Probably Nothing
Curated by INSTINC
It was what the world thought NFT mania was. Also what artists thought they might make from going digital, and what collectors thought they might gain from buying art they can admire on their own screens. 2022 has shown that NFT art is very much something, and is here to stay for now. We celebrate the extension of the definition and vision of art with this fun exhibition of contemporary fine artists who are expanding their practices through this NFT show.
As the novelty and hype of NFTs continues to settle, “Probably Nothing” offers a less frenzied space for the participating artists to meditate upon the ongoing conversations about the tech landscapes of the arts ecology, to playfully probe their own practices for new possibilities of presentation/being, to continue questioning how value and creativity is communicated through new market modalities. Collections are minted on various blockchains, and explore the various relationships artists have - having their existing skill sets dialogue with new platforms for transaction and presentation; working with their peers to collaborate artistically in a Zoom-mediated world; navigating evolving models of patronage with their collectors who are more familiar with collecting their work in the brick and mortar world.
Probably Nothing.
Featuring new works by:
ALBA ESCAYO | SPAIN
ANDY YANG | SINGAPORE
ELAINE WONG | HONG KONG
EZZAM RAHMAN | SINGAPORE
VALERIE NG | MALAYSIA
YEN PHANG | SINGAPORE
YEO SHIH YUN | SINGAPORE
OPENING RECEPTION 28 APRIL 2022 6PM ONWARDS
WITH MUSIC PERFORMANCE BY ANDY YANG & PERFORMANCE BY YEN PHANG.
29, 30 APRIL & 1 MAY , EXHIBITION CONTINUES , 1-7PM
7artists | 30 New Digital NFT works
Alba Escayo [Spain]
Currently based in Madrid, Escayo is a critically acclaimed contemporary artist who’s expansive and compelling paintings and interdisciplinary works have garnered her international recognition, and are extensively represented in museums, galleries, and several permanent public and private collections. In addition to a frequent exhibitions the world over, with most recent solo and group exhibitions in Madrid, Singapore, Serbia, France, and Portugal, Escayo maintains a highly engaged and collaborative artist practice, which includes numerous invitational residencies and international projects. Vibrant, masterful, and implicitly expressionistic, Alba Escayo’s paintings converge artistic ingenuity with new media principles in practice which is entirely contemporary. With reference to natural elements, oceanic-landscapes, and travel iconography, Escayo’s painterly collage work is a reinterpretation of the artist’s international travels— acting as both a signifier for contemporary re-engagement, and preservation of, the tradition of exploration place, afar and familiar.
Informed and inspired by the collective multi-culturalism,she employs a similar hybridization of cultural and natural influence in her work, engaging an immersion of icons, colours, and environmental influence in her paintings.
View NFT collection here
Digital flowers for the ancestors
“Digital flowers for the ancestors” is a collection of digital collage & paintings. As usual on my work I play with memories and with the contrasts of different textures in between the printed image and the brushstrokes. I feel we live in a world that sadly always is looking forward. Almost 600 plant species have become extinct, and this is something that is never heard.
I did lose dear people in my life path. I miss them. To poetically translate this feeling, I work with old botanical studies illustrations, and I dialogue through color with them to connect with all those memories from past generations. I embrace the feeling of missing the lost ones with vibrant and colorful pieces that celebrate life as a circle. Alba Escayo
Andy Yang [Singapore]
Andy Yang was born in Malaysia in 1973. He is a multi-disciplinary artist known for his abstract visual and sound experimentations. His explorations between visual art and music led him to the creation of works under musical stimuli with The Observatory. In Anitya 1 (2011) at the Earl Lu Gallery of the Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore, the process of his art-making cycle was exposed in full, from the point of creation to destruction. In his latest ArtScience Late feature at the ArtScience Museum, the work Ceremony (2019) produced together with SAtheCollective, saw the artist celebrate the experiences of human childbirth through an energetic sound performance set against an elaborate visual art installation. Andy was also one of the key artists (in a select group of 8) who presented DE:VOTED (2020) a critically acclaimed immersive art experience at Helutrans for Singapore Art Week 2020—one which featured an intense communion with light, sound, and performance art.
View NFTs collection here
Chance Encounter
One of the vast and vital parts of our lives is interpersonal relationships, regardless of the nature of the relationship. Ranging from intimate, close to distant and challenging relationships. However, as we navigate through the vast digital network. I have observed that relationships have has gone beyond what we have been taught or perceive them to be. This series explores that unique relationship that developed while learning to draw on an app from scratch. From freedom to chaos. Frustrations of losing control. Numerous failed attempts to establish contact to eventually reach a truce. Finally, a balance of working in harmony. Creating worlds that would not exist had the relationship ceased to live in the first place. Andy Yang
Elaine Wong [Hong Kong]
Wong lives and based in Hong Kong. She received her Master of Fine Art (Creative Media) from School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong in 2019 and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) degree from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University.
Her interest in the experiential quality of works leads her to engage in experiments with videography, image-making, sound and installations.
Elaine’s works have been shown in Hong Kong and international art spaces; including the Singapore Art Week (2021), Art Basel Hong Kong Spotlight (2020), Hong Kong International Photo Festival (2019), Hong Kong Heritage Museum (2018), Hong Kong Education Museum (2018), Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre (2018), and EXIS Korea (2017). She was one of the selected artists for 1a Space’s Emerging Talents in Contemporary Art (2020), Art- Uni-On (AUO) Artist Mentoring Program (2017) in Korea, and was awarded a scholarship from Hong Kong Art Centre to study in New York School of Visual Arts (2013).
She is also the founder of Altermodernists, an independent art group that is devoted to the
documentation of artists’ creative processes and promote visual arts in Hong Kong.
View NFTs collection here
White Night
Is the night not darkened, or is the day overspread?
White Night is a series of digital videos about the experience of insomnia - trapped in between the sleepless night and the drowsy day at the same time.
These nocturnal excursions through the inner and the psychological visualize the sensuous world of a city dweller in limbo. Elaine Wong
Ezzam Rahman [Singapore]
Ezzam Rahman (b.1981, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist known for his interest in the body and the use of common, easily accessible, yet unconventional media in his art practice. Working across sculpture, installation, digital and performance, he creates works that are often time-based and ephemeral, aiming to pique viewers’ thoughts on the themes of body politics, impermanence, traces, and abjection. As a performance artist, Ezzam has performed extensively both regionally and internationally. He was awarded a joint winner of the Grand Prize for the President's Young Talents 2015 and the People’s Choice Award by the Singapore Art Museum. In 2016, Ezzam was awarded the Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award by Yayasan Mendaki and the prestigious Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council, Singapore. In 2021, Ezzam awarded the Most Promising Award; photography category for PULSE Awards, Thailand and was appointed the artistic director of The Substation.
Ezzam Rahman IG account
View NFTs collection here
every inch of us
every inch of us is a series of digitally manipulated performative work where the artist and his working partner recorded and studied each other's bodies. Ezzam constant examination of the body as the main medium. Like many of his works, the absence and presence of the breathing body is important to his ongoing studies on gender roles and positionings in society. Ezzam Rahman
Valerie Ng [Malaysia]
Valerie Ng is a visual artist who creates abstract art inspired by nature, in an imaginary journey through colour and texture. Wandering from oil paintings to recent digital art transformations through 20 years of painting. While having a computer science background, she embarked on an art practice after a fine art summer course at The Slade, London in 2002. Thus, prefers spacing out in the handmade realm of paint and paper while seeking a more sustainable eco-friendly art practice in her studio at Goodman Arts Center, Singapore
Her abstract works are created as a result of explorations in colour, light, depth, form and texture while utilizing the expressive qualities of the medium. Through a unique transfer of energy in the action of mark making, the painting process involves a dynamic balance of strokes and subtle variations to convey a sense of mood and movement on the surface be it on canvas or digital screens. Drawing inspiration from the natural elements, hues and shapes in the environment, the works aim to evoke an experience, sensation or atmospheric feel.
A Malaysian based in Singapore, she has exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum as well as the National Art Gallery, Malaysia. With several solo exhibitions, numerous group shows and participation in art fairs across the region. She has won awards in the UOB Painting of the Year competition, Singapore and been a finalist in the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong.
View NFTs collection here
Digital Strata
A collection of geographical strata digital paintings. Drawing from nature and a buildup of layers of colour and texture these artworks form an elemental movement of earth, fire, water and wind through time and space. With the additional layer of generative processing to reveal the digital drawings. A pixelized extension of oil on canvas artworks in an abstract expressionist style. They are created as a result of explorations in colour, light, depth, form and texture. Seeking a quiet balance with a sense of mood and movement on the surface, through a unique transfer of energy in the action of painting. Valerie Ng
Yen Phang [Singapore]
Born to a geneticist and agriculturalist, Yen is attuned to the biological. Working in the mediums of painting, installation, and performance, he reflects on nature as interface, sense phenomena in eco/bodily systems.
He was a recipient of the Winston Oh Grant (2016), Winston Oh Travel Research Award (2016), and was awarded the Cliftons Art Prize (2015) and the UNSW Julius Stone Prize (2006). His work has been collected by the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Singapore), British Airways for their Terminal 1 Lounge at Changi Airport, Singapore. He has also initiated projects such as “I.D. (The Body’s Still Warm)” (2018), Displacements: 13 Wilkie Terrace“ (2013),“The Peony And the Crow“ (2016), and “Repurposing Nostalgia” (2016) under the Displacements banner.
Nu Skin : Lau Pa Sat
This series explores urban camouflage and collective metabolisms through bare gestures in public space. I wove together a ghillie suit made out of ‘Good Morning’ cleaning cloths and used mop heads.
Wearing this new skin, I haunt a food centre during dinner time on a Sunday, collecting dirt. What’s left behind on the floors? Is it the scraps of food, the dust tracked in from the road, the dead skin cells of other diners? Yen Phang
With thanks to Veronyka Lau and Cynthia Suwito Delaney
Yen Phang IG account
View NFT collection here
Yeo Shih Yun [Singapore]
YEO Shih Yun (1976, Singapore) graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1998 with a Bachelor degree in Business Administration. She then joined LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts and completed a Diploma in Communication Design in 2001, prior to her pursuit of the Post Baccalaureate Programme in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002.
Professionally, Yeo is known to reinterpret the very act of ink painting with striking results. Her experimentations with the fusion of the traditional form and contemporary mediums, such as new media or performance art, have garnered much acclaim, including a commission by the Singapore Art Museum in 2011. Her “Conversations with trees” painting was nominated for Sovereign Asian Art Prize Finalists and awarded People's Choice Award in 2012, with her painting auctioned by Christie's Asia. She also won the UOB Painting of the Year Competition (Distinction in Abstract category) in 1999 & 2007. Additionally, Yeo has held exhibitions in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Tokyo & New York on the international scene. Her recent commissions include National Gallery Singapore, ‘My Ink-credible Adventure’ and solo exhibition at Esplanade titled ‘Chance Encounters’ in 2021. Her NFT video art titled “Mind Ink Painting Machine” is part of "Generative Art and the Future" hosted by Poly Auction China (China’s largest auction house). Recently, she was one of the 14 artists invited to the "Digital Baroque' exhibition & auction that was curated by 4ART NFT+ marketplace and minted on Palm network.
In 2017, her first book, INKPULSE: the art of Yeo Shih Yun, was published. The volume conceptualizes Yeo's pulsating pursuit for new depths and new perspectives within and beyond the realm of Abstract Expressionism.
YEO is also the Founder of the independent art space “INSTINC” in Singapore, where she currently lives and works.
View NFTs collection here
Impossibility of Repetition
Physical & Digital: Merging realities
Impossibility of Repetition’ series NFT Box #1-4
Designed by http://www.thepressroom.com.sg/
Yeo’s ‘Impossibility of Repetition’ series, pushes the boundaries of the ink medium itself and also both the physical and digital realms. The artwork comes in both forms - physical and digital. The first part is the physical painting involves two printmaking techniques: monoprinting on the first layer combined with screen printing with the marks made by toy robots, and the second layer consisting of screen printing on glass and painting by hand. In addition, the shadows created by the marks on the glass form the ‘gray’ in these works and are ever-changing depending on the direction and intensity of the light source. The second part is the NFT on the blockchain & on the digital screen where a section of the physical work is deconstructed into layers and particles using an AI program, and transformed into a digital moving inkscape. Yeo Shih Yun
