Soft Realities 2 to 31 October 2021

About

SOFT REALITIES situates and frames the space of 136 GOETHE LAB as a site of inquiry. The work explores real and imagined narratives within and beyond its physical space, told through the eyes and ears of the basement.
 
Inspired in part by the allegory of Plato’s Cave, SOFT REALITIES is conceived as a site-specific installation and subterranean labyrinth. It comprises heavily built and schematised structures, but also intuitive gestures and spontaneous discoveries drawn from the site’s environs. These seemingly opposed approaches of reading and determining one’s environment become a lens with which to experience the work.
 
Through an assemblage of choreographed filmic projections, cut-out silhouettes, and subliminal soundscapes, SOFT REALITIES invites the audience to suspend your preconceptions, and plunge, and crouch, and peer, and overhear, as you encounter its shadows and glitches.

The Artists

Fiona Tan is an installation artist and registered architect based in Singapore. Her artistic interests often explore the themes of identity, memory, and time. She proposes that beyond the natural order of Architecture as building with permanence in mind, the Architecture of the temporary is an equally necessary and important counterpoint that offers wide-ranging possibilities in injecting surprise and delight into otherwise predictable urban landscapes.
 
Working in the blurred boundaries of art and architecture, her personal and collaborative works span diverse mediums of representation –from 2- dimensional architectural reimaginations, mobile furniture, self-build structures to architectural pavilions. Her multi-disciplinary collaborations include I’m All Hands and All Eyes (2021) for the National Gallery Singapore, Ways of Seeing (2021) for Asian Civilisations Museum and SS NIMBY (2015) for the Joo Chiat OH! Open House.
 
Outside of running her architectural/creative practice- Atelier IF, she is currently an adjunct lecturer at National University of Singapore’s Department of Architecture.
 
Finbarr Fallon is a Singapore based inter-disciplinary designer and artist, whose work draws on his formal training in architecture. As a spatial thinker and storyteller, he fuses his expertise in digital technology to combine dramatic visuals & cinematography with narrative.
 
Fallon's works have been exhibited internationally including institutions such as The Singapore Art Museum, National Gallery Singapore, National Museum of Singapore, The Private Museum and Bargehouse London.
 
Recent showings include his digital animation Subterranean Singapore 2065, was presented at 2219: Futures Imagined (2020) at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore and received a RIBA Silver Nomination.
 
Ong Kian Peng is a media artist based in Singapore. His practice investigates the effects of climate change and our relationship with nature. Working at the intersection of art, technology, and the environment, Ong creates immersive and reflective environments that offer alternate visions and imaginations of our relationship with nature.
 
Ong’s works have been exhibited in art spaces such as the Tainan Museum of Fine Art, Singapore Art Museum, Arebyte Gallery London, ICA London, Total Museum Seoul, and ICA Singapore. He has presented works in festivals and art fairs like the Singapore M1 Fringe Festival, International Computer Music Conference, Siggraph Art Gallery, FILE Festival Brazil, Asian Students and Young Artists Festival, Japan Media Arts Festival, Singapore Open Media Art Festival, and Yeosu International Art Fair. Ong was awarded the President’s Young Talent Grand Prize in 2015.
 
Ong graduated from UCLA with an MFA in Design Media Art. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts, specializing in media and creative technologies. Since 2017, he runs Supernormal, an independent art space focusing on emerging and experimental art practice.

The Space

136 GOETHE LAB is a new project space at the Goethe-Institut Singapore. Housed in the former library and reading room, the space is intended as a response to the need for physical spaces for the arts, and an ongoing conversation with the public and arts community in Singapore.

SOFT REALITIES is supported as part of the open call Project Work (PW), the pilot programme of 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space with a group proposal.