Founded by Mike Tay and Vincent Chow, Flaneur Gallery is a contemporary art gallery promoting Singapore based artists who create brilliant art inspired by their acute observation of the urban life in this vibrant city.

Residing in a beautifully restored conservation shophouse at 129 Jalan Besar, the gallery rides on the precinct’s historical past to nurture the art future of Singapore.

The gallery presents a wide range of art forms, all speaking earnestly in moving narratives, inspired by the artists’ personal stories and experiences. Through showcasing artwork at exhibitions and facilitating an ongoing dialogue between the artists and the public, the gallery strives to promote patronage of local artists throughout the community and beyond. This March, Flaneur Gallery presents two debut solo exhibitions by Singapore based artists.

Nandita Mukand, The Order and the Chaos 1

The first exhibition features works by Nandita Mukand, whose artistic pursuit is grounded in an awareness of how urban life today impacts our experience of time and consequently the meaning we give to our own lives. Her work creates an emotive connection through an exploration of material and gesture. In its crudeness and directness there is an attempt to probe the surface of our slick urban existence. It is a contemplation of the unhurried yet steady processes of nature, eternal cycles of growth and decay, accretion and erosion that hint at matters beyond our control and comprehension.

Nandita’s paintings are inspired by natural surfaces built up over time. The surfaces of nature reflect the phenomenon that bring about their creation – weather, geography, geology and the inherent intelligence of each cell within the biological forms of trees, lichens, moss, fungus.

Nandita Mukand, The Tree and Me 1

Her sculptural work is made up of newspaper and organic material. Newspaper with its myriad urban stories is dissolved into the organic material to reflect upon the fact that our elaborate urban lives and its stories will ultimately be subsumed into the natural order. The organic materials embody ideas of instability and transformation.

Fyerool Darma, Portrait No. 1 (Raden Saleh), Acrylic and charcoal on canvas
with charcoal coated frame, 110 x 84 cm, 2015

The second solo exhibition this month is Moyang by Fyerool Darma. His paintings are an assemblage of dissected and cropped subjects, materials and scenes. Together, it forms an exploration of the artist’s ongoing interest in the areas of dissociation, identity and rootedness in and to the Malay Archipelago.

Fyerool borrows references from the region’s literary and historical texts and processes them visually through the philosophical framework of Deleuze and Guatarri’s Assemblage Theory.

In appropriating photographs and historical narratives from the pre-colonial era of the Malay Archipelago, and merging and revising them in various combinations, Fyerool highlights lesser known peripheral narratives and alternative perpectives. This research and artistic method helps in his own understanding of the dissociation he feels towards mainstream history of the region. As such, the resulting output is a series of paintings that has evolved to represent Fyerool’s intention to re-look and explore the many possible narratives that has shaped the island’s past, and will continue to shape the island’s future.

Fyerool Darma, Lion (fight) As Seen by His Chief Minister, Acrylic on canvas with wood,
67 x 53 cm, 2014

Exhibition I: A solo exhibition by Nandita Mukand
Dates: 5 – 15 March 2015

Exhibition II: Moyang by Fyerool Darma
Dates: 19 – 29 March 2015

Venue: Flaneur Gallery, 129 Jalan Besar, Singapore 208847
Hours: Tuesday to Friday, 3 to 7pm; Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 6pm
Web: www.flaneur.sg