This August, Element Art Space (formerly known as SBin Art Plus) presents its inaugural group exhibition New Pop New World, featuring the works of eight established and young contemporary artists from Indonesia and Singapore.
One of the most influential genres of contemporary visual arts, pop art’s impact as an interdisciplinary visual language, with globalisation and the proliferation of information technology, continues to be a creative influence that extends across graphic design, video art, graffiti, new media art and photography.
New Pop New World explores the new terms and categories that impact the interconnected global visual art world in a collaborative exhibition of 25 artworks, ranging from paintings to digital prints. Reflecting a change in visual trends influenced by popular culture in Indonesia and Singapore’s contemporary art scenes, the artists explore themes previously regarded as taboo to present their own narratives on politics, religion and tradition, through their depiction of the ironies of everyday life.
Curated by Alia Swastika, the exhibition features established names in the Singapore art scene including: Vincent Leow who through his use of vivid colours that reverberates with pop art explores the idea of kitsch through his paintings, drawings and three-dimensional objects; Lee Wen, a recipient of the Cultural Medallion for his contribution to the local contemporary art scene; David Chan, known for his lurid, part-comic, part-eerie human-animal hybrid paintings that are widely interpreted as a tragicomic take on society’s collective split personality; and :phunk, a contemporary art and design collective that uses a highly skilful display of fresh and exciting images to depict how pop art is very much affected by comic visualisation.
The impressive lineup of contemporary artists from Indonesia include that of Agan Harahap, photographer and digital imaging artist whose works often combine the parody and satire of human life, looking at how religions have become a commoditized object in the mass media and the entertainment industries; Switzerland-based Eddie Hara, one of the pioneer pop artists in Indonesia who has influenced many artists of the following generation whose works display a solid dose of irony and humour, often populated by mutant women and strange animals despite serious themes in his art (politics, sexism, racism etc.); Arief Tousiga, who works with various mediums and probes with realist forms to communicate his ideas through visual illusions and Wisnu Auri, who elaborates intimate personal stories through a semi-autobiographical approach based on his daily experiences.
