House of God
Painting as a practice is not simply the cerebral reflection that stows its physique in static conditions, however. For Boo Sze Yang, travels are not uncommon, and his sojourns have yielded temples and architectural splendours that are not found in Singapore or even in the average cosmopolitan city. His Angkor series studies interiors and exteriors; the passing of time and the capsule of time. His church interiors reveal an exploration of sacred and profane: a vivid study of space as concept and space as symbol. Beyond investing gestural invocations with the mastery of depiction and the gravitas of reflection, to paint the interior of a place of worship for instance, is to re-evaluate the space through making, through re-creation. The act of a gesture in paint is to make a mark on the surface that is timeless yet time-based, implicating the moment of its manifestation. Even to remove the mark, is to take away by making another. Complete eradication would be impossible. In contemporary terms, we regard the painter’s practice as one of enforcing permanence, an absolute: seeking to document, almost like photography does, the moment of death. It is a moment that exists in time, and subsequently cannot be repeated. It captures an emotive consonance, a question, an answer and a thought; a creation (to make something new) and destruction (to mark a space means to take away the void from something else).
Conceptually, to understand why painting is so important is to believe that its potential goes beyond the representational facets of it as a means to an end, as visual art. Boo’s paintings are not pictures as such. They render the impossibility of representation in an age of complex civilisation, in a time of ambivalence. This is particularly relevant for Southeast Asia and its relationship to Europe as having influenced key aspects of its artistic traditions. Painting and drawing of the traditional kind was imported into Asia in the early 20th century, and has stayed under the auspices of contemporary expression in modern and cosmopolitan societies. Boo’s practice in part recognises the improbability of Western traditions to adequately represent a regional identity that resides in historical origins that are themselves fraught with contention, difference and doubt. Painting the architecture of economic infrastructures whether of malls or of churches, is more about the impossibility of real space, where layers of civilisation have existed for generations. In the cosmopolitan context, one generation of buildings gradually and surely replace another (the default of our disposable age), its usefulness or utilitarian possibilities determined by the current community that resides around that area. Migration patterns of the community largely determined by a global and mobile cosmopolis hark to the era of impermanence. And that precise impermanence responds directly to our questions of how buildings of any kind, symbolically tile our life passages to document who we are and what we do, and why those things are possible (whether we are shopping or attending religious ceremonies).
Bridget Tracy Tan
Director (Institute of Southeast Asian Arts)
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
(extract from The New Cathedral catalogue, 2012)
Conceptually, to understand why painting is so important is to believe that its potential goes beyond the representational facets of it as a means to an end, as visual art. Boo’s paintings are not pictures as such. They render the impossibility of representation in an age of complex civilisation, in a time of ambivalence. This is particularly relevant for Southeast Asia and its relationship to Europe as having influenced key aspects of its artistic traditions. Painting and drawing of the traditional kind was imported into Asia in the early 20th century, and has stayed under the auspices of contemporary expression in modern and cosmopolitan societies. Boo’s practice in part recognises the improbability of Western traditions to adequately represent a regional identity that resides in historical origins that are themselves fraught with contention, difference and doubt. Painting the architecture of economic infrastructures whether of malls or of churches, is more about the impossibility of real space, where layers of civilisation have existed for generations. In the cosmopolitan context, one generation of buildings gradually and surely replace another (the default of our disposable age), its usefulness or utilitarian possibilities determined by the current community that resides around that area. Migration patterns of the community largely determined by a global and mobile cosmopolis hark to the era of impermanence. And that precise impermanence responds directly to our questions of how buildings of any kind, symbolically tile our life passages to document who we are and what we do, and why those things are possible (whether we are shopping or attending religious ceremonies).
Bridget Tracy Tan
Director (Institute of Southeast Asian Arts)
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
(extract from The New Cathedral catalogue, 2012)