Wave and Particle by Joshua Yang [2015]
[20.11.15 — 14.01.16]
In this new project, Joshua Yang continues drawing lines as expressions and experiences of time, while departing from the rules he has previously set for himself. Previously, the lines do not intersect and line-breaks are marked with points. This time, there are multitudinous overlapping lines and intersecting spaces. Dots, lines and cross-hatched areas inhabit the same spaces on paper.
In thinking through his line-forms and dot-particles, Yang quotes Albert Einstein, “It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.” Yang suggests history not as time unfolded but as a space, a space that meets time at tangential points the way two circles touch. If we can now accept the previously dichotomous time and space as a unified field of spacetime, and if light and other energies can present as both ‘wave’ and ‘particle’, why not history as both wave and particle, both time and space, and ‘history painting’ as ‘spatial drawing’?
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Joshua Yang was born in 1974 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 1994, he moved to Singapore and worked as a civil engineer in Tuas. In 2003, while pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, he founded the art collective, Vertical Submarine, which has been active in the local and international art scene since.
In 2005, he won first prize in the UOB Painting of the Year for the Abstract category. Other awards include the coveted Credit Suisse Artist Residency Award 2009, The President’s Young Talents Award 2009 and the Singapore Art Show Judges’ Choice 2005. His drawings began to receive attention when he completed a forty-eight hour drawing marathon in 2007. His works, which are predominantly site-specific time-based drawings employing a single-continuous line, have been featured in local and regional Biennales, including the Singapore Biennale 2008 and the Dojima River Biennale 2009 (Osaka). He has received commissions from public institutions as well as private collectors for his work. These include the Bishop’s quarters in Malaysia, Marymount MRT station in Singapore and the Dojima Performing Arts Theatre in Japan.
A firm believer in education, he taught at the NUS High School of Mathematics and Science and has been lecturing at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts since 2009. Currently living and working in Singapore, he has completed projects in Spain, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, The Philippines, Mexico City, Australia, and Germany.