Artist Heman Chong's SAM survey whittles data down to visual aphorisms
Singaporean artist Heman Chong's survey, This Is A Dynamic List And May Never Be Able To Satisfy Particular Standards For Completeness, features more than 50 works across 25 years. ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
SINGAPORE – Singaporean artist Heman Chong's survey at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) begins with a veritable textual barrage. Over 2,000 unread books in various languages are set against posters carrying 239 words from a failed meta-fictional novel and its stilted machine-translated Mandarin.
No surprise then that the exhibition's title, lifted from a legal clause on Wikipedia, is a mouthful – This Is A Dynamic List And May Never Be Able To Satisfy Particular Standards For Completeness. These 16 words, printed simply on a banner hoisted above the reception desk, constitute the exhibition's first artwork.
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