Rhythm comes from the pairings of really hard and smooth, mild and major, harmony and imbalance, the punctuation and mix of distinctive tones. – Haruki Murakami, Totally on Audio
rodolphe janssen is happy to current Polyphony, an Alvin Ong solo exhibition curated by Kami Gahiga. The artist’s style combines several overlaid visual vocabularies which endow his paintings a rhythmic good quality. Colour, condition, texture, and sort but also devices, notation, and scale, are viewed as as web-sites of enquiry. Taking the polyphonic and contrapuntal expressive traits of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “The Artwork of Fugue” (published posthumously in 1751) as stage of departure, Polyphony showcases fifteen paintings developed in the course of the second 50 % of 2022 in London and Ong’s art residency at Eton College or university.
The exhibition addresses the diversity of layers, references, and influences that tell Ong’s paintings – such as classical music, standard Malay folktales, and engineering blended with art history ranging from Previous Masters to present-day art. Via the range of its themes and intersecting driving forces, Polyphony unveils genuine humanistic attributes : carnal whims, voyeurism, alienation, and the human motivation for relationship. Alvin Ong’s paintings possess a universality and unique worldview that ignite one’s inner environment and deepest impulses.