Singapore Biennale 2008: City Hall

I went to the City Hall and the South Beach Development to see the Biennale before it ends soon on 16 November 2008. It's really astonishing! I love Biennale!

Let the pictures do the explanation. It's impossible to show all the exhibition photos that I've visited. Here are some of the highlights.


First destination, City Hall.

Maggots; installation by Pham, Ngoc Duong. "...Trapped inside with the maggots, we find ourselves occupying a site of both gross fascination and unyielding discomfort. It is in precisely the artwork's ability to discomfit, that it succeeds."

Singapore; installation by Pimkanchanapong, Wit. "Pimkachanapong has re-created a Google Earth satellite-image of Singapore as wall-to-wall floor covering for the Chamber at City Hall. Similar to what happens on the internet, the artist provides tags for visitors' to place personal information about specific places onto the image-map..."

Raw Canvas; painting by Lee, Jane. "Threads of paint cross over each other creating a weave ostensibly reflective of the artist's obsessive nature, as she follows the action of the weft and the warp. By striving to create paintings that appear like draped cloth, a knotty loose weave, or a combination of both, Lee continues to blue the visual lines between fabric and paint."

Tropicana; sculptural installation by E Chen. " The yarn in this installation is elaborately woven to take the shape of a scooter and a lamp post with ivy growing around it..."

I was standing next to one of the images in the photographic series by Ryuro Fukuada.

El Naufragio de los Hombres; three channel video installation by Nijensohn, Charly. "This video was filmed in the salt desert of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The sky's reflection makes them appear to be floating amongst clouds, as if becoming mythical beings."

One of the photographs by Dolron, Deriee. "...The rich, multi-layered colours, the use of light, darkness and depth give the impression of an oil painting..."

Blackfield; installation by Ben-David, Zadok. " Blackfield are taken from botanical drawings and etched out in thin metal. Painted in color on one side and black on the other..."

"...there botanical shapes collectively compose an installation that literally has two sides; one light, growing and liberating while the other, cold and sombre, parched like a burn landscape..."

Close up shot.

I'm Not Expensive; installation by Lee, Yonh Deok. This is one of my favorite exhibitions. This installation looked like a still image from the first glance, but when you walked towards it, the highlighted images looked as if they were moving.

"Movement and illusion are central to Lee's practice and his pieces use mesmerizing tricks of the eye. We move towards them, across and away from them, experimenting with our sense of sight and our location..."

I Wonder Why; installation by Prasad, Srinivasa. " A room filled with various everyday objects layered with a covering of charcoal. Images of fire projected on the four surrounding walls bring to mind as a burning space, when everything may go up in flames at the end of the world. This image of destruction seems to come as a warming regarding the current state we find the world in."

Serigala Militia; installation by Tromarama. "...experiencing the individual moments when music, craft and technology are bound together."

War of the Worlds; Installation by New, Leeroy.

Bachelor - The Dual Body; installation by Rhee, Ki Bong. " A special copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein's only book-length work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) floats inside an aquarium; the book is made of leather to endure long periods in the water. Due to the currents of the water inside the aquarium the book neither rises to the surface nor sinks to the bottom; instead it floats about in the middle of the tank kept buoyant by the undercurrents of philosophical obscurity."

Photos of me playing inside the Kids' Biennale area, before leaving City Hall to South Beach Development.

A kid at heart.