Established in 2002, H Gallery is well respected and considered to be one of Bangkok’s leading galleries in contemporary art.
Read moreDeveloped from Wee’s recent period of residency at Singapore’s Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), the fabric maze of the installation suggests a highly theatrical experience of barriers and walls, while also recalling the luridly sensuous acts of queer cruising . Photographic images printed on chiffon and polyester silk provoke questions of legibility and recognition in the navigation of queer-ed and queer-ing space. Playing up the eroticised pursuit of signs and misdirection, sexual ‘orientation’ in Wee’s installation becomes a literal search for direction.
The language and architecture of barriers belie a gamut of significance: privacy, control and protection and also division and difference. The particularly skewed context of H Project Space – 19th century architectural space amidst a modern metropolis – is heightened by Wee’s construction. Surrounding sounds and scents bleed into the installation and layer an experience of claustrophobia and surprise…
Stand. Move. (A Labyrinth) asks questions of the impact of conceptualizations and representations of space and its “proper” use. In our era of rising authoritarianism, the role of space in shaping ideals of society through basic regulations of the human body becomes an urgent consideration. Wee’s staging of the poetics of powerless through the eyes of a queer individual living in Southeast Asia, and his foregrounding of individual movement in view of coercive influence is a timely and provocative intervention. During the length of the exhibition, Wee will return to H Gallery in early November to reshape the labyrinth with new images, panels and routes.
Jason Wee is an artist and a writer. A graduate of Harvard University, the New School New York and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, he directs Grey Projects in Singapore, an artists’ space, library, and residency program. Wee is an editor for the poetry journal Softblow and his book The Monsters Between Us was named by TODAY newspaper as one of the top art picks of 2013. His curatorial projects include When You Get Closer To The Heart, You May Find Cracks by the Migrant Ecologies Project (2014); Mirrors in the Dark by Lee Wen (2014); Useful Fictions by Shubigi Rao (2013); and Beyond LKY (2010) at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore. Wee’s art has been exhibited in Chelsea Art Museum, Photo New York; Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg; ifa galerie, Stuttgart and Berlin; Singapore Art Museum; Singapore Biennale; and Valentine Willie in Manila. Residencies include Artspace Sydney, ISEA; Tokyo Wonder Site, Tokyo; ZK/U Berlin; and Gyeonggi Creation Center in Korea. He was artist-in-residence at Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore for 2016-17. Wee has received coverage in Artnews, ArtInfo, New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Cha Literary Journal, Singapore Architects and Art Asia Pacific amongst others.
