Two vastly different artists, one thought provoking gallery space; Opera Gallery Singapore at ION Orchard presents sculptor Pierre Matter and canvas-based artist Wang Yehan. Both artists come from diverse and different backgrounds with clear aesthetic differences, but paired, they pack a sincere and dynamic visual punch.  Both peace and dynamism simultaneously battle for supremacy in the artist’s individual pieces unwittingly complimenting each other throughout the exhibition space.

Matter’s works fit into our disruptive era, when all human limits are constantly being called into question by the rapidly accelerating technological and scientific development of the 21st Century. Political statement, powerful animalistic emotions, human affection; all are moulded into the mechanical dreams of Matter’s metallic creatures. Matter seems to freely admit and exploit the view of man as partly evolved, part organism part machine, the inevitable, if not literal, consequence of the future.

Wang touches his surfaces with a similar lack of apprehension, and with a confidence that appears random but is strategic, ferociously bold, yet hypnotising and soothing. He calls the finished form, the complete work, the entire content. He does not wish to hide things from his viewer; all is on show, from the work’s explosive nucleus to its beautiful coloured cloud as it extends with crackling speed towards the limits of his canvas. Wang freely admits that he refuses to see the experience of his paintings as complete; they will always respond, like a faithful friend, to new feelings and new encounters. Rothko dances with Pollock here to Wang’s tune, Matter introducing Dali to Epstein in his pagan mechanistic phase.