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With the slogan “We Are Asia,” Art Stage Singapore 2014 returns for its fourth annual edition. Art Stage Singapore will take place from 16-19 January at Marina Bay Sands.
Within Southeast Asia, Singapore occupies a powerful position: the region is a hotspot for Asian contemporary art, promising for the market, but with fragmented cultural identity and structure. Among the charms of Singapore for an art fair are its international character and business frameworks, efficient organization and proximity to a strong collector base, as well as emerging and established artists in the region.
On his renewed ambitions for Art Stage Singapore, the founding director Lorenzo Rudolf, formerly the director of Art Basel, highlights the need to create a distinctive brand: “Your own very specific identity and uniqueness”. One priority in 2014 is content. Expect a new fair format and museum-style layout aiming to offer much more in terms of curatorial guidance. Visiors are invited to join leading academics, writers, critics, gallerists, collectors, artists and art professionals in conversation about emerging artists and artworks like “Lonely” in oil on canvas by Nguyen The Dung.
Nguyen The Dung's work explores scenarios that are imbued with social and personalised meaning. Humorous, melancholic and sometimes disturbing, his work is layered with representations of emotional and physical experiences. The emerging artist from Vietnam, born in 1985, holds a Bachelor Degree at University of Fine Arts in Hanoi. Nguyen The Dung doesn’t create art, he creates worlds. His cow-headed human beings stand like a scaled-down snapshot of next-century urbanity in a tiny, but frozen atmosphere. Nguyen has a certain obsession with the one signature image - a cow-headed human being. This reflects both the traditional Vietnamese respect towards the animal and, on the other hand, a mighty hint towards cattle-herd mentality within modern society. It’s the life of the futuristic metropolis citizen, outfitted with business dress, which makes them seem even more plausible, more inhabited. Some of those citizens you’ll recognize in your own neighborhood. Nguyen The Dung’s work is inspired by pop culture in their design, but at the same time at once familiar and exotic. A science-fiction déjà vu?
Focusing on the urban context of the city of Shanghai, the Chinese artist Pu Jie is telling portray stories of contemporary residents who live in the shadow of China’s newly emerging histories. Pu Jie was born in Shanghai in 1959. Through his work, Pu Jie explores the concepts of identity and the self. According to Pu Jie, who was educated as an artist in the sprawling metropolis of Shangai, the level of multiculturalism and diversity has the potential to cause the discord, displacement, and division of the self. Pu Jie, however, draws a clear distinction between himself and most other Beijing artists, who were lured by easy money, devoting himself to an artistic practice centered on his own individual worldview. As a result, the ideals are mingled and morphed; metaphors are understood and misunderstood according to context and audience. All the while, the authentic self – if there is one – is via distortion, alteration, and compromise, made, unmade and struggling.
Amoungst his juried and curated solo shows it should mentioned, that his works were displayed at Today Art Museum (Beijing), Museum at Tamada Projets, Tokyo (Japan), and Shanghai Art Museum and at the group shows “Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection” at Kunsthalle Hamburg (Germany), Kunstmuseum Bern (Switzerland), Miro Foundation Barcelona (Spain). Gratuated at Fine Arts College of Shanghai University (Master Degree), the artist, known in contemporary art society all over Asia and globally, is also represented by AP Contemporary in Hong Kong.
The newly founded gallery based in Hong Kong is providing a platform for emerging and established contemporary artists and talents from around the world to show their work in the center point of Asia – where some of them have never exhibited before. AP Contemporary introduces contemporary art from all over the world including Central and Southeast Asia, Europe and America, including the artistsMari Kim (her solo show in the gallery’s Hong Kong space runs until the end of February), Hong Wai, Jieun Park, Ann Hoi, Alexander Zakharov, Olga Tobreluts, Nguyen The Dung and Pu Jie.
No doubt, Pu Jie andNguyen The Dung are absolutly hot shot Asian artists, presenting a sustained, eloquent and provocative exploration of the construction of human roles and identites – restless and sleepless in the city.
Art Stage Singapore
January, 16-19, 2014
10 Bayfront Avenue
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre (Halls D, E & F)
Singapore 018956
Phone +65 6224 4975
