Victor Tan

Bold yet gentle steps

Victor Tan, local visual artist,  has been around, accepting commissions for corporate and private in the past 10 years.  This recent display could perhaps be seen as a tour de force, rendering near perfection of the man’s torso form and an explosion in numbers, each with a lightness of touch – the mesh of wires under Victor’s careful hands seem to float and deny gravity. This is a bold expansion of Victor’s understanding of the wire-material, eclipsing his previous collective exhibition of works.

Victor’s work seems to be striving towards the ideal from idea to execution, literally taking shape from mangled wire. His works are simple yet elegant, imposing yet familiar.  The installation comes across like a dreamscape, with hovering babies/cherubs, floating heads and bodies in conversation.

The body, people-relationships are central to Victor’s work. Indeed, the body and it’s idealized form has seen representation in the Greek sculpture of the gods and goddesses, perfection of marble sculpting in the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo Buonarroti’s David (c.1500-1504); embellishment in the following Baroque period through the works the likes of Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa (c. 1647-1652); Anthony Gormley’s body casts of Learning to Think (1991). The anti-thesis to an Ideal forming the 20^th Century, can perhaps be seen in Gilbert and Georges’ performative Singing Sculptures (1970), Kiki Smith’s dissected Man (1988), British artist Marc Quinn’s 12 foot Naked Disabled Woman Sculpture (2005).

I think I will be right to say that Victor’s work can be appreciated by touch and visual sight, as I can imagine a series of one-lined drawings popping out of the paper, and walking into our three dimensional world. The order, within the chaotic twine of wires escapes the progression of point-to-line, line-to-shape, shape-to-form. Instead, Victor offers us the possibility of skipping steps, from line-to-form, from dream to reality.   

 3.0 of5 stars

Till Jan 7 ,2007, Esplanade Concourse Steps.