Ikkan Art Gallery brings top photography to Singapore

YASUMASA MORIMURA
To My Little Sister: for Cindy Sherman
1998

Ikkan Art Gallery will open "Shoot and Point: Selected works by international photographers" on Aug 6, showcasing works by twenty-two international artists who through their experimental photography explore innovative ways of capturing and expressing images.


The exhibition takes as its starting point Man Ray’s La Prière (Prayer) from 1923. Man Ray was a pioneer in pushing the boundaries of photography to create abstraction of the mundane. Much of his work was motivated by a desire to provoke a momentary shock in the viewer that would arrest rational thought processes and stimulate fresh ways of seeing. This was achieved through chance effects and surprising juxtapositions caught by unconventional use of the camera, as well as exploring new methods of photographic development.

On show will be a work by Cindy Sherman whose photography recently fetched US$3.89 million at Christie's, making it the most expensive photograph to date. There will also be several works by Asian photographers such as Naoya Hatakeyama, Yusumasa Morimura, Rika Noguchi, Toshio Shibata, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Hai Bo.

DESIREE DOLRON
Xteriors (Bridget)
2003

One of my favorite works is Desiree Dolron's Xterior's (Bridget), part of a series of works which recreate Old Master paintings through the use of digital photographic composites of several different faces. Dolron's aesthetic is intricately linked to the Flemish school of primitive portrait painters. She does not try to emulate their work but rather adapts the aesthetic to her 21st century vision, which is as complex in construction as the paintings themselves.

RUUD VAN EMPEL
World #1
2005

Another very interesting work is by Rudd Van Empel, who creates Rousseau-like controversial images of children, in which the innocence of childhood is explored in relation to exotic and lush tropical vegetation. These children are created with the aid of Photoshop from a database of thousands of his own photographs carefully collaged together on the computer. This digital manipulation of photography to re-create reality and the uncanny innocence of children in alien but familiar environments leave the viewer feeling uncomfortable but transfixed.