Pretty' can be something of a dirty word in contemporary art. But Malaysia-born, Singapore-bred artist Eric Chan is set on flying in the face of fashion to produce paintings that are unabashed in their pure need to be easy on the eye.
Submissions to Beauty, the latest of Chan's dozen or so solo exhibitions, now on at the Amelia Johnson Contemporary gallery until April 24, is made up of nine large works that juxtapose monochrome, reverse-negative figures with bright blooming flora and plumage.
'When people say that something is beautiful in the art scene, it's almost like it's too pretty. I want to work through that. I want to create that contrast; to address the dichotomy between beauty and ugliness, scary and soothing,' says Chan.
The paintings - some measuring 2.2 metres tall - have a serene yet ghostly effect, and build upon the 35-year-old's ongoing obsession with beauty. In previous shows, with one in particular titled Towards Beauty's End, he explored the glory of nature with realistic renditions of floral subjects from photographs he took. Then, in late 2008, he decided to swing towards the other extreme and present human figures. Eventually, he decided to combine the thematic opposites and the current show was born.
The artist, who won a Philip Morris Juror's Choice Award in 2002, says that the series is his bid to go beyond technical perfection in painting and formulistic form, and find new stories to tell. The process of putting together his Submissions compositions borders on an obsessive need to research and craft a narrative.
He begins by reading books, taking photographs and visiting museums; collecting and trolling through hundreds of images to collage together, to tease out the tension between them. 'I sit down and it's like a jigsaw puzzle, deciding which image goes with which. It's a very intense and therapeutic process,' says Chan.
