Cheong Soo Pieng’s In A Balinese Village on display at the National Gallery Singapore's new exhibition on the artist. It is opening on April 5.But conservator Diana Tay did that to extract a tiny sample from Singapore pioneer artist Cheong Soo Pieng’s A Corner Of Art Studio .
The Amoy-born Cheong came to Singapore in 1945 and taught at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Along with fellow China-born artists Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Liu Kang, Cheong went on a landmark trip to Bali in 1952, which resulted in an exhibition that helped solidify the identity and reputation of the pioneer generation of Singapore painters.
Visitors, too, can get up close and personal with these materials at the exhibition. There are interactive stations where microscopes have been set up, so one can peer at samples, and others where one can touch and feel linen and cotton canvases to better understand how textures can affect a painting’s appearance.
Following the revision, the work was exhibited again at his 11th solo show in Kuala Lumpur in 1966, and redated to 1952 to 1964. This work contains a horizontal streak of paint which runs across the girl’s eyes. The resulting image was hard to decipher, but the eureka moment came as Ms Teo was peering at the image on the computer from an odd angle over Dr Tay’s shoulder.
While such details may not seem important on first encounter, Dr Tay notes that identifying materials can also offer insights into the times and places the artist was working in. This is the first time the gallery has presented a show focusing on what material analysis can reveal of a Singaporean artist’s practice. But Ms Teo says research on Singapore artists is ongoing at the museum and the Heritage Conservation Centre, where the National Collection is cared for and new discoveries are being made.
reveal how much Cheong has changed the painting, and the redating of the piece from 1953 to 1952-1964 also reflects the artist’s fertile decade of artistic development and evolution since he first made the work.An X-ray of Young Girl showed that the work had been changed from a portrait to landscape orientation, allowing the artist to add more details. ST PHOTO: AZMI ATHNI
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