Upcoming Exhibition: Simple by Paul Kohl, Opening reception: 9th May 2008

Photographic Exhibition:

09 May – 31 May 2008

Opening Reception:

Friday 09 May 2008, 7:30pm

Kay Ngee Tan Architects- Gallery

16-17 Duxton Hill, Singapore 089600

Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri 11am-7pm, Saturday 11-6pm, by appointment.

Kay Ngee Tan Architects Gallery is pleased to present Simple/Simplicity - a twin solo-exhibition of Colour/Black&White photographic works by Paul Kohl.

Simple showcases a series of color photographic prints made from 1983 to 1986 by Paul Kohl during his stay in the Baltimore and Indiana before the work upon his Black and White series began.

Paul Kohl’s color works reflect his attempts to translate his fascination and emotions with the environment. He engages himself to objects and spaces, committing solely to the solipsistic process of relating himself to his surroundings through the camera.

Paul draws influences from jazz music like that of John Coltraine, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and others in the American Pantheon into his works. His first encounter with the work of the photographer Harry Callahan at the Hallmark Gallery in New York City inspired his decision to convey himself through images- of his perceptions towards the time and space that held his existence.

In his images, we see a plant spray painted blue, oppressed by its man-made environment, a tennis court held by primary colors of red, blue and green, pushing an image of a famous final scene of tennis court on Antonioni’s film “Blowup” into our minds. In the film the photographer watches a mimed tennis match, he enters the mimes' own version of reality by picking up the invisible ball and throwing it back to the two players- an illusion reciprocating the artificiality of these landscapes by Paul.

Through his lens, Paul seeks the chance to celebrate the transitory beauty of the real and to participate in the ecstatic potential of the simple.

Paul Kohl graduated from The San Francisco Institute in Photography with a Bachelor’s Degree in 1973. He further pursued his Master Degree in Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana in 1985. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Japan and the States from 1974 - 2009, with Simple/Simplicity being his first solo-exhibition in Singapore.

Paul works were collected internationally by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Fogg Museum, at Harvard University and the Awagami Paper Museum among others. No stranger to grants and awards, he received the National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Photography Fellowship in 1976 and became the only writer in English awarded with the Takeshi Kaikoi Award 1997. He is currently a guest lecturer in NTU.

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