Young, bold voices at Gillman Barracks

IN this pandemic, young Singapore visual artists have unexpectedly come to the fore, promising succor and salvation for the struggling scene. National Gallery Singapore's latest showcases brim with their fresh, whimsical perspectives. Independent spaces such as Grey Projects and soft/WALL/studs are championing young talents.

At the country's premier commercial art cluster Gillman Barracks, three galleries are exhibiting works by strong, young local artists.

The giddiest of these is Wong Lip Chin at Yeo Workshop, a show that challenges the viewer to find aesthetic and thematic coherence among diverging styles of paintings, performances and video works. Speaking to the 33-year-old artist, it turns out there is no real unifying theme other than the fact the artist often pursues whatever he wishes to achieve its logical end.

For instance, he was fascinated and confused by the commercial and critical success of Yayoi Kusama's dot paintings. So he created one of his own. He was drawn to the uncomplicated buoyancy of pop art. So he made a pop artwork himself. It doesn't matter if someone accused him of plagiarism. He values his own journey of finding and developing his own artistic voice to consider these temporary acts of mimicry to be perfectly legitimate forms of expression.

But beyond these homages/rip-offs - you decide what you want to call them - there are some wildly unique and eccentric works, such as a series of large paintings of wet open mouths in which tiny manga characters jaunt.

There is a video of him getting a nose filler injection, right next to a painting of his nose. ("I hate my nose and I'm obsessed with it.") There is a video game you can play in the gallery or download as an app. And, as for the title of the show, it is a sound clip you can hear by scanning a QR code at the start of the exhibition.

Wong is clearly having fun - and you'll be darned if you don't too.

Next door to Yeo Workshop is Richard Koh Fine Art, where you'll find another selection of brash and youthful works. This one, however, is a group show with three artists born in the 1980s and three in the 1990s. Among the intriguing newcomers is 27-year-old Odelia Tang, whose striking wall sculpture made of foam putty, untempered glass, mirror shards and tulle fabric, among other materials, boasts a most unique and unexpected kind of beauty.

There's also Ian Tee, a year younger than Tang, who's created a large dramatic collage out of old clothes, a fire blanket, safety straps and other kinds of fabric. Like Tang, he defies you to look upon his work and not find beauty in the unconventional melange of colours and textures.

Finally, at the other end of Gillman Barracks, there is Mizuma Gallery's exhibition of Ashley Yeo's works. It's just as well that her works are presented there because they couldn't be more different from the others. Yeo's ornate paper sculptures are meticulously prepared and cut, resulting in fragile little constructions that are extremely delicate and refined.

Yeo, 30, seems diametrically opposed to the excesses and abandon of much of contemporary art. Her tiny works are painstakingly created over several weeks, as a tribute to a slower, more meditative way of living.

Between her and Wong, there are enough reasons to believe the future of Singapore's visual arts looks sufficiently bright.