Jevon Chandra, Khor Ting Yan, and Samuel Xun
By Wong Kar Mun Nicole

Art and Market Small Rooms (AMSR) is an intimate oasis of art, situated in a new space shared between Art & Market and Art Agenda in Tanjong Pagar Distripark. On show are works by emerging artists Jevon Chandra, Khor Ting Yan, and Samuel Xun. Each artist has taken the borderless exhibition space, and successfully crafted an individual pocket for themselves and their work.

“Each artist has taken the borderless exhibition space, and successfully crafted an individual pocket for themselves and their work.”

I’m Exhausted, Where is he - Samuel Xun

Samuel’s room ‘I’m Exhausted, Where is he’ greets me at the door. Up close, the precision of his craftsmanship is fully on display. Each ribbon has been individually ruched and glitter is abundant in every fold. Illuminated by the natural light pouring in from the windows, his works gleam, beckoning the viewer closer.

On the floor is a cluster of sculptures including ‘Psycho Ornamental Ideal Boyfriend II’ and ‘Old Habits Cry Hard’. They cast their spell of glitter and shadow against the backdrop of the dull highway seen through the window. This placement allows for us to appreciate these sculptures in their bright joy, while tempering the experience with the sober throb of reality, an artistic decision particularly apt for works that tackle heartbreak through aesthetic extravagance.

Samuel Xun, ‘I’m Exhausted, Where is he’, 2022 installation view. Image courtesy of artist and Art & Market.

Samuel can be seen at his most playful in the works that have been mounted against the industrial steel grills on the walls. Phallic symbols are prominent in these works and the artist has also placed ‘Everything Reminds Me of Him’ slightly higher than the rest, prompting viewers to adopt a posture of wistful ‘devotion’ as they stare up at this tongue-in-cheek representation of a past lover.

Seeing Samuel’s works in person allows viewers to better understand them as a group. ‘I Hate You THVISS much’ and ‘Maybe That’s What It’s Supposed to Feel Like’ were conceived as a pair, evoking the male and female genitalia respectively. The latter, the smallest work in the room, stands out despite its size. In a presentation about holding heartbreak and humour simultaneously, it is a quiver in the voice that exposes a deeper level of vulnerability - one that questions if heteronormativity is something to aspire towards.

That being said, “I’m Exhausted, Where is he’ revels in its queerness. Samuel embraces who he is, encouraging the visitor to do the same. It is the first of the small rooms and it is an exuberant welcome into the world of AMSR.

it is light and stackable - Khor Ting Yan

AMSR’s second ‘room’, is Khor Ting Yan’s ‘it is light and stackable’. In contrast to the glitz of ‘I’m Exhausted, Where is he’, Ting Yan’s room emanates a calmness that gathers the visitor into its midst. The quilt works ‘in between oakbrook and chinatown’ and ‘my plant is dying’’ exude comfort not solely because of their material and form, but also because of the soothing repetition in their designs.

Khor Ting Yan, ‘it is light and stackable’, 2022 installation view. Image courtesy of artist and Art & Market.

Recurrences and transformation are intrinsic to ‘it is light and stackable’ and Ting Yan is particularly concerned with how our spaces and their meanings can change with each visit. She explores this through the running motif of the innocuous plastic chair.The artist compels us to look at this object again and again, not to rid it of meaning, but to allow its significance to rise to the surface. For example, in the ‘1 Binjai Park, Singapore 589818’ series which replicates a location that the artist associates with childhood and home, she uses the plastic chair as a recurring anchor. Each work in the series is different, in part due to the loving labour of print work. In the last variation, the now tenderly familiar image of 1 Binjai Park melds with fragments of another time and place, gesturing towards the complex overlapping of memory and an intermingling of past and present.

Khor Ting Yan, ‘1 Binjai Park, Singapore 589818’ (variations), 2016, installation view. Image courtesy of artist and Art & Market.

The AMSR space is ultimately a far cry from the coffee shops, alleyways, and apartment rooms featured in Ting Yan’s work. Her placement of a plastic chair opposite the Barcelona chairs in the space is a stark reminder of that. Yet as viewers observe ‘my plant is dying’, they are inevitably transported. The medium is a linen sheet capturing images of different rooms and snippets of conversations between friends. The piece hangs across the two walls so that when the viewer stands in front of it, they are enveloped on both sides. At eye level, the dialogue between two unseen friends reads: “If you could spend a moment with God, how would it look like?” asks one, “We would sit by the lake, and He would hold me, and we would just hang out,” reponds the other. A sliver of light passes through the cloth and for a moment, a whisper of transcendence creeps in – comforting as a worn blanket, gentle as a friend reaching for your hand.

The Faraway Nearby - Jevon Chandra

On the ascent up the stairs to Jevon Chandra’s ‘The Faraway Nearby’, the visitor has to crouch to avoid a delicate sheet of silk paper that hangs from the ceiling, a part of the ‘Other Things’ series, which is a standout of the showcase. Beginning at the stairs and extending thorough the mezzanine, the silk papers are suspended from the low ceiling to create a floating paper maze of sorts. On them, Jevon has written his reflections on religion, only to then painstakingly cut each word out. What is left is a work of phantom confessions, marked by absences which simultaneously capture both the artist’s faith and doubt. In their barely there lightness, ‘Other Things’ seems to flicker in and out of the physical realm.

Jevon Chandra, ‘The Faraway Nearby’, 2022 installation view. Image courtesy of artist and Art & Market.

Unlike the rest of AMSR, there are no windows in Jevon’s space. A candle near the back of the room lights ‘The Faraway Nearby’, introducing us to a world that is almost separate from the presentations on the floor below. Contributing to this is the sound installation ‘This Side of Heaven’ which plays recordings of Jevon singing an evening prayer, ‘Tuhanku, Bila Hati Kawanku’. However, the recordings have been stretched and compressed such that the actual words are indistinguishable. This creates the sensation that the exhibit is held outside of time, within a sacred space that cannot be confined by easy rules.

Despite the overt explorations of spirituality, at the heart of the presentation is a concern with human connection. The song ‘Tuhanku, Bila Hati Kawanku’ in ‘This Side of Heaven’ translates to ‘If I Have Wounded Any Soul Today’. Bookending the exhibit are the automated flipbooks ‘Songs of Companionship #1 and #2’ which capture hands in perpetual motion as they hold each other, highlighting human affection as an act of mutual faith. Even the words that have been cut out from ‘Other Things’ have been left in front of ‘Homebound’, a line etching of people huddled together in a cemetery in Bangka Island, where the artist’s father had grown up, and where Jevon first visited to attend his uncle’s funeral. These paper scraps are both offerings to the dead and a reminder that our dealings with doubt can ultimately form the crumbs needed to mark our journey home.

Jevon Chandra, ‘Songs of Companionship #1 and #2’, 2019, laser-cut acrylic, servo motor, die-cut digital print Bristol paper flaps, Arduino, code, 19.1 x 14.2 x 14.4cm each. Image courtesy of artist and Art & Market.

For Jevon, the works on display serve as a “check-in” with himself, a physical manifestation of his starting point as an artist and the foundational themes that drive him. ‘The Faraway Nearby’ is a deeply personal journey through the torrents of doubt, and a reminder of what might keep us afloat through it all.

–

Having previously seen and reviewed the digital version of AMSR, I was struck by the complexities that the physical Art & Market and Art Agenda space brought to the digital rooms. To house three distinctive “rooms” within a shared salon seems impossible. Yet, Ting Yan, Samuel and Jevon have used this arrangement to their advantage, playing with light, architecture, and atmosphere to facilitate intimate encounters with their work.

“While effective individually, the intermingling of the three ‘rooms’ makes AMSR a particularly interesting show to experience.”

While effective individually, the intermingling of the three ‘rooms’ makes AMSR a particularly interesting show to experience. The visual spectacle of Samuel’s ‘I’m Exhausted, Where is he’, amplifies the quiet nostalgia of Ting Yan’s ‘it is light and stackable’, and vice versa. The emphasis of both these rooms on the material qualities of their work – glitter and ribbon in Samuel’s; fabric and plastic in Ting Yan’s – also allows for ASMR to feel like a journey of moving from the worldly to the spiritual when the visitor eventually enters the mezzanine where Jevon’s ‘The Faraway Nearby’ is housed. By placing these three early-career artists together, AMSR has created an opportunity not only for their works to be seen, but also for their distinct practices to be placed in conversation with each other, creating a show that is ultimately greater than the sum of its already compelling parts.