illustrations.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Zine exhibition

There is a zine exhibition which will be held on the night of 15th October.

Opening time has not been confirmed (probably 7 or 8p.m.)

Venue:
Goodman Arts Centre
90 Goodman Road
Block B #05-06
Singapore 439053

Rocket Zine, Biennale fine-artist Michael Lee, the little drom store,
comic-artist Troy Chin, photographer Philipp Aldrup, and independent
fashion anarchists FALSE/Anti-Anti are amongst some of the others
exhibiting works.

I will be showing "Nature, Solitude, and Memory".

Monday, September 19, 2011

Hiatus till December 2011

I am currently working on an A5-sized drawing. I will probably complete it some time in November or December.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Some Thoughts

I had wanted to say this since a while back, but I never had the discipline and time to blog about it till now:

I have stopped taking pictures of dead animals. I have stopped drawing dead animals.

I do not want to dwell on depressing stuff; I do not like depressing stuff anymore.

Art does not have to be spiritual all the time or to solve the world's problems, but the very least it can do is to be hopeful and realistic.

Art should give people courage and strength.

Down with depressing stuff, down with depressing art. That is too easy; try something harder.

Yes, I am still working on incomplete drawings, but I want to move on from here. To what, to where, I do not know, but it must be something more hopeful.

Monday, July 18, 2011

sin X Carl Andre




Like Eva Hesse, Carl Andre uses the language of repetition.

My drawings of walls were inspired by Tapies's works. These walls reveal the beauty in "poor objects" and weathered surfaces, and they are about the passage of time.

I was also exploring the visual language of repetition within each drawing -- the bricks of a wall, the wooden boards of an old house, the patterns on a sewage cover etc.

One of Christopher Alexander's fifteen fundamental properties is alternating repetition. Personally, I think banal repetition without alternation can be interesting too.

When I did my drawings, I was looking at art of the sixties such as works by Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Tapies, and a few others. I chose my subject matter carefully -- it must have a certain appearance or aesthetic to it. The similarities between my works and art of the sixties have not occurred by chance.

sin X Joseph Beuys




I could not find the beautiful drawings of the stag skeletons online. I am not sure what Beuys had intended his drawings to express; my drawing is about mortality and the impermanence of life.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

sin X Eva Hesse





The truth is, I know nothing about Eva Hesse's works. I only know she uses the language of repetition. The above is a comparison of my drawing Sewage Cover with her work Schema (1967-8) and an untitled drawing (1967).

When I was working on the drawings of the walls and sewage covers, I was also looking at quite a bit of Minimalist Art and Conceptual Art. I guess that is why I can see Eva Hesse's influence in my own work.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Notes July 2011

1.
Question: What is so Japanese about the circle?
Answer: Zen.

2.
I drew my headless Buddha before I saw the photo of the headless Christ by a Japanese photographer.

3.
Seeing is everything.
The truth is, my drawings do not heal.
My drawings are about seeing.

4.
I imagine myself falling in love with a beautiful lady, and she says to me, "You are dull, just like your drawings." (I took this line from Toni Takitani, the film based on Haruki Murakami's short story of the same title.)

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Time passes...Morning Walk



This morning, I returned to the abandoned railway at Teban. Only Smoker remains, Emo-face, Robot, and Wondergirl are gone. They are replaced by new graffiti.










Should have been 'indie folk and foul, or fool'. Maybe I will paint a picture of this but change the text.

I went over to another side and saw them.



This is my favourite shot of the morning despite it being one of the least colorful pictures -- a muddy path on one side and a stone path on the other.


Sunday, June 12, 2011

The Dilapidated House




I still need to touch up a little, but it is more or less done.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Recent Notes (Jan - June 2011)

I did a painting of a graffiti wall. Smoker, emo-face, robot, and Wondergirl. But the truth remains: my days of youth and rebellion are over.

I like the ending of Murakami's 69. Why should a gentle and beautiful girl have to go out of her way to see something sad or painful?

I am in love with Yohji's idea of a home. What is my idea of a home? A bed. A few books and magazines. A pencil case. A sketchbook and journal. My iPod. A camera. A few sets of clothes. A cup of tea. That's my idea of home.

Sorrowful World is the book I have always wanted to produce. Despite the typo errors and one of the images printed upside-down, it remains important to me. I am very proud of these drawings.

I decided to withdraw from society for two years to be alone. I thought I could read up on Bas Jan Ader, watch his documentary, read Daido's autobiography, produce some mind-blowing work, or have a richer inner life. None of the above happened. I wrote one or two letters, read some books and wandered aimlessly in town, looking for familiar faces in a sea of strangers.

I have spent more than five months working on a drawing and it is still incomplete. I think it is a beautiful idea to do a painstaking piece of work, like how Tanizaki wrote The Makioka Sisters.

Some people took thirteen years or more to complete a novel. I have not even worked on a drawing for thirteen months.

An incomplete work can be more interesting than a completed work.

My outlook of life oscillates between humanism and Buddhist philosophy. There is no reason for me not to believe in Right Speech and Right Livelihood.

Wandering along the rows of shophouses, trying to find some obscure cafe, boutique, bookshop or gallery -- those days are gone.

I should not associate nature with my youthful days of romantic longing. Nature should restore in me a deep sense of well-being, just like breathing meditation.

The Dilapidated House -- my highlight of this year.

It does not matter what the world think of me as an artist. It is important that I do not number and count, that I am at peace with myself without feeling anxious or insecure.

I like how my colleague (Mr Chan C K) said that Some/Things Issue 03 would bring my art to a new level. Indeed it has.

What I know is actually very little, yet the very little that I know is sufficient for me to produce excellent works for the next ten to twenty years.

The Drawing Book

The Drawing Book was featured in Monocle magazine (May issue) and I decided to buy it today.

Picture of Monocle magazine and my newly-bought book:


The book is item #25 in the magazine.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

New Drawings





I am nothing compared to the manga artists Inoue and Taniguchi.