Homegrown canvas: Guo Yixiu creates abstract pictures of HDB flats (above) out of tiny images of slippers and shoes while another emerging artist, Hu Qiren, mixes actual Old Master Q images from comic books of his childhood with various photographs of Singapore. - PHOTO: GUO YIXIU
IN Guo Yixiu's White Dreams series, images of HDB flats are constructed using very tiny photos of random slippers and shoes which she photographed along the corridors of HDB flats.
It's a clever device that makes her images at once intimate and abstract. Foreigners who have never stepped into Singapore, for one, would not be able to make out the images of HDB flats. It's almost coded for only Singaporeans to decipher.
Says, Guo: "I wanted a systematic way of representing HDB flats because the country is so orderly and systematic. So I chose slippers and shoes as a unit of that system."
Guo, 24, is hyped as a promising new talent in the fine arts scene and was recently named as one of the artists for the Singapore Biennale. But prior to the October art extravaganza, she's holding this double exhibition together with another budding artist Hu Qiren.
