iPRECIATION Hong Kong is pleased to present eminent Singapore artist Goh Beng Kwan’s ( b. 1937) latest 14 ink paintings. Goh Beng Kwan, a key Singapore national artist, was born in 1937 in Medan, Sumatra. At the age of eight, Goh’s family migrated to Singapore after the Japanese occupation. Goh started his education at the Chinese High School in Singapore where he was the pupil of Pioneer Artists Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917 – 1983) and Chen Wen Hsi (b. 1906 – 1991). Awarded the Ford Foundation Scholarship from United States and encouraged by his mentor Chen Wen Hsi, Goh sets out to further his studies in New York at the Art Students’ League of New York, devoting two years to study under Abstract Expressionist painter Sidney Gross (b. 1921 – 1969). Goh’s first practical experience with collage was at the Provincetown Workshop in Massachusetts conducted by the renowned collage artist Leo Manso (b. 1914 – 1993). Goh produced collages at the same time as he was painting expressive abstractions in oils. Governed by instinctual sensibilities, Goh instilled a new set of visual languages in Abstract Expressionism and Collage after four years in the United States of America.
In his latest 14 works, the Singapore prominent artist continues to devote his attention to the close relationship between nature and human beings. The artist travels frequently to get inspiration from the nature – often spending time living in relatively isolated and unfamiliar parts of Asia. He visualizes his experience of tropical environment in Southeast Asia with ink on rice paper. For the artist, nature is warm while cool, energetic while harmonious, furious while gentle. In his series of works of “Tropical Scene”, he utilizes a wide spectrum of colors which can be found in nature, and applies spontaneous brushstrokes of ink to give a sense of movement we can feel in the natural environment. Warm colors occupying background and cool colors dabbed in the foreground form an intricate scene that vitalizes the still tropics. Colors of different tones and dynamic brushworks emerge as wonderful musical scales in a wide vocal range and rhythmic pattern. His rendition of his spiritual interpretation of natural scenery is melodic, lyrical and evocative.
His remarkable style of vivid colors in Chinese medium and painterly abstraction is a fruit of his years being nurtured in the East and the West. In his return to Singapore, Goh consciously developed an oriental perspective in his paintings. Between the 1960s and 2000s, Goh sturdily employs the use of oil, acrylic, ink and collage mediums in his works, an incessant experimentation of the various mediums augment to his painterly abstractions. In the multidisciplinary master’s art career, his devotion to Chinese ink painting never fades. Establishing on his Chinese values, culture and traditions, Goh molds his artistic principles in creating imageries that are of eastern daintiness yet distinctively contemporary.
Image: © Goh Beng Kwan, iPRECIATION
