In Luke Heng’s solo exhibition, Mechanics of the Snap, the artist makes paintings using an eclectic array of digital images sourced from both private and public realms. But what prompted the shift from abstraction to figuration in Heng’s paintings, and how much of a shift is it, really? The artist draws on several distinctive compositional processes to make these works. But what are these, and how do they contribute to our experience of the paintings? The exhibition is presented as being a study of support systems, both physical and psychological, and it is marked by moods of absence and anguish. But how can we speak about some ideas and experiences that have shaped these paintings, while still keeping them open to other possible readings? And what kinds of support systems are generative for painting in Singapore today? In this conversation, Luke Heng will respond to queries and propositions such as these, from fellow artist Jon Chan as well as art historian and curator Roger Nelson.
Luke Heng is an artist based in Singapore. By giving attention to the nuances of memory and the void, he employs painting as a structural framework to examine the delicate, often-illusory supports of perception. Utilizing images that are in circulation within the cultural archives, this process provides a form of resistance, anchoring the fleeting and immaterial in paint.
Jon Chan is an artist based in Singapore. He works through the dimensions of unsolicited real-time performances and the circulation of mediated images, but he does so primarily from the position of a painter.
Roger Nelson is an art historian and curator based in Singapore. He works on contemporary and modern art in Southeast Asia.
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