10 must-see exhibitions at Singapore Gallery Month 2024, according to an art curator

Vietnamese-American artist Kenny Nguyen creates mixed-media paintings that are centred on ideas of cultural identity and displacement. He grew up on a coconut farm in rural Vietnam and relocated to the United States as an adult, turning to art as a coping mechanism for feelings of alienation and isolation. Drawing on his work with textiles, he produces sensuous, three-dimensional silk-based objects that he describes as “deconstructed paintings.”

Taiwanese artist Demos Chiang’s contemporary literati art style blends Eastern and Western cultures. He works across various mediums, including painting, installation and street art. His latest exhibition captures the rich and diverse changes of the seasons, encouraging viewers to reconnect with their memories of nature's cycles through his use of animal imagery.

Ruben Pang’s work reflects his effusive and spontaneous approach to the act of painting. The Singaporean artist, who is based in Italy, has a keen interest in metaphysics. The images in “Prometheus” are based on archetypal stories, such as the Quest, Rebirth, and Voyage, and their visual language evinces varying degrees of abstraction and figuration.

Natee Utarit is one of the most celebrated artists in Thailand. While his visual language is premised on familiar genres of European art history, from history painting to landscapes, his worldview is a globalised, postcolonial one. The present exhibition is a culmination of his residency at STPI in 2023, during which he continued the “Deja vu” series that reimagines the histories of the East and West.

Charles-Joseph de Ligne, who was born H.H. Prince Charles-Joseph M. de Ligne – La TrémoÏle, is a French-Belgian artist who works chiefly in the photographic medium. His works are exercises in the power and symbolism of colour, which evokes feelings and moods for the viewer. In his hands, the image becomes a large screen, “which challenges and encourages the viewer to walk around it, to enter it, to get lost in it.”

Comprising photographs and installations, Singaporean artist Tay Wei Leng’s latest exhibition pivots on the ways in which photographic and visual documents influence memory and our perception of history. Tay’s works are cantered on her approach to reconsidering what a photograph is, and how images–and therefore histories–can be interpreted.

Paintings in this show by Spanish artist Carmen Ceniga Prado speak to the radical changes in her body before and after the birth of her first child. Through the language of abstraction, her works use the body as a starting point. They reflect a range of emotional states or embodied sensations, such as darkness, clarity and anxiety. 

This exhibition by Singaporean industrial designer and artist Nathan Yong features ten new works crafted from stainless steel. The meeting of art and industrial design has an illustrious history, and was explored by Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Yong aims to overturn conventional knowledge of furniture, pushing these objects beyond their usual familiarity in our lives. 

Guangzhou-based Lin Aojie’s solo exhibition brings together his recent works that are based on witty insights gathered from his observations of the art industry, society, and the world at large. His approach of discussing serious topics in a light-hearted manner positions himself as a unique voice in this increasingly complex and fragmented world.

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