Join art historian and curator at the Singapore Art Museum, Chanon Kenji Praepipatmongkol, and Guo-Liang Tan, artist and guest curator of “Strange Forms of Life” for a thoughtful discussion centred on the prolific practice of the late Singaporean-British sculptor Kim Lim.
What does it mean to approach Kim Lim as an artist interested in the life of materials? Such a question may seem to go against the impersonality of the serial and gridded compositions she is known for. But lively presence in Lim’s work is conjured precisely through a careful minimalism of means. Across sculptures and prints, sinuous energies of the meticulously drawn line jog an elemental imagination: the shimmering tension of a liquid surface, the deepening of rivulets into shadowy troughs, the gentle fan of a current petering out into air. Understanding animation as the interplay of material thing and its evocation of memory, this talk suggests the relevance of Lim’s work for a sculptural imagination that cuts across usual measures of time and place. In the past few decades, Lim’s practice has been increasingly distinguished as a strong point of reference for abstract practitioners.