Rifqi Amirul, Joel Chin, Daniel Chong, Shirly Koh
23 June – 28 July 2018
I_S_L_A_N_D_S gears up to present 4D: Not Another Dimension, a collaboration of site-specific works by Rifqi Amirul, Joel Chin, Daniel Chong, and Shirly Koh. The artists explore concepts of space and place, presenting multiple interpretations of spatio-temporal dimensionalities. Responding to the labyrinthine infrastructure of an old shopping mall, these works combine notions of chance and chaos within a transitional passageway, precipitating layers of personal affect and spurring the space into alternate realms.
Dealing with texts, images, and materials found in or around Peninsula and Excelsior Shopping Centres, each of these artists finds different ways to deconstruct our tacit relationships with urban artifacts and spaces. Dated architectural elements, such as mirrored escalators and retro typefaces, transform into proxies for distant worlds and chance encounters. Promotional flyers, stock images, and colourful inventories are distilled to conjure a silly din in an otherwise placid shopping interior. Industrial supplies and construction materials, like sound barrier sheets and styrofoam, are folded and warped to create shapes and textures that bend the rules between sensory and tactile.
Contradictions abound in this exhibition format, where the artists seek to counterbalance each other in frames originally signified as advertising units. Shapeshifting between image and object, absurd and sensible, organisation and sheer mess, these works call attention to the arbitrary nature of language, and the slippages in our contemporary urban vernacular.