SINGAPORE.- The Parkview Museum Singapore announced the contemporary art exhibition, The Artist’s Voice, the first show in a series of thematic exhibitions presented by The Parkview Museum aimed at exploring the complexity of our historical time through the narrative language of contemporary art. The Artist’s Voice runs until 18 March 2018. The Parkview Museum Singapore is the first stop for this exhibition.
The exhibition, curated by the internationally acclaimed curator and art historian Lorand Hegyi, features 34 contemporary artists from various countries and across different generations. These works suggest a strong belief in the ethical character and powerful mission of contemporary art to convey visual metaphors about human existence, through strong expressive language which reinforces and highlights the emotional, passionate and human character of contemporary art.
This exhibition focuses on the capacity and competence of contemporary art to transfer essential messages and existential revelations about life, truth, historical visions, ethical values, anthropological constellations. In a historical period dominated by a sense of crisis, disillusionment, instability and disorientation, the artist has the power and the responsibility to send their messages about human perspectives, creating new connections between different fields and experiences and providing multiple systems of interpreting the complexity of contemporary reality.
“When Claude Levi-Strauss presented different models of different cultures, he opened up the grounds for concentrating on the concrete, human experience, and not simply on a general evolutionary ideology. That was the very important basis for the seventies and eighties. Contemporary art began in this period,” explains Hegyi, who is also the Artistic Director of The Parkview Museum. “So our exhibition is part of this process of rethinking existing narratives—and that forms the title of this exhibition, The Artist’s Voice. It is simply about what the artist says. They do not merely paint a beautiful picture or make a sculpture; they say something with that. There is a strong message, there is something personal, something very much engaged on a personal participation of the real life.”
The contemporary "speaking artist" – using the expression chosen by the great artists Gilbert & George while addressing the duty and competence of the artist – is ready to take responsibility for the very message, the simple, clear, understandable narrative, the powerful transmission of their vision, the suggestive, sensual, effective visualization of their view on recent realities, on the chance of the artist to participate in making realities more conscious, more clear, more evident.
In the process of selecting artworks in accordance with the theme and the subject matter of The Artist’s Voice, the autonomy of each work of art in relation to their use or misuse within the context of the thematic exhibition as a total work of art has been taken into account. A work of art does not serve as illustration, but rather generates meanings, creates new associations, and sensitizes our relation to the sphere of human experience it incorporates.
Hegyi adds, “As the title of Sejla Kameric’s work Basic suggests, this exhibition speaks about the very basic human experience in very different forms. While the audience may observe various styles and expressive forms throughout the exhibition, the works are all connected through this narrative the basic emotions and orientation of the life.”
The exhibition showcases artworks from internationally renowned artists including Andrei Molodkin, Anne & Patrick Poirier, Arnulf Rainer, Barthélémy Toguo, Bernardi Roig, Bill Viola, Chun Sungmyung, Davide Cantoni, Dennis Oppenheim, Gianni Dessi, Gilbert & George, Gloria Friedmann, Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Jan Fabre, Jannis Kounellis, László Feher, Liu Xiaodong, Luigi Ontani, Marina Abramović, Maurizio Nannucci, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Miguel Angel Rios, Motti Mizrachi, Muntean/Rosenblum, Paolo Grassino, Qiu Anxiong, Roberto Barni, Sándor Pinczcehelyi, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Šejla Kamerić, Ugo Giletta, Urs Lüthi and Wang Luyan.
Some of the works showcased in the exhibition are also part of The Parkview Museum permanent collection. The collection includes works of art by artists from both Europe and Asia reflecting the fundamental concept of George Wong’s activity as collector and founder of The Parkview Museum – the belief in the emotional, imaginary, and evocative power of art, in the power of radical fantasy, which creates poetic metaphors of existence.
The Artist’s Voice offers a complex, rich, deep, suggestive and perhaps somewhat disturbing, moving vision about the basic existential questioning of human orientation, through the power of the singular, unique, imaginary worlds created by the artists of our time.
