A cathartic project that seeks to find a resolution to the trappings of paradise especially within the premise of the present day populace. Paradie indulges on the amorphous border between spirituality and culture whilst investigating what constitutes the psyche, sensibility and consciousness of the people living in Singapore.
Paradie proposes a synthesis between the search of happiness and the eventuality of mortality. The artist postulates that perhaps it has always been a nebulous territory without distinction.
Paradie is made up of a curation stage whereby inquiries are made to the public regarding paradise and departures, seeking to inspect the multivalency of meanings and derivations. The responses are gathered unto specific materials namely polaroid films and white shroud that enlivens the cultural codes and symbols of the theme. Of the ephemeral, the ineffable, a memento mori of sorts.
The poignancy of the project stems from the delving of the dimension between life and death. It amalgamates threads of hopes, dreams, uncertainty and finality. The responses weave upon an installation that would hopefully invoke a profound serendipity for the audience.
Paradie is also manifested as a photographic series by the artist in his search for paradisic idiosyncrasies in lieu of the responses from the audience. The artist wishes for the quintessence of paradise ; be it through energy, spirituality, culture, religiosity, to surface through the intangible abstractions, hence the painterly ruination of the digital images through the process of inkjet misdemeanour. The images taken by the artist will undergo this organic process of evolution and attrition of elements as the pigment scatter on the printing paper over time. The process would result in a gradual shift in light and darkness, in colours and energy, unto a painterly visual throughout the span of the exhibition. Scans of the print after substantial eradication would be hung as large format prints to bind the postulations of the aforementioned tangents of Paradie. It serves as a resolution of the conception of Paradie, one that dispenses the corporeality of paradise, a breakaway from perceiving paradise as a vessel, but rather an intimate novel of spirituality.
Paradie speaks much on the philosophy of the essence and a philosophy of the appearance, likeness and presence, much akin to how cultural forces influence the creation (or subversion) of an Image. All in all, Paradie is a project that aspires to let die a visual dimension only to give birth to another, much like how we grasp meanings and metaphors.
Untitled 1-10 , from Paradie series
33" x 44"
Inkjet Print on Awagami Handmade Paper
33" x 44"
Inkjet Print on Awagami Handmade Paper
2014
"What is Paradise to you?" written on an unexposed Fujifilm Instax Film
"If given the chance, how would you like to die?" written on white funeral shroud
What good are shivers? What use is to weep? Throwing a few sighs in between sleeps.
Like tides, this trouble rises and recedes. In hopes of seeing shadows without a doubt, without the sun. Drowning in oblivion, save your affection, bar none. This feels almost too quiet an existence, too graceful an exit. Am I a galaxy now their eyes can see? Or a mere dust fallen from sullen skies for veiled eyes before me?
I yearn to glide across your vein so expansive like frozen webs of fractured stars limping on shores. I will find comfort in their foreign skins; skins that burn next to my cold. Wherein night is just a failed conviction for a world that unearths only light. Light that bends so vivid we are only left to preach in blindness of being and darkness of knowing.
You used to teach me different shades of white. I am going to have to hold your words against you. For forgiveness comes in flowers. Frail white flowers that slither my chest that pillows my spines that longs for your palms. Palms when held in nearness, look most beautiful. Much like a nest within your ribcage and knuckles that crack a slight familiarity of nostalgia, resting amongst the ridges of your collarbones. Bones that compact like soil on impact that floats like a feather.
Sin is a regrettable word. Seen is just as foolish. For it was never where the lines meet but where the heart is. I’ve learnt to grow fonder of this invitation to love, this chance at living, this coming to terms with leaving. That exit is a letter away from exist; A part, just a space away from apart. I vow to be the relentless dust twirling in tandem with the win. To show up, so certain, whispering in kindred with the warmth of your sand. And I too, have grown to have lips married to Your Name, but when will I ever be ready to see Your Face?
