PRESENTATION: Material Moves

“Material Moves” is a group exhibition featuring four legendary Singapore artists. Held on the occasion of Singapore’s 60th year of independence (SG60), the exhibition celebrates the remarkable contributions of these artists – all of whom are Cultural Medallion recipients – in shaping the country’s art scene throughout their storied careers. Having collectively completed multiple residencies.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: STPI Archive

“Material Moves” presents fifty-three works on paper that mark a striking departure from the artists’ more established practices in sculpture, collage, watercolor, and ink. Conceived in close collaboration with STPI during the artists’ most recent residencies in 2024, octogenarians Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, and Ong Kim Seng unveil newly commissioned works that revisit the textures, sights, and sensibilities of their native Singapore, but through media and methods unexpected of their oeuvres. The exhibition also pays tribute to the late Chua Ek Kay, honoring his artistic legacy with works from his 2003 and 2007 residencies at STPI—the latter comprising some of the final pieces he produced before his untimely passing. Together, these fresh artistic directions embody the spirit of the SG60 celebrations: a timely moment for renewal, reflection, and the embrace of new possibilities. At its heart, “Material Moves” unites these four distinct practices through a shared sense of physical and conceptual movement, prompted by material experimentation and adaptation. For Han, the journey manifests in paper works that channel her sculptural sensibilities: hand-molded sheets, relief intaglio collages, and collagraphs that explore form, color, and the vitality of Singapore’s native flora. Goh, long celebrated for his innovations in collage, extends his vocabulary into bold new terrain, adopting vivid color palettes, abstract configurations, and unexpected textural effects such as flocking—infusing his works with psychedelic energy and a palpable sense of rhythm. Ong continues this thread of material innovation by working on mulberry bark paper, transforming its fibrous textures into luminous renderings of old and vanishing Singaporean streetscapes, each informed by his own recollections and deep-seated nostalgia. Finally, Chua’s works on view chart a pivotal period of transition, where his mastery of ink expanded into lithography and woodcut—mediums that opened new pathways for abstraction and materiality. His contributions are complemented by two rare paintings from 1990, on loan from the National Collection of Singapore, which highlight his enduring dialogue between tradition and modernity.

Since the 1970s, Han Sai Por has been celebrated for her profound explorations of the relationship between humankind, nature, and the urban environment. Widely regarded as one of Singapore’s foremost sculptors, she has cultivated a distinctive visual language imbued with organic vitality—forms that evoke the subliminal forces of the natural world while prompting reflection on their persistence and transformation within a rapidly evolving cityscape. Best known for her hand-carved stone sculptures, often inspired by tropical rainforests and characterized by fluid, continuous lines, Han approaches every work with deep reverence for the elemental qualities of her material—a sensibility rooted in her childhood encounters with nature.

Goh Beng Kwan, one of Singapore’s most prominent Post-war artists, has long been recognized as a pioneering figure in the development of collage in the country. His practice is distinguished by bold experimentation and versatility, qualities that have influenced generations of mixed-media artists. Grounded in both Chinese ink and Western painting traditions, Goh’s visual outlook was profoundly shaped by his formal training in New York during the 1960s, where American Abstraction and collage methodologies informed his approaches to representation and subjectivity. His later works often reflected his fascination with cities undergoing urbanization and industrialization, expressed through collages assembled from culturally resonant found materials such as rice paper, tea wrappings, nails, fabric, and bamboo. Interspersed with calligraphic gestures, these compositions evoke at once the natural and the cosmopolitan, weaving together fragments of memory, culture, and place into poetic visual terrains.

Ong Kim Seng is acclaimed for his evocative portrayals of landscapes—both natural and urban—that capture the shifting pulse of environments in transition. Central to his practice is a masterful handling of watercolor, through which he renders the interplay of light, shadow, and color with extraordinary sensitivity. Largely self-taught, Ong began his career in the 1960s with stylistic influences from British watercolor traditions and socialist realist sensibilities. Over time, his engagement with diverse schools of practice, including the American West Coast “California Style,” brought a brighter, more dynamic palette into his work. His depictions of Singaporean streetscapes chart decades of urban change, often suffused with nostalgia and an awareness of impermanence. An avid traveler, Ong paints extensively en plein air in locations such as Nepal and Bali, capturing fleeting encounters between people, architecture, and nature with lyrical immediacy.

Chua Ek Kay remains one of Singapore’s most celebrated ink practitioners, renowned for his lyrical depictions of nature and the city that merge Chinese ink traditions with the spontaneity of abstraction and expressionism. Rooted in his early training in calligraphy and poetry, Chua developed his artistic foundation through the Shanghai School of ink painting, particularly its “xieyi” (“write ideas”) ethos—where spontaneity and expressive brushwork prevail over strict realism. Over the years, he expanded this foundation by engaging with the work of Western modernists such as Matisse, Picasso, and Pollock, creating a hybrid visual language that transcended cultural boundaries. His works, whether meditative landscapes or bustling urban scenes, sought to capture not literal likenesses but fleeting impressions—sensory, emotional, and poetic.

Participating Artists: Han Sai Por, Goh Beng Kwan, and Ong Kim Seng

Photo: Han Sai Por, Tropical Impression, 2024, Acrylic paint, hand-molded paper pulp on STPI handmade paper, 125 x 194 x 5 cm. © Han Sai Por / STPI. Photo courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore

Info: Curator: Adele Tan, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore, Duration: 16/8-5/10/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.stpi.com.sg/