Electric Series #01 by Alba Escayo and Yeo Shih Yun

Going Electric

Alba Escayo and Shih Yun Yeo in collaboration

By Joe Nolan 

The “Electric Series” isn't a triptych presenting a single artwork in three sections, but when these three paintings hang together as an installation, the visual breadth of Alba Escayo and Shih Yun Yeo’s collaboration is greater than the sum of its parts. These paintings interact with one another through mutual movement and common colors, creating a conversation about balance and harmony that mirrors the ongoing creative relationship between the artists themselves. 

Escayo is based in Spain and Yeo is based in Singapore. The pair first met in July 2008 at the LINDART International Fine Arts Colony in Slovenia. The creative duo clicked on their first collaboration at Lendava Castle, and the artists have continued to meet regularly in Spain and Singapore to co-create several projects. Escayo and Yeo have made a number of elegant works on paper since 2008, but their latest project reads like the most fully-realized version of their combined practice. 

The painters created the "Electric Series" in Yeo’s studio after Covid 19 travel restrictions were lifted and Escayo was able to fly to Singapore in November, 2022. Escayo’s multimedia paintings generally feature abstract landscapes rendered in candy-colored palettes. Yeo’s works marry ancient Chinese calligraphy traditions to energized lines inspired by mid-century abstract expressionists. A collaboration between the two artists might not seem like an obvious match, but Escayo’s soft forms and fields of colorful acrylics help to define these compositions where Yeo’s rough and angular brushing highlights and energizes the underlying arrangement of hues and tones. The “Electric Series” explores a verdant palette from delicate yellows to cool blue greens to turquoise. They’re all tied together with slashes and splashes of black ink. This limited range of colors puts the emphasis on these painters' lines, forms and gestures, and the textures they bring to the surfaces of each work. There are lots of instances where the painters’ contributions intersect, putting competing and colluding layers of paint and ink in play. The surfaces of each of these panels – and across the series as a whole – find these artists talking over one another and finishing each other’s sentences in a lively, formalist conversation about color, movement, form and line. 

The title “Electric Series” speaks to the energetic movement in this succession of painted canvases, but it also calls to mind electrical series circuits in which a charge travels through various components in the order in which they’re connected to one another. Each of the three stretched canvases is simply titled with a number – emphasizing that each piece occupies a specific place within the larger arrangement. With this in mind, it’s compelling to consider the “Electric Series” paintings in order, looking at the paintings from left to right, from “Electric Series #1” to “Electric Series #3”. The first canvas is mostly white with a touch of green playing against the black ink. The second work also has green accents, but the overall painting is blue. The last painting in the series offers a more balanced mix of all the colors, reading like a synthesis of the first two works. “Electric Series #3” ends the sequence with a sense of balance and fulfillment – a resolution that’s emblematic of the shared creative practice that’s emerged from the disparate-seeming aesthetics of these two unique artists.