30th February by Chow Chee Yong

30th February
Photographic Exhibition:
19 February – 15 March 2008

Opening Reception/Book Launch:
Friday 29 February 2008, 7:30pm

Q&A session: 30th February 2008, 7:30pm

Kay Ngee Tan Architects Gallery is pleased to present 30th February- the sixth solo exhibition by fine art photographer, Chow Chee Yong.

30th February is the product of a four-year long awaited inauguration by Chow. He was known for being the first of only three Singaporeans whose prints were acquired by the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (KMOPA). Chow’s works were further showcased by KMOPA alongside Nobuyashi Araki, Ansel Adams and Helmut Newton in his most recent group exhibition.

Drawing influences from the surrealists, most notably Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte and Op Artist MC Escher, Chow questions possibilities of subverting expectations of the experiences. These processes of questioning reality forms the catalyst of visual ideas that propels Chow to sketch, and thus beginning the recording and compilation of these photographic images necessary to make the non-existential alive. The collective of images were finally juxtaposed and fixed onto the final photographic print in the darkroom.

In Chow’s work, we experience surrealistic images that defy our notions of conventional perceptions. A swimmer freestyles through a ripped fence, another swimmer surfaces to inhale air in a strip of water in a building corridor; windows emerge in the midst of field; building columns taper off into buttress roots. These juxtaposed images fragmented of time and spaces, retain truly absolute to the artist’s imagination. Chow will be launching his first publication, titled 30th February alongside the exhibition opening reception. It showcases development in his art practice, images not publicly shown, and illustrations of the process to realizing his “personal belief that one’s imagination and the very private world of dreams must form the start of any creative work”, as quoted from the artist.

Chow graduated with a BFA (Hons) degree in Photography in 1994 from Western Michigan University, USA. The JCCI Art Scholar received his MA (Distinction) degree in Photography in 2001 from the Musashino Art University. He has held a number of solo and group exhibitions internationally in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United States. Chow’s works have also been featured in numerous publications such as the Passages North (USA), OP Editions (Hong Kong), particularly the Nippon Camera and Asahi Camera in Japan. His works have also been compiled in two series under the titles of Light Trails and Things unseen, Places not been. Chow’s original prints can be found in various corporate, private and museum collections in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States. He is currently a photography lecturer in the Department of Visual Communication at The Temasek Design School, Temasek Polytechnic.

For further information, please contact Ee Peng or Tricia at gallery@kayngeetanarchitects.com or (65)64230198.