PAINTINGS: SINGAPORE
Between Sense and Sensibility
Art Angel Company in Seoul and Singapore’s Taksu art gallery are collaborating to present a group exhibition at the latter. Between Sense and Sensibility features the works of four painters from Spain, Japan and South Korea whose works are exploring both conscious and subconscious thought. South Korean painter Daeho Guk’s work “Ellis Street 02” looks like a poorly focused photograph of the street but the blurred image symbolises the gap between our perception and reality. Meanwhile, Spanish painter Miguel Iglesias’s portrayal of a city at first appears as a cheerful sight thanks to its vibrant colours but foreboding shadows from tall, windowless buildings also create a claustrophobic atmosphere. City dwellers might know the feeling all too well already.
Taksu Singapore, 43 Jalan Merah Saga #01-72, Workloft at Chip Bee. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00-19.00; Sunday 12.00-18.00. Until 8 June.
taksu.com
FILM: NEW YORK
Brooklyn Film Festival
Now in its 17th edition, the Brooklyn Film Festival is featuring 107 films over the course of 10 days. Catch world premieres such as Movement + Location on Saturday at Windmill Studios, a dramatic tale of time travel from the future to present day directed by the borough’s very own Alexis Boling. Also recommended are a slew of documentary shorts including The Diamond Cutter – a five-minute window into the life of 92-year-old jeweller Max Fuchs. Peter Pan Bakery is a film about Greenpoint’s local pastry stop of the same name and at just eight minutes long it’s a perfect way to keep things short and sweet.
IndieScreen, 289 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, and Windmill Studios, 287 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn. Friday 30 May until Sunday 8 June 8.
brooklynfilmfestival.org
ART: ISTANBUL
Gulay Semercioglu: Walking on the Wire
This month Istanbul’s Pi Artworks gallery will be showcasing Walking on the Wire, an exhibition showcasing the work of Turkish artist Gulay Semercioglu. Her contemporary designs, which consist of kilometres of thin, colourful, enamel-coated silver wire wrapped around an arrangement of screws atop a wooden frame, create a dynamic metallic meshes that vibrantly refract and reflect light. Her work is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York among other international museums across the globe so seeing it displayed in her home country is a chance to understand some surreal works placed into context, if only for a while.
163-4 Istikal Caddesi, Misir Apartment, Galatasaray, Beyoglu. Open Monday to Saturday 10.00-19.00. Until 28 June.
piartworks.com
ART: LONDON
Obsessive Compulsive Order
Obsessive Compulsive Order is a mixed-media exhibition at London’s Cøpperfield gallery – a converted church in Southwark – exploring the human need to keep things organised through the work of five creatives including British installation artist David Rickard and South Korean pencil extraordinaire Yun Kyung Jeong. Rickard’s “One Hundred Thousand” is a small globe of 100,000 ‘hundreds and thousands’ – the result of joining these tiny toppings together over the course of a year. Equally spick’n’span is Jeong’s pencil-on-canvas “Axonometric Jungle VII” that features the same leaf motif replicated seemingly almost infinitely across a large page. For such meticulous and painstaking work, the end result is a surprisingly soothing vision of impeccable orderliness.
Cøpperfield Gallery, 6 Copperfield Street. Open Wednesday to Saturday, 12.00-18.00. Until 15 June.
copperfieldgallery.com
MUSIC: GLOBAL
Ben Frost: A U R O R A
Australian-born musician Ben Frost is a Reykjavík resident whose ongoing search for the most extreme sonic highs and lows found within sound means his latest album – a crushingly dense, multi-textured industrial soundscape work called A U R O R A – took the artist to Congo in central Africa to find inspiration. You won’t hear much trace of stereotypical Afrobeat sounds on the record though. What you will find is an intensely taut collection of instrumental tunes that merge dance music, industrial rock and ambient sounds to create challenging yet rewarding listening. A pro tip, though: maybe just surrender immediately.
‘A U R O R A’ is available to buy now.
benfrost.bandcamp.com
