Curatorial Statement

Material Agendas

Tan Boon Hui

Curatorial Advisor

The art of the present has freed itself from the limitations of material expectations. The basis of art making is now more than ink, paint, carved stone or cast metal, and some of the most interesting contemporary work see artists testing the limits of material possibilities. This bold experimentation is carried out not just with modern industrial materials but also involves relooking at experiential possibilities of older materials. In this brave new world, one thing certainly does not look like another, as artworks test our perception of reality and experience. The transgressive quality of these material agendas has helped shape the development of contemporary art. Post war Conceptualism and Pop shattered the very idea that art had to be made from certain things, or that art even needed to be a physical object. The advent of digital techniques such as image manipulation opened up the possibility that artists could create new worlds and lives that could never exist in the physical world, while obscuring that act of manipulation. Ruud van Empel’s Theatre #6 is an example of this: each component, even the two children hidden in the woods, is constructed from the artist’s library of digital body parts, blurring the lines between what is real and what is not. This edition of the IMPART Collectors' Show celebrates the transgressive spirit of artists boldly transforming materials into strange, odd and exhilarating forms.

The lifting of limits on the material possibilities of art complements new lines of inquiry in the global art world. The latest iteration of post-colonial development has been a concerted effort to renegotiate the horizons of the contemporary art world, by seeking out and embracing varied artistic practices and artists who would otherwise have been marginalised for their ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. Reflecting recent global collecting trends, this exhibition challenges what is and has been important, bringing back to the global art conversation artists that have not traditionally been part of it before. This is seen for example in the rise of African, African-American, Latino and Asian artists. These global responses to the hegemony of the Euro-American art world, and how it has shaped the understanding of what form of art and which artists are significant, is reflected in this exhibition in two ways.

Firstly, the selection includes artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Jeffrey Gibson and Jakkai Siributr who use techniques historically relegated to craft and artisanship, such as textile printing, weaving, and beading. In a similar vein, El Anatsui’s wooden sculptures of the 1980s and 1990s are made from wood pieces that have been scored with Nigerian uli and nsibidi symbols. The departure from traditional sculpture lies in his