Richard Koh Fine Art (RKFA) Singapore in collaboration with Finale Art File Philippines proudly presents There’s always something to look at if you open your eyes! featuring Annie Cabigting (b. 1971). This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore. The exhibition will run from 6 Dec 2013 – 4 Jan 2014.

Within the boundaries of institutional critique surrounding the artist, the work, and space is the audience. Filipino painter, Annie Cabigting turns the tables and puts the phenomenon of the engagement of a “viewer,” as the subject.

Let’s observe the practice of “looking”. Annie Cabigting examines the visual culture of art practice through the gaze, power, and semiotics of a viewing body. Our visual language habitually considers a white gallery, a frame, or canvas with paint as a structure in processing a work of art. As the viewing body encountering the work, do we at all recognize our own contribution within the completion of a particular experience of an exhibition? The level of engagement between artist, artwork, and viewer is put into focus. The placement of the body encountering the work is recognized.

Stepping back from the structural frame of the art world, Annie Cabigting recognizes the importance of engagement and processing. Well known for the self-reflexive nature and conceptual frameworks of her paintings (in relation to the vernacular of contemporary art practice). Her previous body of work on monochrome is more cerebral, while this particular exhibition purposely has colour as if to signify engagement within consideration of the participation of the viewer as the work manifests its presence on a particular space and encounter.

Institutional critique has explored various positions in the contemporary art world, either within the criticism of a governing body, or a deconstruction of a patriarchal hand. When does the critique from an audience come to play? It happens everyday, by the hour and second of our viewing experience, within consideration of our own bodies, and the bodies next to ours, by the passing time, put on to center view. In Annie Cabigting’s paintings, the everyday is monumentalized.

About the artist:

Annie Cabigting (b. 1971, lives and works in Manila) studied Painting at the University of the Philippines, Diliman (1994) and was a recipient of the Ateneo Art Awards (2005). She has exhibited at the Finale Art File, West Gallery, Silverlens, Jorge Vargas Museum (Manila), Art Stage (Singapore), Richard Koh Fine Art (Kuala Lumpur), Primo Marella Gallery (Milan), Prague Biennale (Prague), Scope Basel (Basel) and Summa Contemporary Art Fair (Madrid).

-Richard Koh Fine Art

Image: © Annie Cabigting