“Moving Forest” presents a new body of print and paper works from the STPI residency of Han Sai Por, one of Asia’s leading sculptors and Singapore’s Cultural Medallion recipient.

One of Singapore’s pivotal modern art sculptors, Han has received critical attention for the rigour of her practice over the years. Nature has been her principal source, providing motifs and metaphors of forests; with plants, seeds and fruit that signify the vitality of life. Her sculptures are characterised by organic forms and understated elegance, often demonstrating a strong sense of symmetry as well as an intuitive understanding of material.

The motif and metaphor of the forest recurs throughout Han’s practice; sometimes emerging as a tropical rainforest as  the ‘brain forest’, and more recently, as the ‘black forest’. Rainforest had emerged some 14 years earlier in Han’s solo exhibition, of the same name in 1994; recent exhibitions of Han’s works in Singapore and China have elaborated upon the forest with ideas of de-forestation, forest destruction, and extinction.  

The artist engages paper and threads with the STPI team in ways not previously explored. Unlike the subtle and slab-like surfaces of her stone works, these pieces bear the crusty textures true to its pulp, along with vivid hues from high-grade colour pigments. Cotton threads evoke wind vortexes and paper pulp is used to construct hybrid pods and fruit; forest terrain of trees, valleys, rivers and mounds are interpreted with woodblock techniques and paper relief.

“Moving Forest” shares Han’s imaginative journey through a primal forest that pulsates with life and virility – propagating curious fruit and nurturing Nature’s vital elements of wind and water.

For more information of the artist, please click here.

Click here for available works.