Luke Heng: Mechanics of the Snap
Yeo Workshop, Gillman Barracks
It is fitting that the images in Luke Heng’s latest paintings appear ghostly. For the past few years, the artist has largely withdrawn from public view – “ghosting” the public, if you will – hiding in his studio to rethink the direction of his practice.
Once regarded as a promising young voice in minimalist abstraction, Heng returns with a body of paintings that edges towards figuration – though only in the most elusive, hard-to-pin-down way.
At first glance, the shift seems decisive. The canvases are populated with recognisable motifs – cars, palm trees, swimming pools, birthday cakes – drawn from the visual fragments of contemporary life.
But any sense of clarity is quickly undone, as Heng’s images refuse to settle. Painted in thin, almost evaporative layers of oil, the images seem to hover on the surface, as though on the verge of disappearing.
The works are derived from film stills, news imagery and digitally sourced fragments – images that have been endlessly circulated digitally. But Heng halts their movement by committing them to paint, creating a tension between appearance and disappearance, forcing us to also slow down and look at them more attentively.
In one painting, a crumpled car sits beneath two palm trees, its contours partially bleached out by a blinding whiteness. In another painting, another car appears to be engulfed by a white haze suggestive of heat or smoke.
We have seen these images before: in movies, newspapers and social media. Repeated to the point of numbness, they no longer register. But Heng forces a pause by slowing the image down and stripping it of context, giving it back a measure of tragedy that we have learnt to ignore.
The exhibition is titled Mechanics of the Snap, showcasing images of how structures – physical, psychological or even perceptual – give way under pressure. Beneath these familiar imagery lies an unsettling suggestion that, in a world flooded with pictures, we no longer fully absorb or care about what we see.
