microverse IV, 2017
MAYBE
Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore ICAS – Earl Lu Gallery
microverse IV, 2017 was captured using macro videography, iron oxide particles seemingly come to organic life and assume sculptural forms. The artist’s human actions are caught in a push-and-pull play with unseen forces. She may have some control over her gestures but, at the micro level, particles do as they please. Each gesture has an impact lasting only split seconds, evoking a sense of dynamic transient equilibrium. Magnetism influences the movements, the ebb and flow, the attaching and detaching. Magnetism may cajole, but the particles respond unpredictably. Together, they counteract as if compelled in an irresistible dance. Projected on a large glass screen, elevated above ground in the gallery. The customised tempered glass screen sandblasted on one side and transparent on the reverse. The selection of audio expressions can only be described as ‘collapsing’ and ‘compressing’. A series of otherworldly tones creates a ‘shifting’ straddling between ‘form’ and ‘formless’ states.
Lean In, 2017 embodied the essential of the essence. An interest in how the pieces, deceptively static, had the potentiality to fall apart especially in its precarious state. Held with neodymium magnets, the negotiation of equilibrium and tension are at play but only barely with the forces of magnetism, gravity with minimal artist intervention.