Guo-Liang Tan

Guo-Liang Tan (b. 1980, Singapore) is a visual artist working primarily in painting and text. In his work, the painterly and the textual act as surfaces for performing affect that can conjure a haunting or a promise. He is interested in how this sense of absence, located in the past and/or the future, frames our present-ness and of our subjectivities. Tension between the phenomenological and the psychological are played out in the process of painting and writing, staging congruencies and slippages that occurs within material and language. Tan's practice revolves around these moments of overlaps and gaps where projections and disruptions may be used to map out territories of desire.

[Guo-Liang Tan] Born in 1980 in Singapore, where he is currently based. Tan creates abstract paintings using a thin translucent fabric as ground, and by layering transparent colours with diluted acrylic paint atop its surface. In some cases, the wooden stretcher frame can be observed through the fabric, creating visual depth and harmony. In recent years, Tan is increasingly interested in the relationship between object and space in painting. He has developed a series of large 'painterly screens' that are painted on both sides, and presented as free-standing pieces in the gallery space. This way of thinking about painting also extends to Tan's public installations such as “A Folding Scene” at Esplanade concourse, Singapore (2023) and “Arrive, Arrive” at National Gallery Singapore (2021). His solo exhibitions include “Soft Turnings”, Ota Fine Arts, Singapore (2021), “Ghost Screen”, Ota Fine Arts, Singapore (2017) and “Play Dead”, Space Cottonseed, Singapore (2012). Notable group exhibitions include “Re-surfacing”, STORAGE, Bangkok (2023), “Object of Desire”, Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum, Iceland (2021) , “A Different Way of (Thinking About) Painting?”, Langgeng Art Foundation, Yogyakarta (2017) and “The Trouble With Painting Today”, Pump House Gallery, London (2014).