Shadows, Signals, And The Line

For many, Singapore art is still synonymous with scenes of the Singapore river, or watercolours of shophouses. Lately, a newer motif might have entered public consciousness – the samsui woman.

But this two-level show, curated by John Tung, proves that Singapore art is more. He brings together a group of artists who work in abstraction. For those immediately put off, there are helpful quotes from him in each room to guide interpretation. He draws your attention to the squares, the lines and even the shadows.

The exhibition is free at The Private Museum atop Emily Hill. The first room already shows the different ways artists have approached abstraction – a collage by Goh Beng Kwan, a gigantic swirling painting by Henri Chen KeZhan, Jane Lee’s textured paint on fibreglass that looks to sink off the canvas from its own weight, and Choy Weng Yang’s more superficially plain yellow painting that reveals unexpected variation the more one looks.

On the upper floor, Tung has created a pathway among a forest of Wong Keen’s three-dimensional flesh carcasses made of rice paper. Kumari Nahappan has a triptych of teal abstracts that are almost religious; Lam Fung conjures vivid, otherworldly fauna.

Many of these artists had long wanted to be presented in an exhibition with artist and former curator Choy Weng Yang, who died in 2025 at 95 in the midst of planning this exhibition. A room is dedicated to him, a shorthand for his decades of practice.

In the context of an introduction to abstraction, Milenko Prvacki’s series Abstraction For Beginners, with its recognisable but ...