Alfa Tango by Guo-Liang Tan and Sookoon Ang [2017]
[19.01.17 — 18.02.17]
The exhibition Alfa Tango takes its cue from the initials of the artists' surnames, expressed in the codes of radio operators. Alfa Tango hints at the way the artists' material interests, concerns and sensitivities find correspondences across the distances they live and work in, as well as a mutually appreciative friendship. Ang lives in Paris while Tan spent his most recent years in Glasgow/Frankfurt.
The syntax of dance in Tango describes the interplay in the exhibition between two equals, and the contrasting rhythms and points of emphasis between them. The exhibition palate is deliberate constrained to monochromes, in part a response to Grey Projects' unique properties, and in part to accentuate these contrasts. The exhibition features all new works: two large fabric works by Sookoon Ang, as well as a video and four fabric collages by Guo-Liang Tan. Hands grasping and in slacked release, bodies in both collective and solo movement echo as image and subject in both artists' works. The tremulous grid in Ang's wall-mounted fabric suggests brickwork but also musical scores and film strips, while the frequent reference to song and the knots and rings in Tan's video point to the entanglement between space and sound. With these works, the artists offer two distinctive approaches to the place of the lyric, as well as to the syntax of circularity and recurrence.
Ang’s work addresses the unstable dimension of existence through presenting variable perceptions of reality and also suggesting or creating alternative universes. Encompassing a wide range of mediums and artistic approaches, Ang brings about evocative reconsiderations of the everyday. Her work response to the transient and imperfect nature of things, emotions and ideas. Ang creates physical objects imbued with metaphysical connotations or staging of nonlinear narratives involving layers of perceptions and plasticity of interpretations.
Tan’s practice revolves around how the act of painting and writing can be charged with affect and otherness. Tension between the phenomenological and the psychological are played out in the making process, staging congruencies and slippages that occurs within material and language. The notion of touch as an indexical and evocative gesture features prominently in Tan’s work, which includes painting, collages, text and the moving image. Tan is particularly interested in how modes of abstraction may be used to negotiate the space between the haptic and the haunted while reframing our present-ness and subjectivity.
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Sookoon Ang (b. 1977, Singapore) lives and works in Singapore & France. She majored in sculpture in School of Visual Arts, New York and participated Rijksakademie Residency in Amsterdam amongst others. Recent major exhibitions include Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Art Basel Hong Kong (2014); Singapore Biennale (2013); Paris Scope: Sookoon Ang, Mixed Greens Gallery, New York (2013); Absurdistan, OV Gallery, Shanghai (2013); Future Proof, Singapore Art Museum (2012). Her film & video work has also been screened in major International film festivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen and Fribourg International Film Festival.
Guo-Liang Tan (b. 1980 Singapore) completed his BA Fine Art & Critical Studies at Goldsmiths College, London. As part of his MFA at Glasgow School of Art, he attended the Erasmus Exchange at The Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His work has been exhibited and collected in Asia and Europe, including his first solo exhibition Dead Play at Space Cottonseed, The Trouble With Painting Today in Pump House Gallery, London and Peacetime Resistance in Bærum Kunsthall, Oslo. He is a recipient of the Singapore National Arts Council Scholarship for visual art as well as the Mackendrick Scholarship and the Antje und Jurgen Conzelmann Preis for painting. He was a participant for Axisweb’s artwriting programme for Scotland and is a contributing writer on various art journals, catalogues and websites. More recently, he was an artist-in-residence at the NTU CCA residency and currently runs the project space Peninsular.