Can there still be anything totally new? Somewhere, someone would have done it before... so many artists, artistic histories and experiments, even if they are not remembered. Still, each genealogical track of developing a painting practice is different and how a painting language is used is different. This set of works tracks down a history of my studio processes across different times and developments. Some residues seem to have stories or rejections embedded that can open up ideas for painting. (Text by Ng Joon Kiat)

Painting Vocabularies: continue to play on the tension between the picture plane and the work’s depth. But rather than cutting and reducing, the method is additive, involving processes of carpentry and construction, cut and paste. Finished paintings and extraneous dried-up paint material from the artist’s studio are stacked over one another. Their subtly-varied surfaces interact visually to contrast representational depth with concrete materiality. While the all-over white canvases often occlude the frontal view of other paintings, the collage effect in turn undermines monolithic vision and interpretation. It encourages one to look obliquely, suggesting the presences of different stories and particularities across time that maybe salvaged. Recovering materials to build up a contemporary language, the artist reanimates the histories of painting as refracted through personal experience and practice. (Text by Isabelle Ching)