​楊子扬 Yeo Tze Yang

FOST Gallery is delighted to present, My heart will go on and on and on, Yeo Tze Yang’s exhibition of recent works, his second with the gallery. Recognised for his paintings of everyday life, Tze Yang continues to challenge perceptions of the mundane, taking objects he encounters on the street as his subject matter. These seemingly random debris he paints are on the ground, flattened or both; disintegrating, neglected or about to be discarded—crumpled fast food packaging, a loan-shark’s name card, an eggplant that has been driven over and the shadow of the artist’s own silhouette in a dirty drain—bits of urban life depicted in painterly strokes and unflinching realism. These still-lifes are then presented via various experimental formats. This exhibition is seminal because it not only has paintings in the usual format, but also includes kinetic painting sculptures (painted panels on remote controlled toy cars), painted canvases mimicking advertising banners strung up like the real thing, and life-size sculptures of half-eaten food. Tze Yang is still at heart, a painter, and willing to seize the endless possibilities the medium has to offer. 

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In his essay, Tze Yang writes, “[M]y fundamental preoccupations as an artist have not changed drastically over the years…But this time, it’s about bringing it all into focus; if not just a visual focus then one of mood, feeling and an idea too. It’s about the singularity of unwanted things, paying attention to not just the everyday but things we would rather avoid. It’s about no longer wading casually on the surface of “paintings of daily life”, and instead diving deep into the less certain territories of art-making.” The exhibition title parodies Celine Dion’s ballad ‘My Heart Will Go On’, theme song of the epic film Titanic (1997). Here, art-making becomes a language of love and perhaps an obsession for the unloved. This exhibition is an ode to the absurdity, tragedy and pathos of the banal.