The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line – Jorge Luis Borges
Images of books and books of images are, it would appear, equally fascinating to Heman Chong. As are libraries and labyrinths; the promise of revelation and the prospect of confusion can, after all, each be delectable in their own way. His fondness for the grid - emblem par excellence of modern order - may be deliberately confounded by intimations of the palimpsest, that timeworn tissue of sedimented meanings, veiled ideas and obscured import.
The life of the collector, according to Walter Benjamin, is characterised by just such a 'dialectical tension between the poles of order and disorder'. That said, Chong is the kind of 'collector' for whom the impulse to gather and assemble is subordinate to an even stronger compulsion to generate and disperse. Shades here, perhaps, of Andy Warhol's wilful misreading of the Rorschach system as creative means rather than analytic tool.
This exhibition, composed of four disparate but complementary works, is a subtly woven mesh that draws into its net a notable range of concerns: multiplicity and diversity, obliteration and retrieval, explorations of space and chartings of time, the lure of cartography and the legacy of colonialism.
The Book of Equators
This series of paintings play with the line. Under each painted line other patterns peek through: commercially available polyester fabrics, often used for curtains, dotted over with motifs of tropical flora and fauna, patterned fabrics made in countries colonised by the British Empire - visual motifs of resources extracted from the colonies, excised for global consumption. Line on line at once conceal and reveal these motifs, making new images and new ways of looking, while keeping the past still in view.
Labyrinths (Libraries)
Library as labyrinth and labyrinth as library. Each form intricate paths that fork, rejoin. A library's collection can be a site of discovery and of chance, plural knowledges and opposing ideas. These canvases form tight grids, horizontal and vertical lines with little room for the mind to breathe between. But then other marks - layer on layer - pool to the surface, forming asymmetries of knowledge and mark making. To read between the lines.
Oleanders
This video work is the result of three days wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking for depictions of books in painting. The title is the same as that of a still life painting by van Gogh: a full bloom of pink oleanders, Émile Zola's novel La joie de vivre resting on the edge of a table, the book's title etched into the paint. The painting is one of a series of works photographed by Heman, zoomed and cropped, a playful inverse of ekphrasis.
Works on Paper #2 : Prospectus
On 8 July 2006, Heman Chong began writing what would become a 200 page novel, Prospectus. During the editing process, in a fit of rage, he deleted the whole thing. In 2024 he took the Macbook on which he wrote the novel to a data retrieval company, but the file was so badly corrupted they were only able to recover 239 words. The novel centres around a retrospective exhibition for an artist accused of stealing the idea for a work from a younger artist - the work in question is itself a novel called Prospectus, a masterplan for an imaginary art school. These 239 words are spread out across 8 posters, at once the residue of a now lost body of work, and something new.
Forthcoming exhibitions include:
Lahore Biennale 03, curated by John Tain, opens 5 October 2024
The Endless Summer, UCCA Dune, Beijing, China 27 October 2024 - 16 February 2025
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness (retrospective), Singapore Art Museum, Spring 2025
Sharjah Biennale 16, curated by Natasha Ginwala, Amal Khalaf, Zeynep Öz, Alia Swastika, and Megan Tamati-Quennell, 2025
