Joy of a preverbal dispenser by Ian WOO

IAN WOO Joy of a preverbal dispenser

Ian Woo

Joy of a preverbal dispenser FOST Gallery Singapore

I don’t know yet: some vague guidelines to see Ian Woo Sherman Sam

Ask anyone who works with the body and they say we all dance to an individual rhythm, likewise we tend to see things differently. John Travolta, famous for dancing if you recall, once talked about getting into character by discovering their walk. That is to uncover each character’s sense of rhythm. Likewise it takes time to see an artist. Usually the more challenging the artwork the longer it takes one’s eye to adapt to their pace; let’s just say to feel one’s way into their character. Where does an Ian Woo painting take us then?

Formally you could reduce the elements in Woo’s current paintings to flat zones or shapes of colour, graphic linear elements, and varied wonky paint gestures. The overall effect of his painterly acts result in rhythms, rhythms within rhythms, interrupted rhythms and visual pratfalls, that is seemingly unrhythmic slips and corrections, that span the canvas surface. Beyond that neither picture nor image fixes immediately in mind.

This is not to say there isn’t one, rather it is as if his actions were struggling to coalesce into a picture. Just. Like that irrational space where jokes occur. It is not logical but somehow it comes together. In fact, take a cursory glance at Ian Woo’s exhibition titles, How I forgot to be happy (2013), The difference between your mountain and my couch (2014), or Falling off plastic chairs (2015), and you notice their Zen Koan-like humour.

In the painting, The good the bad and the ugly, for instance, there are two flat-ish columns of orange hemming in a larger painterly central zone. Within the middle space, a blurry-muddy red-grey field could suggest a “background”, while a patchwork of white, grey, cream, red shapes and gestures construct an architecture of forms. Painted over all these forms are several gold-bronze outlines that give focus to his colour patches.

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On one side they seem to delineate cellular structures, while the jagged lines, on the other, suggest a coral-like entity. Are these “cellular events” falling out or maybe stacked against it? Some of these flat shapes are made from muddy or blurry paint; as if an “image” had been wiped away, Richter-like. These shapes certainly act as a “foreground” to the flatter window-like “background”. Could the central zone be a window or a doorway? What fights to be in front and what falls behind? Within the window-like space floats a small triangle, yellow-orange in the middle and outlined with small purple-pink brushstrokes. It is like a painting within a painting in its own right. An island of painted marks in another scale, in another rhythm, to the rest and directed inwards. Like its title, taken from a famous Sixties spaghetti western, it has a tripartite structure; each zone could be considered a moment in the painting. Could the title be a playful suggestion on how to regard its aesthetics? Or even aspects of the work itself? Given that the Clint Eastwood film was in part about trust and betrayal, perhaps we are asked to question what we see?

Woo’s visual language is rendered more visible in a recent series of exhibitions, Impermanent Durations - On time and painting (20162019). It was a collaboration with fellow painters Beth Harland, David Thomas and Laura Lisbon that spanned three years and as many continents. The quartet improvised installations from painted elements reconfigured each time to suit the specific space, a fourway jam so to speak. To this end, Woo experimented with smaller paintings and shaped painted objects. This format required him to isolate the many diverse elements of his art into more singular moments. The result of this reduction can be seen in works such as the multi-part Emotional Things, included in this exhibition, which exudes a more stately, elegiac pace in contrast to the chaotic dynamism of his bigger work. The singularity of these moments allows us to catch the span of his project with better clarity.

Woo seems to distill painting into its basic elements and from that ground zero constructs an abstraction. Each is an improvisation in its own right, as if he were trying – again – to figure out how an abstraction works, or for that matter what an abstraction is. Even that notion seems too specific; consider that he is unpacking the mechanism of painting itself, and thus picking at the question of contemporary painting. Abstract expressionism exploded the idea of paint on canvas as a direct action. That moment more than half a century ago shifted the ideology of painting across the object’s surface, pushing ideas of picture-making aside. Yet we viewers still subconsciously want to make a picture out of what happens within the rectangle. Woo’s work wrestles with these notions as if he were trying to expose or uncover each painting’s particular pictorial logic.

Hence each work struggles with front and back, things and events, solids and holes, large gestures becoming forms in themselves, changes in scale, space and hierachy, and so on.

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This quality connects his abstraction with the memory of historical painting, yet rather than certainties, say a representation or each mark becoming a symbol, Woo leaves us with the flux and questions of non-representation. Even more so, as different paintings and groupings explore alternative improvisations. As my title suggests this is not a definitive guide to Woo’s painting, rather I hope an opening to grasp the fluctuating rhythms of his vision. Maybe painting for him exists in the gap between his happy sofa and your plastic mountain.

This is what I see, what do you?

Sherman Sam is an artist and critic based in London and Singapore.

He has exhibited internationally, including one-person shows at The Suburban (Chicago), the Rubicon Gallery (Dublin), Equator Art Projects (Singapore), Annka Kultys Gallery (London), and most recently at CeyssonBenetiere (Luxembourg). His work has also been included in numerous group shows, including M6: Around London at CCA Andrax (Majorca), Connected at Feature Inc (New York), The Theory and Practice of Small Paintings at Equator Art Projects (Singapore), and Slow Painting, a UK touring museum exhibition in 2019-20.

As a writer, he has written for kultureflash.net, The Brooklyn Rail and various British magazines. Currently he contributes to Artforum, ocula.com and artcritical.com.

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Bridge 2019 Acrylic on linen H200 x W180 x D4.5 cm

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Finder 2019 Acrylic on linen H76 x W61 x D3.5 cm

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Whisperer 2019 Acrylic on linen H76 x W61 x D3.5 cm

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Arrival 2019 Acrylic on linen H76 x W61 x D3.5 cm

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As of Nature 2019 Acrylic on linen H76 x W61 x D3.5 cm

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Plural 2019 Acrylic on linen H92 x W76 x D3.5 cm

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Passing 2019 Acrylic on wood H23 x W30.5 x D2 cm

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Codex 2019 Acrylic on wood H23 x W30.5 x D2 cm

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The good the bad and the ugly 2019 Acrylic on linen H160 x W155 x D3 cm

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Fringe 2019 Acrylic on linen H164.5 x W111 x D4.5 cm

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Glean 2019 Acrylic on linen H25.5 x W20 x D2 cm

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(Flag – Installation) Trinity 2019 Acrylic on wood H53.5 x W43.5 x D5.5 cm

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(Flag – Installation) Curtain 2019 Acrylic on wood H53.5 x W43.5 x D5.5 cm

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(Flag – Installation) Purple Rain 2019 Acrylic on wood H53.5 x W43.5 x D5.5 cm

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(Flag – Installation) Decimal 2019 Acrylic on wood H53.5 x W43.5 x D5.5 cm

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Coil Flux 2019 Acrylic on linen H194.5 x W150 x D4.5 cm

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Emotional Things 2018 Acrylic on wood Dimensions variable

On air where (#2) 2013 Acrylic on paper H31 x W23 cm

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On air where (#3) 2013 Acrylic on paper H31 x W23 cm

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On air where (#1) 2013 Acrylic on paper H31 x W23 cm

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On air where (#4) 2013 Acrylic on paper H31 x W23 cm

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On air where (#5) 2013 Acrylic on paper H31 x W23 cm

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Drumming 2015 Acrylic, charcoal, graphite and watercolor on paper H51 x W36 cm

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Husk 2015 Acrylic, charcoal, graphite and watercolor on paper H51 x W36 cm

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Testament 2015 Acrylic, charcoal, graphite and watercolor on paper H51 x W36 cm

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Ian Woo Joy of a preverbal dispenser 11 January - 29 March 2020 FOST Gallery, Singapore Editor Stephanie Fong Contributor Sherman Sam Photographer Wong Jing Wei

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© FOST Private Limited © All images copyright Ian Woo ISBN 978-981-14-5606-0

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Cover: Bridge | 2019 | Acrylic on linen | H200 x W180 x D4.5 cm (detail) Inside Front Cover: Coil Flux | 2019 | Acrylic on linen | H194.5 x W150 x D4.5 cm (detail) Inside Back Cover: The good, the bad and the ugly | 2019 | Acrylic on linen | H160 x W155 x D3 cm (detail) 65