PROGRESSIVE DISINTEGRATIONS

By Chua Chye Teck, Hilmi Johandi & Wei Leng Tay
in conversation with Marc Gloede
Chapel Gallery, Objectifs
10 Dec 2020 to 21 Feb 2021
Tues to Sat, 12pm to 7pm / Sun, 12pm to 4pm
Admission is free; donations are welcome.

:: Opening (Extended Hours): Thu 10 Dec, 12pm to 9pm
:: Artist Conversations / Tours:
1. Hilmi Johandi & Chua Chye Teck: (un)controlled: Sat 12 Dec, 2pm
2. Chua Chye Teck & Wei Leng Tay: mould: Sat 9 Jan, 2pm
3. Wei Leng Tay & Hilmi Johandi: public / private memory: Sat 23 Jan, 2021
:: Panel Discussion: Sat 30 Jan, 2pm 
Progressive Disintegrations: rethinking collaboration, process and dialogue
Featuring the artists and curatorial interlocutor in conversation

Download the exhibition map and information about the artworks here.

Purchase the catalogue from the exhibition via our online store here.

In Progressive Disintegrations, artists Chua Chye Teck, Hilmi Johandi and Wei Leng Tay engage in conversation with Marc Gloede to create an installation of mixed-media works.

These artworks, with beginnings in touristic images in Singapore from the late 1980s-90s, a family archive of photographic slides from the early 70s, and fluorescences of mould and wetness on wood, open up ways of re-looking at and thinking about what and who we live with, and how photographs inscribe ways of being.

Through photography, painting and installation, the exhibition addresses what is perceived through an image. It also asks how a photograph — as document, object and artefact — can be re-examined through a series of transformations, fragmentation and remaking.

Supported by
National Arts Council
The Arts Fund
Goethe Institute
Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film

Chua Chye Teck, they landed on the damp spot and started to grow, 2020. © Courtesy the artist

Hilmi Johandi, City hall and the Old Supreme Court Building c. 1970s (Part of Landscapes & Paradise: Attractions and Sceneries), collage and graphite on paper © Courtesy the artist

Wei Leng Tay, 1 half frame 135mm colour reversal film slide. “Sept. 70” hand-written on Agfacolor branded heat-sealed cardboard slide mount. © Courtesy the artist

Press:
Plural Art Mag: Progressive Disintegrations, Collective Accumulations
Art & Market: Review of ‘Progressive Disintegrations’ at Objectifs

About the artists

Chua Chye Teck employs both photography and sculpture to execute his ideas. He draws inspiration from things in the environment that catch his eye, transforming them from their original state to take on a different context as works of art. Chye Teck’s philosophy is in re-presenting them, offering a fresh way of looking at something we may already know. He recently launched his book Beyond Wilderness, produced as a grant recipient of the National Arts Council’s Creation Fund. Chye Teck has a BA in sculpture from RMIT and his works are collected or commissioned by public institutions and local museums.

Hilmi Johandi works primarily with painting and explores interventions with various media to pursue ideas of image-making. He revises images from film, archival footage and photographs into a fragmented montage that hints at the social effects of rapid development. Beyond the reflection of nostalgia in Hilmi’s work is a subtle portrayal of a society that encourages the viewer to reflect existing historical narratives, within the context of Singapore. Hilmi is the recipient of the Young Artist Award 2018, NAC Arts Scholarship (Postgraduate) 2018, LASALLE Scholarship 2017 and the Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award. He has held several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions, and is one of the five artist finalists to participate in the President’s Young Talents 2018 with the Singapore Art Museum.

Wei Leng Tay works across disciplines including photography, audio, and installation. She focuses on how desires and histories are tied to family, society, the state, and the impact of displacement. She uses formal strategies in installation, in the relationships between image and text and bodily experiences in encounters, to question ingrained modes of perception and representation. Tay’s most recent solo exhibition, Crossings, was presented at NUS Museum (2018-19). She has collaborated with organisations such as ARTER Space for Art, Istanbul, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and NTU CCA Singapore, through group exhibitions and residencies, and holds an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.

About the curatorial interlocutor

Marc Gloede is a curator, critic and film scholar. His work focuses on the relationship between images, technology, space, the body, and the dynamics between art, architecture and film. He was senior curator of Art Film, Art Basel’s film programme (2008-14) and has curated exhibitions including STILL/MOVING/STILL — The History of Slide Projection in the Arts (Knokke / Belgium). He authored the book Farbige Lichträume / Colored Space of Light (2014), was co-editor of Synästhesie-Effekte (2011), and was recently published in The Impossibility of Mapping [Urban Asia] (2020). He received his PhD at the Free University of Berlin and since 2017 is Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the MA in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at NTU ADM.