In Praise of Boredom
Sunspots: Chok Si Xuan, Izyanti Asaari, Kin Leon, Sean Gwee
Group Exhibition
22 Feb - 2 Mar 2025, 11am - 7pm
<in praise of boredom>
presents our attempt to access minute perceptions through forced meditation. It employs the notion of Mitate (a concept akin to visual metaphors) to amplify phenomena.
Consisting of three phases; a waiting room, an opera of the sublime, and a reservoir, <in praise of boredom> is structured around the intimacy of the gallery space.
In the first section of the exhibition: the waiting room, there will be seating available for visitors to rest for a moment and consider 2 sculptural works.
The second section is a gentle presentation of light, sound and small movements. Invoking a “perfect day” chosen by the Sunspots collective.
We will use a series of lights, projected film, instruments and mirrors to portray sublime moments in a moment in time. Collectively it should feel like watching sun light shine in through an open window while curtains flutter in the wind.
These gestures are not random, but derived and filtered from mundane data: the humidity, the wind speed, the temperature; the minutiae which could never alone convey the divinity of the ordinary. A real- time(scale) portrait, it is slow and subtle, patterns barely perceptible but the keen observer is rewarded with access to an intimacy which feels warm and comforting.
The final phase: the reservoir is a loose swirl of gathered thought. It is space of text and texture an indoor garden planted with turns of phrases and pages from books and articles. These paratextual elements feel uncanny, not in an unsettling manner but like deja vu of a pleasant encounter, barely significant yet still remembered with a clarity unmatched.
Apart from a looping automated performance (light, sound and mechanical movement), we plan to conduct two reading sessions where we will explore some texts that have informed this showcase.
Tours in the form of guided meditations as visitors traverse through the space will be conducted on weekends.
While we hope visitors will leave with an appreciation for the subtlety of the sublime, we would be more than happy for visitors to leave with an altered state of mind; slower, softer, comforted.
About the Artist(s)
Sunspots is a collective formed to explore themes of comfort, atmospheric pressure and sensorial delight. It consists of Izyanti, Kin Leonn, Sean and Si Xuan.
Izyanti Asa’ari is a writer and co-founder of Fellow Design. She is interested in studying the gestures the body makes against its own will, including that of cities.
Kin Leonn is an artist, composer, and producer; Singapore’s “ambient boy” releasingmusic under KITCHEN. LABEL, an avant-garde/neo-classical outfit based in Singapore and Tokyo.
Sean Gwee is an art fabricator, architectural designer, instigator and artist interested in structures, hosting, vessels, performance and process. He is the founder of the Made Agency, an art fabrication workshop and consultancy.
Chok Si Xuan is a sculptor and installation- based artist whose practice is heavily influenced by technology and science fiction. Her works explore cybernetic systems through an enquiry into the body as a site of virtual and corporeal convergence.
