The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) is titled after a 14th-century medieval treatise on faith, in which “the cloud of unknowing” that stands between the aspirant and God can only be evoked by the senses, rather than the rational mind. In the video, eight protagonists act out their daily lives. The setting is a soon-to-be-demolished public housing facility in Singapore, a country in transition from a mindset of Eastern collectivism to global neoliberalism. These individuals have lived hermetically and absurdly in their apartment space until this moment, when a magical and mysterious cloud appears, connecting their seemingly disjointed lives. It is a story about the tension between solitude and togetherness, privacy and communal experiences. The symbolic cloud embodies both divine illumination and hallucination.
Drawing from historical events, documentary footage, art history, music videos, and mythical stories, Ho Tzu Nyen’s films investigate the construction of history, the narrative of myth, and the plurality of identities. Nyen often collaborates with theater professionals, and the lighting in his films is meticulously orchestrated, the compositions highly aesthetic. Ho also practices painting, performance, and writing, exploring the many possible relationships between stills, painted images, and moving images. His first feature film, HERE , premiered at the 41st Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. He has exhibited widely, including at the Bienal de São Paulo (2004), the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2005), the Singapore Biennale (2006), the Dojima River Biennale (2009), and the Singapore Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2011).
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
At first glance, Cityscapes (2010) seems to be a collection of panoramic photographs of the city of Istanbul—the kind that are found on postcards in souvenir shops...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
In Ante la imagen (Before the Image, 2009) Muñoz continues to explore the power of a photograph to live up to the memory of a specific person...
Mario Garcia Torres discovered the work of artist Oscar Neuestern in an article published in ARTnews in 1969...
Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...
In 1940 Rivera came to San Francisco for what would be his last mural project in the city, Pan-American Unity ...
Masks is a series of abstract paintings by Simon Fujiwara that together form a giant, fragmented portrait of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s face...
Hill of Poisonous Trees (three men) (2008) exemplifies the artist’s signature photo-weaving technique, in which he collects diverse found photographs—portraits of anonymous people, stills from blockbuster films, or journalistic images—cuts them into strips, and weaves them into new composition...
War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist...
Untitled (Wheelchair Drawing) is a ten-foot photo transfer of the image of a wheelchair with burning embers in its seat...
In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...