​楊子扬 Yeo Tze Yang

SUKE. DASH. NORTH SOUTH EXPRESSWAY. DUKE. In zooming on highways across counties, countries, continents, eyes and wheels dead set on destination, what are we blinded to? What lies beneath the flyovers?

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This is the question that Singaporean artist Yeo Tze Yang circles around. His first solo exhibition since moving to Malaysia, Observations Under The Flyover marks not a grand migration, but a drift into a different rhythm. Where his earlier wanderings traced the contours of an entire island city-state, here Tze Yang’s attention settles on Pandan Jaya, a neighbourhood neither central nor peripheral, pinned between the arterial highways of the Klang Valley. Working, walking, seeing every day in the area around his studio, Tze Yang’s practice is shaped by routine. In this act of dwelling, he paints not from nostalgia, but from being somewhere long enough to notice the shape of a footpath, the lean of a stall, the glow of a shop sign after dark. 

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Through this slow attention, and in his stubborn resolve on painting the ordinary, he renders what most would pass by: a muddy drain under the MRR2, graffitied concrete walls, a car left to rust, a celup tepung stall clinging to the edge of a lot, a lone figure crossing a dimly lit street under the glare of a streetlamp. 

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It is not grand commentary, nor romantic ruin. But in the works, there is an insistence: that even in the in-between, there is something worth seeing. The Back Room invites you to see.

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Credits
Texts by Ong Kar Jin
Exhibition identity by Ejin Sha
With thanks to FOST Gallery