Frieze Seoul 2024
presented by Yeo Workshop
photo courtesy of Yeo Workshop. photography by Jonathan Tan. edited by Ng Joon Kiat
Plastic Remains (2015 – 2018)
This set of works are developed further from 2018 and presented in Frieze Seoul 2024
The underlying dynamics of Plastic Remains are unpacked to reveal charts in human behaviour.
The underlying dynamics of Plastic Remains are unpacked to reveal charts in human behaviour.
Cities that want to globalise seem to take the same route. At some level, locales disappear under the gentrification
of districts, bright colourful plastics become a dominant aesthetic, and emotions are led by the highs and lows of
financial charts. History, heritage, identity and landscape are actively being made and re-made. Human experiences
and physical geographies become just memories. What is distinctive about these ‘post-country’ visual
environments? How would painting reflect the collage nature and psychotic conditions of these big urban spots
across the world?
The works in Plastic Remains: want to distill, through the translational medium of painting, some constitutive visual
elements of the global cities of today. To do so, they take on an imagination of themselves as the (future) artefacts
from these cities. Their layered fragments hint at practices such as the widespread use of plastics and the abstract
imaging of human desires and demands through financial charts. The tension between the layers of paint and the
shallowness of its surface plays out on the picture plane. Bright thick paint, sketchy marks, snarly lines and broader
areas of color joust for dominance. Some marks gain obvious upperhand in the field of visibility, others get
obscured. The visual tanglings suggest the restless vibrations of psychological life in the concentrated sites of
human population and wealth.
photo courtesy of Yeo Workshop. photography by Jonathan Tan. edited by Ng Joon Kiat