Within Without

19 Jan – 23 Feb 2019

Within Without, a solo exhibition featuring traditional oil paintings shown alongside more experimental media works by Singapore artist André Wee is also part of Singapore Art Week (19 – 27 January 2019). A joint initiative by the National Arts Council, the Singapore Tourism Board and the Singapore Economic Development Board, Singapore Art Week reinforces Singapore’s position as Asia’s leading arts destination.

The exhibition presents an exploration of the liminality of identity in an increasingly globalised and digitised world. Fusing human, image, text and architecture, these articulations offer examinations of how meaning, identity and memories are formed and reveal the transformative potential of stepping into the realm of the in-between. Working at the cusp of art and technology, Wee explores state-of-the-art, interactive storytelling techniques with 3D printed sculptures created via digital sculpting and 2D interactive prints embedded with augmented reality digital content. 3D printed figures interact with environments that evoke the heimlich and unheimlich of Freud’s uncanny – both familiar and strange at the same time. The immersive, interactive experience turns an onlooker at a contemplative remove from the work into a protagonist catapulted into the centre of the augmented reality environment, plugging his/her perception directly into the virtual realm of the work. The boundaries between the inside and the outside of the work and exhibition space become amorphous as the walls between the real and virtual worlds fold in upon themselves, dissolving into a hyperreal realm offering a window into new, integrated perceptive realities. The work consumes the individual at the moment of the consumption of the work of art in an age of technology – choices turn into data at the moment of preoccupying the self with this art-ondemand. The erasure of the dichotomy/divide between self and other and the blurring of boundaries between within and without lies at the heart of the transformative potential of an immersion in the Möbius loop of intersectional reality

André Wee (b. 1989) is a Singapore-based artist, illustrator and virtual world builder. He graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts, majoring in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. Working across a variety of media ranging from oil painting to digital sculpting, his works have been shown locally and internationally (US, UK, Italy), including at the ArtScience Museum as part of the group exhibition MeshMinds 1.0: ArtxTechforGood held during Singapore Art Week 2018. Wee last participated in group exhibition Future Imperfect: Young Printmaker’s League 2016 at Mulan Gallery.