Tell Me Something I Don’t Know | 4/5

SINGAPORE — Geraldine Kang’s Tell Me Something I Don’t Know casts an eye on something we sort of already know about: Spaces in Singapore that are either forgotten, overlooked or simply taken for granted.

But the photographs comprising the young artist’s first solo exhibition aren’t mere moments of documentation but intimate, pro-active conversations with these very spaces. Taking on various places ranging from a black and white colonial house to a lowly longkang to a construction site, Kang creates poignant statements full of empathy about how space and land is manipulated, shaped or simply engaged.

The colour white is a recurring element in the exhibition. In the series, This City By Any Other Name (Will Smell Just As White), a nod to the Shakespearean line, a white piece of cloth flutters down the side of an HDB flat, a huge white pedestal stands amidst an explosion of pigeons taking flight, a mysterious white horse peeks out from the greenery and a corrugated fence dividing a plot of land is painted white.

In these seemingly nondescript images, white could very well take on another, specifically political, significance. Its presence is undeniable yet somewhat unnatural in these landscapes — something underscored by the fact that these have been moments engineered by Kang herself.

In the second series, Under The Guise Of Surface, a central character emerges. A man in white coveralls is seemingly seen doing maintenance work, re-painting faded drains, a children’s game on the street, railings, a table in a park.

This enigmatic character could perhaps be seen as both Kang’s subject and proxy who, despite looking deadpan, lovingly treats these spaces and objects as if they were works of art in need of sprucing up. In these images, the studied poses of the worker mimic a painter’s, a sculptor’s or a calligrapher’s.

These two series feature Kang’s heavy artistic hand in shaping the images but in the final one, she steps back from a subject — and a moment — potent enough to unfold on its own, so to speak. As Quietly As Rhythms Go is presented as a photo book that presumably captures a dusk-till-night moment at a construction site in Sungei Serangoon.

These haunting images exude a theatricality: A glorious-but-tragic a dance of sorts among machine, man and land that climaxes with images of trees uprooted. Many of the images could very well have looked great as prints (such as a vivid one of a worker crouching to the right as a crane’s arm looms over to his left in a painterly hand-of-god moment).

But as a book, there’s an undeniable momentum that gives it the immediacy of a narrative of violence that is beautiful all the same. MAYO MARTIN

What: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know When: Until Feb 24, 1pm to 6pm (closed from Sun to Tue)

Where: Grey Projects, 6B Kim Tian Road, Tiong Bahru

Tickets: Free admission