12x: Curator's Pick

Here's my pick of interesting artworks from 12x: to those lucky 36 ballot holders, keep your eyes on these five! - Berny

If you haven't heard about 12x, click here to find out more!

Like many of these young artists, this is my first exhibition. At least, it's the first time I'm officially curating an art show. I have to admit that it's quite a challenge; the average group show has maybe 10-15 artists, but here I am balancing the demands of handling 36 different young artists who all have their respective school/nation-serving schedules.

As a young art-maker myself, I know how it is when you have drawers full of old sketches and prints and art materials, or when you've finally made something that you can be proud to call your work - yet you're not really sure where these works go from there. So, at the end of it all, it's nice to know that these works will find their way into someone's home.

For the sake of diversity, I've chosen 5 works of 5 different media for my Curator's Pick. Each one has their own special quality, but let's just say that when these images found their way into my inbox, it made a particularly stressful day seem alright again.

Roy Wang Han Yi
Fantasies Of A Concrete Jungle
Digital Photography
30 cm x 42 cm

I've always been one for colourful things, so it's obvious why I'm immediately drawn to this photograph. A surreal anti-gravity alternate reality where the plastic/tin toys of our childhood gather, I am both captivated and intrigued by this seamless puzzle of multiple photographs.

Cheryl Teo
Abyss
Van Dyke Brown prints on charcoal paper
25 cm x 19 cm each (series of 4)

This work possesses an almost 'retro' feel, as if it was a vintage sepia photograph, and yet the approach remains contemporary. I love how the rawness of the edges contrasts with the sharpness of the miniature house, making this work simultaneously painterly and photographic.

Jonathan Maximilian Goh
Alice
Illustration
21 cm x 15 cm each (series of 3)

You would think that the recent saturation of the 'Alice in Wonderland' theme would make one jaded of the world of food that makes you grow/shrink and talking animals that don't really seem to make much sense. Yet this ink-and-watercolour illustration perfectly shows why C.S. Lewis' classic remains charming to this day - and always ripe for re-interpretation.

Elizabeth Lim Su Ying
Jellyfish-splish
Diluted acrylic (wet-on-wet, salt)
91 cm x 122 cm

I enjoy looking at works that are built on simplified visual motifs. Something that doesn't pretend to be realistic or abstract, but just is whatever it is. There is that sense of freedom of experimentation, and yet she seems to have grasped the feeling of being a jellyfish in her diluted colours and fluid lines.

Sarah Choo
Gestalt In The City
Mixed Media
25 cm x 25 cm x 25 cm

Looking at this installation, you half-expect it to be some kind of avant-garde jewellery piece. In fact, these are all found objects bought from the Thieves' Market at Sungei Road. It's Duchampian, not in a crazy-Dada-urinal kind of way, but in its existence as proof that artists can turn trash into treasure.