Responding to the coast and the architecture of Jendela gallery, Haven’t seen you lately is an exhibition about the influence of abstract painting in relation to walls and windows. Taking the gallery windows as a starting point, wall interventions, pictures, objects and improvised music engage with aspects of scale, form and colour, acting as counterpoints to the dualities of interiority and exteriority. 

The title of the exhibition is a common expression that often alludes to memory and the passage of time. It arose from a dream where the artist found himself arriving at a gallery opening, greeted by visitors with this refrain. Drawing upon abstraction as a source, the artist considers and arrives at junctures of form through making, looking and waiting. 

In Conversation with Ian Woo

I would like to look back to when we started conversations for this exhibition. What were some of the first few thoughts that came to your mind for this project?

I recall that we started with the gallery as an idea for my art practice to respond to. I had a conversation with a friend in Penang a year ago about how we look at art when there is no art. This was based on questions about the fine line between life and art where one ends and the other takes over.

The first thing I noticed was the long stretch of window at Jendela, which I wanted to open up to let the light in. Of course, this could pose lighting issues but I felt it was an important decision to work with, especially when I feel that paintings always look better to me in natural light, even when it is dark. The question for me would be whether the window can be experienced as a kind of painting? All paintings are like windows and doors. The window is also a strange opening as it is more fiction than reality to me. There is something about the distance and the taking in of an image that is emotive and psychologically calming to our state of being.

Could you elaborate on this idea of the window being more fiction than reality?

A window is a frame which engages us with a sense of distance, separating the "here" and "there". I see fiction making as referring to a kind of distancing from the real. I look at the window as a way to reflect and contemplate in time. The things we see from the window are moving pictures. We see the scene of the river along Esplanade, which has a history to different generations of people. I am also drawing a comparison between the window to the history of painting, where the idea of the horizon, the changing light on landscapes and seascapes are common themes found and situated within a frame.

Let us segue to the work "My favourite things" which has been a springboard for other works in the exhibition. I recall you bringing up the idea of "still life". Could you expand on this process or relationship between the works?

This arrangement of objects refers to my early paintings from the late nineties, where there is a suggestion of a kind of tabletop view of "things" from above. These things hover between spaces and were my way of rethinking about the fundamental role and history of still life within my everyday surroundings. These early paintings were essentially about my studio, which was a small study room tinged with fluorescent lighting.

This current permutation for Jendela was my way of revisiting the idea in the form of real things. It is "real" and it is not, as it is in the form of a model of things present in my studio. These things include plastic bowls which I use to mix colours for my paintings. The cactus refers to an example of living things, a type of change which is not immediately visible. There is also a vertical and horizontal four panel colour test which refers to my thought process in relation to the panels at Jendela. While putting them together, I am imagining the sensation of change between proportion and scale happening within my body, within the gallery, the studio, within my paintings as well as inside this model. There is always a referral between pictures and objects in the process of making. It is a form of memory in translation. I am not after representation, but improvisation. I am not interested in arriving at data but a state of abstraction.

I like how you put it: “a form of memory in translation”. Improvisation is core to your practice and something I’ll like to hear more from you on. How does it manifest in this exhibition?

For this exhibition, the window was a starting "riff" that influenced the rest of the decisions, which includes the colours of the four panels and finally the location of the small paintings. It took a bit of time to arrive at the final layout as I am someone that works better on site then planning in the studio. I do not trust everything I see on a laptop till they are in situ. The reality of scale, sounds and light play a big part in how we experience things in this world. As much as it was a problem, it was also really fun, working out the colours on site while negotiating the light and shadows that were changing over the course of day and night. There is a term in painting and music called modulation, which is the construction of changing light, colour and frequencies which influenced how I was envisioning the installation. In a way, I am improvising with the light and shadow at Jendela with my paintings and music improvisations. In addition to that, the play of scale comes from the way the macro of the architectural features concurrently interiorises and exteriorises the nature of the micro of my artworks.

The term improvisation can be seen as something negative, as in it is not planned and that it can be just a reaction. At the same time, we improvise every day because things do not always work out the way we want them. I also think reacting to a situation is a skill of negotiating changes, while simultaneously thinking ahead, like a kind of instant composition. My whole practice has been involved from this idea of finding a situation I am in and working my way in and about it. Perhaps I have never been interested in stories and identities in my art practice, which is why I went for something that is about the process. But everyone has a unique way of generating processes, so isn't that about identity? By the way, I think this question and answer between us is very much in the spirit of improvisation.

Being able to respond to change or what could be unexpected is so much a part of life. I would like to turn to the titles in this exhibition, which I personally find poetic and evocative. Could you share on how you arrived at the exhibition title "Haven’t seen you lately"? And what was the process of putting together the titles of the works like?

After I agreed to this exhibition, the title of this exhibition appeared in a dream that I had. I dreamt that I arrived late to Jendela in the night and sneaked through the gallery front door. Why would I sneak in? I don’t know! After which I was greeted by the same repeated phrase from every guest and guess what? It was just so dark that I did not recognise any of them! The title stayed with me for a while before I finally decided on it. I think the phrase is so post-pandemic, but personally, it was triggered by the opening of this gallery window as an event that has not taken place for a while. I also thought that the phrase could be interpreted widely in relation to time and distance in human relationships. It also occurred to me later that the title was sequenced as a four-word phrase which aligned with the number of panels between the windows.

The idea of movement is one that keeps coming to my mind. The artworks transcend the state of being static objects; instead the experience of the exhibition embodies a dynamic process, like a constant dialogue. Does this resonate in any way with you?

Counterpoints between space and content are evident in my paintings and installations. I am always looking for the tipping point between the two. Another point is the relationship between each of the small paintings installed at the center of each large painted wall where the stillness of the surrounding wall colour was exaggerated to highlight the business of the contents experienced from the windows. The blocks of tinted colour wall shades from left to right of salmon hue, green-yellow, sky blue and beige can be seen in correspondence to the changing colours seen outside the window of the building facade, where changing lights affect the sky, water and shadow.

The source of looking at painting as an exercise of slow time is an important influence for me. Looking at sections of each painting converts the body and mind to a different kind of energy with the shifts of colour and content. It is a form of duration that comes from the act of looking at composition and modulation, which is the opposite of watching a film where the moving image is seen as an active ingredient. I like to pretend that I am making a film that does not move when I make my art, which incidentally reminded me of an idea from the physicist David Bohm, who defined matter as a form of frozen light.

Final question from me. This sense of time keeps recurring. An exhibition would arrive a point where the physical experience concludes, where the act of looking transitions from present to past. Do you think about how the memory of the experience would linger for the viewer, and if so, what would it be in the context of "Haven’t seen you lately"?

Making paintings and arranging things in a real space have their own problems and concerns. Constructing paintings is temperamental and cannot be rushed. Months or years can pass for a work and suddenly within minutes it comes together; while installation involves planning and responding with things that already exist in my inventory. When installing a work, I see my artworks like actors and actresses in a movie, waiting to be cast for a role. I do my best in figuring out what I would like the observer to experience. Once the show opens, everything is up for grabs. You cannot second guess the spectrum of people out there except for what myself or perhaps you the programmer have discussed and went with.

People say that we have no time in this day and age to look at art works or read a book etc. Making this exhibition is how I choose to think otherwise, responding with a desire, naiveness and optimism I had when I was younger. As artists we have the right to dream and indulge especially when living in a distracting society. I believe that if there is any sense of a new order, it is my hope that the audience would return from experiencing the exhibition with a state of new energy within them. This energy refers to how I see my works as a kind of lifeform that is about to come around. Someone once said that they often do not remember the image of my paintings as a whole after they have visited my exhibition. I see that as a compliment.

Haven't seen you lately by Ian Woo is on view at Jendela from 24 May to 1 Sep 2024.

Join Ian Woo on Saturday, 31 August at Jendela for a tour of the exhibition and to hear him share more about his work.