These four artists Ringo Bunoan (The Philippines), Young Rim Lee (South Korea), Ng Joon Kiat (Singapore), and Yu Ji (China) come from four different countries that together span East and South East Asia. Placed besides one another, the art work of these four artists show a certain unity as much as a distinction. This unity is a commitment to the materiality of artistic practice not simply the basis of much of artistic practice but, as its subject.

Utilizing cloth or cardboard, paint, wood or stone, almost all materials have not been previously used. They are raw or manufactured materials to be used or re-used. The process or, in other words, the very making or construction of their work is integral to the subject itself. The work gains its inspiration not from some external factor, as if imposed from without. The work builds through and out of itself. That is, it comes from within, out of a then unclear logic inscribed in the first lineaments, if not principles, of its construction. The understanding of this logic comes through the process of working and reflection and working again. There is a slow succession of decisive actions, additions or interventions. There is nothing swift about this process nor necessarily certain. It may fail or not succeed to build. Or, hopefully, it will gain momentum and the process continues and then perhaps stops. Finished. The work is done.

The work is, in this moment, an artwork, gaining an autonomy which is neither contingent on an external factor nor, at this point, on the artist. The artwork becomes itself, autonomous. It speaks out of itself and to the viewer whose curiosity lead to an engagement. Commentators have often aligned this kind of practice to that of poets and there is a truth to this observation. The economy of words chosen, of building lines and verses. There is no excess here but, a lean economy and with it, a reflexivity, aware that in its making, its constitution, the poem or artwork will be shown again but, differently. Let me start again. This is wood, paint, cloth, stone, cardboard that each have a certain banal or commonplace character. However, the use of this manifested materiality involves a change of form, of shape and function. We do not see this process, as described above, so much as experience its outcome. Through this process, we become witness to the poetics of materiality. The work of each of the artists and the artwork they create is about this process of transformation of materials from the mundane to the poetic.

-Curatorial Statement, by: Charles Merewether

Image: © Ringo Bunoan
The Wall, 2008,
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery