Converting is a piece about the Orang Laut, often called Sea Nomads, that inhabited the Riau archipelago. They were Christians and pagans that were often oppressed by the majority Muslims in the Riau community and were eventually forced to convert to Islam. Zai conveyed this history in Converting through the stark contrasts of red, white, black. Bound together by an island-like black earthy mass, white bubbles resembling clusters of embryonic cells or a sack of seeds marked with different religious symbols in blood red in the center, some with Christian crosses, some with Islamic crescents, with others remaining indecipherable or blank. The protective medium of beeswax forms a translucent layer on the painting’s surface, indexing the way nature ensured Riau’s survival of disasters caused by outside factors beyond their control.
Zai Kuning is one of Singapore’s leading avant-garde practitioners. He refuses to categorize his work, and his output crosses multiple disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, film and video, experimental sound, and performance. His practice often examines the concept of the “tortured body,” and many of his pieces explore the relationship between somatic experiences and language. He founded the Metabolic Theater Laboratory (MTL) in 1996 to examine the relationship between physical movements and language in Southeast Asian rituals. After disbanding the MTL in 2001, he returned to individually defined practices such as solo performance, writing, sound, and research. His most recent work responds to histories of indigenous people in Singapore and Indonesia including the Orang Laut and Dapunta Hyang Jayenasa.
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
His Deck Painting I recalls the simplistic stripes of conceptual artist Daniel Buren, or the minimal lines of twentieth century abstract painting, but is in reality a readymade, fashioned from repurposed fabric of deck chairs...
LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
Hand Palm Echo 1 is a digital animation based on Christine Sun Kim’s staircase mural at The Drawing Center in New York (10 March – 22 May, 2022)...
Itch explores the relationship between technology and daily human experience with a motorized arm that extends from within the gallery’s wall, moving up and down while holding a projector that shows a desperately scratching pair of hands....
The series West (Flag 1), West (Flag 3), and West (Flag 6) continues da Cunha’s ongoing exploration of the form’s various vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripes...
Unlike many of his earlier films which often present poignant critiques of mass media and its deleterious effects on American culture, EASTER MORNING , Conner’s final video work before his death in 2008, constitutes a far more meditative filmic essay in which a limited amount of images turn into compelling, almost hypnotic visual experience...
Towhead n’Ganga, enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form reflects many of Kelley’s works, in both its compositional and semantic qualities...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
Glaze (Savana) (2005) is an assemblage of found materials: a car wheel, a tire, and a wooden plinth of the type traditionally used to display sculpture...
Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...