Art Stage Singapore Friday afternoon fulfilled expectations.
WSJ Cafe for pause after the first round. One of the exhibits was produced in conjunction with Lamborghini; another might have been inadequately attempting to lampoon BMW (unless it was product placement again—it didn't seem worth closer investigation).
A Japanese meltdown of the iconic MBS Integrated Resorts—casino, hotel &etc., which stands opposite the exhibition complex—together with the Sydney Opera House post- upcoming apocalypse seemed tame. The longest stop was at a five screen presentation of contemporary trucker trade across the old Silk Road—scrap-metal in Kyrgyzstan exchanged for tightly packed textiles in China. You sat before the mounted screens and took in whatever you could get of the flickering sequences. Finally it seemed a more effective realisation than the smoother editing might have accomplished.
Mostly a march past the booths was enough. The targeted condo and bungalow market produced a good deal of glitz from which to choose for decoration: oversize garish colours (defiant baby pink), movable parts—an inflatable elephant raising its trunk, flapping ears, stampeding it may have been.
Matched dazzle was given by the attendants and gallery owners, many good performance artists themselves, part-Bond, part-impresario.
A number of ice-buckets held chilled bottles on desks perhaps following notable purchases.
Unexpectedly, the piece the Paragon fashion mall on Orchard Road had commissioned for its forecourt stood modestly in early model form in a quiet corner of one of the booths, among the rest of the genre. The heart shape of the pink and silver bow here had been superseded in the final product for the shopping strip.
Brown water latte @ WSJ Cafe $6. Luckily the Media Desk boy provided free entry on presentation of a biz card and mention of the PR gal.
On the final circuit the small booth that held particular interest for a friend in Australia doing a PhD on colonial echoes in the contemporary culture of the region was happened upon. Glimmers here and there of interest in the old archival photographs, with insertions of the artists pointing to the disturbances and upheavals involved. Slight, glancing effects in the pictorial form for this viewer; young student work developed during an Arts Residency at Cementi House in Jogja, lacking force and energy, I'm afraid Lushan, and entirely out of place in such a setting.
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