Chan + Hori Contemporary, Singapore, is showcasing a photography series titled “Offerings” by Wai Teik.This is Chan Wai Teik’s (known as Wai Teik) first solo show with the gallery in Singapore.The exhibition features artwork from the award-winning contemporary artist, fashion photographer and creative director. “Offerings” coincides with the 20th anniversary of his photography studio, Wai Teik Photography, and his first solo exhibition. The April 5, 2018, opening date will also astronomically mark the coming of spring and falling on Qing Ming Festival, denoting an occasion to remember, honor and tend to the graves of deceased ancestors. In rethinking, reimagining, and reworking the traditional representation of the ritual of offering, Wai Teik has imparted a contemporary sensibility to a mysterious progression in narrative.His “Offerings” series, which won the bronze award at the One Eyeland Photography Awards 2015, features Chan’s contemplation with death and this seeming need to venerate the dead. Growing up in the 1970s, he was already fascinated with the Taoist practice of offerings during the Hungry Ghost Festival. Despite the seemingly secular life, Chan noticed that there are such moments and places in Singapore where practices and beliefs still exist, time becomes fluid, and tradition melds with modernity. In most of Chan’s works, we could see a woman in a gold-foiled bamboo paper (the paper often used in Hungry Ghost rituals). The enigmatic woman in his works is often shrouded and yet glittering in darkness and the art deco backdrop is actually inspired by Fritz Lang 1927 film, “Metropolis.”The photographs mark first of Wai Teik’s exploration in the subjects of death, offerings and the innate need of humans to remember their dearly departed. The series consists of carefully treated photographs of a single, solitary model. The visuals are super clear and compelling, bringing out his award-winning photographic style with conceptual sensibility. He then covers the portraits in gold- foiled bamboo papers that are traditionally used to create the “material wealth” offered up as offerings to the deceased. Wai Teik first deconstructs and then magnifies these objects that are traditionally folded from bamboo papers giving them a sculptural body armor. The combination of the spiritual and the carnal creates a balanced midpoint between two extremities. The female model whose strong angular form shrouded in darkness and slowly devoured by flames functions as a medium for the viewer to explore his or her own mythos.The exhibition is on view through April 29, 2018, at Chan + Hori Contemporary, 6 Lock Road Gillman Barracks, 108934 Singapore.For details, visit: https://www.chanhori.com/Click on the slideshow for a sneak peek at the exhibition.http://www.blouinartinfo.comFounder Louise Blouin
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