The exhibition will contain 4 different works highlighting Chong's practice, which provides a way of understanding relationships between image and text, examining how one is intrinsically linked to the other in his idiosyncratic manner of generating fictional narratives.

Never (Again) (2013) is a new work which is a neon sign literally stating NEVER / AGAIN, flickering between red and yellow in an endless loop. The work uses two diagrammatically opposing terms to feed off each other to suggest the ambivalence of the state of artistic production where everything attempts to be new, but the fact remains that nothing can come from nothing.

This idea of repetition is explored in another new work After Bolaño (After Duchamp) (2013), which tells the story of how Chong encountered Unhappy Readymade (1919), a piece from Marcel Duchamp through the novel 2666 from novelist Roberto Bolaño. In his novel, 2666, Bolaño wrote of a character, Professor Amalfitano, who is slowly going mad and accidentally recreates Unhappy Readymade in his backyard with a geometry book (written by a poet). Prior to reading this passage in 2666, Chong has absolutely no knowledge of the piece by Duchamp. With this work, he spotlights his interest in how literature can produce a form of art history that cannot be written by art historians. He will reproduce this readymade from Duchamp/Bolaño in the gallery.

Since 2009, Chong's signature work has revolved around an ongoing series of paintings of imaginary book covers. To date, the artist has obsessively produced 335 paintings within the series, Cover (Versions) (2009-ongoing). Each painting is of the same size (46 x 61 x 3.5 cm), and appropriates multiple genres and styles from both the history of painting without hesitation or restraint. Each painting is conceived at the moment of painting; there has never been a sketch, or a pre-assumption of what the painting will be. This exhibition will feature 66 new paintings from Cover (Versions). The book titles are taken from a long bibliography (of about 400 books, more or less) that he uses as points of reference when he is working on his upcoming novel, Prospectus. He has been working on the novel since 2007 and hopes to complete this in 2015.

As an epilogue, Chong revisits a work he made in 2008. The Forer Effect (2008), proposes a text so generic that it would relate to every single visitor to the exhibition. The text is appropriated from an experiment involving a personality test by psychologist Bertram Forer in 1948.

Trained as a graphic designer at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore and the Royal College of Art in London, neither art nor writing fiction has been a part of Chong's education but yet, both practices has found central roles in his life.

A publication will accompany the exhibition and will include an essay by Kenneth Tay (Assistant Curator, NUS Museum), a short story by Amanda Lee-Koe (Writer and editor of Postkod.sg) and a new text from Heman Chong.

-FOST Gallery

Image: © Heman Chong
Secret Rendezvous/ Kōbō Abe
2013
Acrylic on canvas
61 x 46 cm