Combining the traditions of European modernism with the heritage of Chinese ink painting, Singapore-Chinese artist Yeo Hoe Koon brings his latest exhibition, “Lyrical Abstraction,” to Singapore artcommune gallery.Though Yeo’s brushwork shows that his upbringing in China and then Singapore has left some imprint on his work, his abstract paintings are most heavily influenced by his time in Europe.Born in 1935, Yeo moved to Paris from a Singapore art school in the late-’50s to study at the famed École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, whose list of alumni reads like a who’s-who of European arts talent, with everyone from Degas to Delacroix, Renoir to Yves Saint Laurent studying there across the centuries.During his time at the university, and the three years he spent later on an extensive art tour in Europe, he developed the style he has become known for, a style he would eventually bring back to Singapore in his role as an art teacher.Looking at the work featured in the show, produced by Yeo over the last few decades, the inspiration of the Cubists and abstract artists of Paris’ Left Bank and beyond can be seen. Works such as “Tranquility Life,”1992, and particularly “Glorious Morning,” 1989, use color palettes and palette knife sculpting reminiscent of Picasso and Braque’s early Cubist works, and works like 2014’s “Tropical Forest” feel like Futurist re-imaginings of Monet’s “Rouen Cathedral” series.This is not to say that Yeo’s work feels derivative. Instead, he has taken the works he undoubtedly must have experienced as a student and filtered them through both his own cultural past and the abstract art being made at the time the artist was a student in the 1950s.Using the oils traditionally associated with European painting since at least the 15th century, Yeo creates semi-abstract works of color, landscape, and still life, 25 of which have been collected together for the artcommune exhibition.Lyrical Abstraction runs February 26-March 6 at artcommune gallery.
↧