Say Hi to Forever, a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist SooKoon Ang, will open at Chan Hampe Galleries @ Tanjong Pagar, which is located at 27 Kreta Ayer Road, on May 29th. Ang was recently featured in the exhibition “The Singapore Show: Futureproof” at the Singapore Art Museum. She works with various media, including video, installation, drawing and printmaking.
Her work addresses both the physical and metaphysical world—the space we physically dwell in and the interior space within us that is our spiritual, emotional and imaginative world. Her latest works play on the nostalgia of birthdays and birthday cakes with icy pink frosting, but here the fairy tale and cartoon characters have gone awry.
The series takes its name from the last weblog post, by Daul Kim, a 20-year old Korean model and aspiring painter, before she committed suicide in her Paris apartment in November 2009. Referencing the glamour and emptiness of her life, this exhibition speaks of such sentiments in a collection that comprises drawings, inkjet prints, web-based images and a sculpture using organic materials.
Some of the drawings are especially inspired by My Little Pony, Hasbro’s line of toys for little girls, which were released in the early 1980s. In Ang's drawings, these playful ponies have been removed from their multi-coloured utopia and placed into an angular, two-dimensional realm of lightning, sharp-edged pyramids and thunderclouds.
The series also includes a 20-second animation loop also called Say Hi To Forever and an animation GIF called Saccharin Girls. The solitary sculpture in the exhibition is The Best Vitality Cannot Excel Decay (from an Emily Dickinson poem). Candles and colourful lumps of crystal residue sit on a loaf of permanently preserved bread. Finally, youth, parties, nourishment and decay all coalesce into a heady mix.