Han Sai Por’s “Moving Forest’ is a new body of 50 breakthrough works produced in collaboration with STPI’s print and workshop team. Following Han’s recent show “Black Forest” at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, “Moving Forest” references a renewal of seasons, such as Spring embodied here in minimalist, landscape wall pieces, three-dimensional fruit objects and forest motifs bursting with colour and movement.

At 70, Han is a formidable artistic figure in Singapore and continues to invigorate her creative approach with new material possibilities at STPI. She exchanges hard stone and marble medium for softer and flexible paper pulp. Integrating her sculptural sensibility, Han stretches paper’s potential to possess volume and textures as seen in the series Tropical Fruits and stunning, cast paper pieces Dawn and Topography Landscape.

Pushing her artistic trajectory to new heights are interpretations of forest drawings in wood-cut prints Rooted and Nestles. Materialised in intricate carvings on woodblock and printed grain pattern, these robust, sinuous tree trucks and branches make powerful statements on the forces of nature.

Modern sculpture pioneers Constantin Brancusi (Romania) and Henry Moore (United Kingdom) known for extreme simplification of forms are early influences for Han, who continues to push herself with physically challenging materials such as stone and marble. She is still going strong in a practice spanning 50 years shaped her sensitivity to nature and an aesthetic language of understated, geometric and organic forms.

Awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1995, Han attended art courses at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in mid 1970s, furthering her studies at East Ham College of Art and the Wolverhampton College of Art in the UK. Her sculptures are recognisable features in Singapore such as at the Istana, Changi airport, the Esplanade, and featured prominently abroad in Singapore offices at the World United Nation, New York and Embassy in Washington D.C.

-STPI

Image: © Han Sai Por/Singapore Tyler Print Institute
Togography Landscape
2013
Acrylic paint, cast cotton paper
102 x 254 x 3cm
Photo courtesy of the artist and Singapore Tyler Print Institute