Heman Chong: Abstracts from the Straits Times

Heman Chong’s “Abstracts from the Straits Times” is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The conceptual works of Heman Chong are often located at the intersection between image, performance, situations and writing. As described by MoMA PS1 curator Ruba Katrib, in a 2015 essay published in Flash Art, ‘Chong rarely performs the part of cultural producer straightforwardly; he is generally “all of the above” at any given occasion. Therefore, his activities don’t sit comfortably within the delineated categories that typically comprise the distribution of content. Books, exhibitions, institutions, paintings — all are vehicles for content whose structures come under Chong’s scrutiny’. Chong has spent the past year working on an entirely new series titled Abstracts from The Straits Times. These works touch on the prevalence of conflicting values and contradictions in our lives that have consistently haunted his work for the past fifteen years; fact and fiction, appearance and reality, secrets and lies.