A graduate of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, David Chanwon the UOB Painting of the Year in 2004 and is known for his humorous art works that portray human-animal hybrids to ponder human behaviors. But in last couple of years, the artist had been noticeably absent from Singapore’s art scene.
The artist says his lower profile was the result of preferring to concentrate on his new-born daughter and explore new artistic avenues. “I was trying to come up with something different and recalibrate some of the ideas that I had. My new direction is a little bit more interactive, it requires the viewers to participate rather than to read and interpret. So the viewer has to perhaps move around, or engage in a way of looking at the details,” Chan explained in a short telephone interview.
“Every Trick Only Needs One Truth,” to open on May 16 at Art Seasons Gallery, will be his first solo show in Singapore since 2009.
The exhibition includes a mix of oil paintings and sculptures with the artist no longer looking at hybrid subjects, though the world of animals still dominates his works.
In “Molly,” the sculpture of a cat inside a cracked white casing is created or reconstituted by compiling thousands of small plastic animal parts.
“Every Trick Only Needs One Truth,” Arts Seasons Gallery, May 16-Jun 15