Chua Chye Teck and Liu Liling at starch
By Woong Soak Teng

Installation view of ‘Something Similar’. Image courtesy of Chua Chye Teck.

Stepping into the spacious unit of a light industrial building, artists Chua Chye Teck and Liu Liling welcomed me from a desk across the echoey room. Liling offered some alone time to experience the works before giving an impromptu tour. Compared to past exhibitions at the artist-run space starch, this duo show immediately stood out for its minimalist, quiet character. At a glance, there was not much to look at — a white table with two accordion books, a miniature tower of postcard-sized prints on the floor, a light box illuminated against a wall and large-scale prints in corners of the double height space.

Gathering around the table, Liling flipped through the two book objects slowly and simultaneously. ‘Pair of Artist Books’ consists of images carefully selected and edited from a two-year long pictorial dialogue between the artists via text messaging. Each book contains images captured on the phone by an artist and the gesture of reading both books together gets the conversation going. The images within are no larger than the size of an Instagram post on the phone or a thumbnail in a digital album. Pictures of everyday objects, situations and textures float across the off-white uncoated paper, leaving an abundance of empty space for the mind to dwell and draw imaginative connections.

“Pictures of everyday objects, situations and textures float across the off-white uncoated paper, leaving an abundance of empty space for the mind to dwell and draw imaginative connections.”

Chua Chye Teck and Liu Liling, ‘Pair of Artist Books’, 2021, inkjet on uncoated paper, 21 x 11cm (each). Image courtesy of Chua Chye Teck.

At times, it seemed like either artist could have taken the same image, alluding to the influence they had on each other over time in paying attention to new yet similar things in their surroundings. Chye Teck uses the term ‘visual chemistry’ in describing their collaborative approach, where their distinct aesthetic sensibilities find common ground in relating to each other. ‘Pair of Artist Books’ is a testament to the shared language that the two artists developed throughout an extended period of digital interactions. Chye Teck added that while he is often interested in leftover objects, Liling is drawn to surfaces. To illustrate this, he turned to two specific spreads where his photo of a fish tail hanging over a plate is juxtaposed against Liling’s close-up of undulating leaves. My mind conjured up a surreal scene of fish tails hanging from branches, flapping gently in the wind.

Chua Chye Teck, ‘Endless’, 2021, inkjet on glossy paper, 23 x 183cm (each). Image courtesy of the artist.

Taking the stairs up to the mezzanine, I nearly lost my balance as I was fixated on the elongated print on the adjacent wall, positioned almost like a directional arrow. The striking pink lured me in as I attempted to make sense of what the foreign-looking strip was. My companion pointed out that it was a swimming foam noodle stitched using repeated cloning in Photoshop. True enough, Chye Teck revealed that ‘Endless’ is indeed a cloned extension of a couple of inches of a foam noodle. In his creative impulse to make a tall sculpture in response to the height of the space, the cloning tool became an addictive painting technique for him.

Initially employed to overcome the resolution limits of mobile photography, the act of cloning became an act of making in itself. The same technique was used in ‘Dust’, a large black and white print mounted on a protruding wall. The abstract image, which looks like an expanse of the galaxy or a dense forest, is collaged from a mobile photograph of sawdust found in Chye Teck’s studio. In keeping an open mind to the unlimited possibilities of image-making, leftovers from a woodworking session can build an entire cosmos.

Chua Chye Teck, ‘Dust’, 2021, inkjet on smooth fine art paper, 249 x 106cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

Diagonally across the room, ‘Ebony’ by Liling lights up against the wall in a similar elongated fashion. Defying representation, the image is constructed by tones of black and white created with light and shadow in closing the lid of a scanner. ‘Islet Dew’, another work inconspicuously adhered on a window pane next to the toilet, is a print on rice paper best experienced when natural sunlight filters through. Expressing slight disappointment in how the work turned out on the cloudy weekend evening, Liling whipped out her phone to show her intended effect on a bright day. While I did not witness it in person, I appreciated how the work can interact with the sun to realise its potential.

Amidst the drama surrounding an inflatable piece of pop art, ‘Something Similar’ is a much-needed return to the introspective space that art can carve out. The artists’ sensitivity towards objects, spaces and even the pixels of the medium lends itself to a fluid and playful dialogue that brings our collective awareness back to the physicality of experiencing images. Gently nudging the boundaries of image-making, the exhibition is a collaborative aesthetic exercise in contemplating the artists’ relationship with photography in this digital age, without any pressure to align with a theme or convey a dire message. In extending photography beyond two-dimensionality and embedding it within architectural elements, it is a reminder that the construction of an image does not end within the camera. Despite their distinct artistic backgrounds and visual languages, Chye Teck and Liling have influenced each other to co-create something similar yet different.

‘Something Similar’ is on view until 5 December 2021 at starch in Singapore. The exhibition opens from Wednesday to Sunday between 2 and 8pm. Exhibition materials are accessible on their website.