Hilmi Johandi, Destination Image #19 ( A Definite Charm), 2025, Oil on linen, 135 x 194 cm
The solo exhibition by Hilmi Johandi, “Destination Image”, features 14 new paintings and works on paper by the artist. Hilmi’s first solo exhibition with Ota Fine Arts in 2019 saw him drawing reference from archival images of Singapore, in particular postcards and posters between the 1980s and 90s. Over several years, Hilmi furthered his reinterpretation of these familiar and symbolic motifs to probe into ideas of pleasure, escape and representation. In this latest presentation, “Destination Image”, the artist culminates his examinations on the mediation of experience through image-making, and how nostalgia and constructed memory function within rapidly modernising societies.
Destination Image, which lends its name to the exhibition, is Hilmi’s most recent series of work which introduces a closer and more intimate experience through close-up, singular motifs that pursue ideas of pleasure and desire. By scrutinizing these motifs, the artist delves into the core, questioning their superficial representations. This exhibition also includes paintings from Hilmi’s Landscaped Grounds series, which focuses on the idea of reinventing spaces, planes and forms of the referenced subject, most of the time with a single theme or a single underlying intention. Spaces in the paintings are broken up, partitioned, and collaged back together to create a montage of real and imaged landscapes, blurring the line between fabrication and reality.
Venue: Ota Fine Arts, 7 Lock Road #02-13, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108935
When: 17 Jan - 28 Feb 2026,
By: Ota Fine Arts
