About
I am a visual artist from Singapore, working primarily with the medium of painting. My work has always been autobiographical. Whether I'm painting a bustling street scene outside my studio, the fleeting face of someone I spotted at a bus stop, or even just my own bedroom, my work always comes back to my relationship with the world around me. It's often about the places, people, and things that surround me and truly make up my world.
A lot of what I do, and who I am, is driven by gut feeling. Maybe it's because I'm a self-taught painter. I tend to feel things out as much as I think them through. I am equal parts a romantic who is unabashedly in touch with his emotions as I am aware of how it can be problematic and myopic to approach things that way only. That awareness grew over time, especially through my Southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. That multidisciplinary background in the social sciences now heavily shapes how I approach my art. Images carry a lot of weight. They're tied to histories, contexts, and politics. It's inescapable. And yet, sometimes, a sunset is still just a sunset.
I just wrapped up two exhibitions in 2025. One was a solo show in Kuala Lumpur where I really honed in on a specific working-class neighbourhood where my studio was located at on the city's edge, surrounded by highways. I turned the infrastructure of "flyovers" into a conceptual foundation to explore what it means to be left behind, overlooked, or forgotten, even when you're so close to the center of the city.
The other was a duo exhibition in Yogyakarta, Indonesia with my friend and fellow artist Gan Siong King, where we really delved into what it means to make paintings. For my part, I created works (paintings, sculptures, readymades, a video-performance) that explored my own journey of becoming a painter through my Singaporean public school education, and what it's like to be a painter day in and day out.
I was honored with the Silver Award at the 2016 UOB Painting of the Year competition. And back in 2022, visual arts journalist Helmi Yusof recognised me as "the fastest-rising figurative artist of his generation" in Singapore. I've exhibited at The Substation, National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, and I've also participated in regional shows and art fairs in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
My works are in the collections of the National University of Singapore, UOB, and private collections across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Currently, I'm based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and represented by FOST Gallery in Singapore.