MEDIUM: GRAPHITE CLAY, COPPER ELECTROPLATING FROM PENNIES, COPPER GREEN PATINA, COPPER SULPHATE, IRON OXIDE, COPPER WIRE, SCREWS, BOLTS, NUTS, COPPER PLATES
Exhibition View: The Hot Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations= {[IMPRINT]x Compression∞Expansion [+]Wiggly [Lumen]1.618 xCarbon] -/+[TIME/SPACE] [In/out]}
Group Exhibition | Open Workshop | Supernormal + Shophouse @ 98a Desker Road Lvl 2 | 3 Jan – 18 Jan 2020
MEDIUM: GRAPHITE CLAY, COPPER ELECTROPLATING FROM PENNIES, COPPER GREEN PATINA, COPPER SULPHATE, IRON OXIDE, COPPER WIRE, SCREWS, BOLTS, NUTS, COPPER PLATES
Text 1
Within the logic of Choon Lin’s practice, which entangles bodily systems and organs with seemingly disparate materials, biology is a form of technology. This is especially since the human body is, as she describes, the most sophisticated machine. Whether an echo of her father’s work as a carpenter, or propelled forward by her sister swallowing a rusty screw (it emerged in her stool, clean, shiny, brand new), her body of work is ultimately driven by an innate interest in materials and what they have to say.
In The Hot Purity of Mathematic Love /Trust Equations=, the fourth iteration of her series titled Intestinology, this interest manifests as clay sculptures and mark-making. Screws, nuts, and bolts are pressed in symmetrical arrangements into blocks, mounds, and spheres of clay. While the clay blocks and mounds retain these metal implements, stabilizing in presentation as sculptures, the spheres are emptied of theirs, becoming fresh fossil. Negative space, which with its absence recalls presence, conjures the object through the empty space left behind. The binary is overtaken by a continuity from which new object relations might arise. This sensibility is articulated by clay, which Choon Lin points out is vulnerable and fragile, yet indestructible since it can be reconstructed.
The clay contains metal particles. When the spheres are rolled across a surface, the memory is transferred as a trailing, glittering mark—a performance that parallels the digital storage of memory, in which an entity can be essentialized, compressed, transferred in crystallized form. Beyond the shapes of screws, nuts, and bolts that are imprinted, the marks also capture the movement and labour behind their creation. They remember the pressure placed by your hands; they remember the curl and unfurl of your wrists. They reveal anatomy, hesitation, energy, dexterity. The body is thus extended through its hands into clay, into technological and material marks that articulate the nature of co-existence.
The process is one of re-fleshing, as the ex vivo is revealed as organism, as living memory, as bodily extension that breathes and breathes. And these technological appendages of the body in turn reflect the soft technology that shapes our bodies, whether as systems, algorithms, or formulas. They reveal the clay-like quality of flesh.
Text 2
When prompted to discuss the philosophical slant expressed in her bio, Choon Lin turns away from it, says she now sees it all as “life”. Perhaps that is a truer way into her work, which excites me with its mixture of hot, cold, soft, hard materials. While it doesn’t give in easily to cognitive meaning, it makes immediate sense to my body. I want to touch it. I want to play.
(But something about this setup, this writer meeting artist, makes me nervous to act on these impulses. So I angle the voice recorder a little more toward her and focus on our conversation. She tells me about her past works, and taking things apart as a child. The snakes she’s seen in the vicinity of her studio. Our encounter is open, but also contained, like a song that progresses certainly toward an end. Verse, verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus, chorus… I am thankful to have been let into her world for a little bit.)
The impulse to play is matched by a sense that The Hot Purity of Mathematic Love /Trust Equations= is also a meditation. The soft stillness of clay feels slow. The turquoise and gold feel regal, reverent. The work may, as Choon Lin said, be set up to confuse the viewer, to resist easy interpretation. But the work is patient. It makes me slow down. It makes me give in.
(She tells me at one point that she loves music, enough that she wonders if visual art is, in comparison, an affair. But she has no talent in music, she says. She lets me hear some of the sounds she has made, like a track for the first iteration of her Intestinology series: We Have The Most Beautiful Intestine. She gestures to (what I’m guessing from memory was) a sequencer and sampler system, stored in its box under her work table. This thing saved my life, she laughs.)
The tactile nature and malleability of the work renders a sensual, romantic undercurrent. Even with this distance, or maybe because of it, I am enamoured. I am shaped to remember it just as it is shaped to remember us. I belong to it as much as it belongs to us.
(Choon Lin shows me the sound disc she made that accompanies this work, though she’s working to improve it. Back home, I listen to it again, my hands longing the whole time for the touch of clay.)
(The music plays.)
Text by Kia Yee
☀ In Studio – Preparation for The Hot Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations
Exhibition View– Intestinology 04 X The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | ADM Gallery NTU. Singapore
Exhibition Brochure + Writings – Intestinology 04 X The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | ADM Gallery NTU, Singapore
MEDIUM: CASEIN-MILK, GRAPHITE CLAY, COPPER ELECTROPLATING FROM PENNIES, COPPER GREEN PATINA, COPPER SULPHATE, IRON OXIDE, COPPER WIRE, SCREW
Curator: Michelle Ho Gallery Management: Clara Lim Artist Assistants: Bryan Leow Ee Kwang, Din Chan, Lim Yi Hui Clara, Ng Pei Wen, Shafna, Shervon Ong, Zennx Fung Designer (Brochures and Exhibition Wall Text): Factory 1611
Video Documentation of Sound Discs Objects- The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | ADM Gallery NTU |16 August – 28 September 2019
MEDIUM: CASEIN-MILK, GRAPHITE CLAY, COPPER ELECTROPLATING FROM PENNIES, COPPER GREEN PATINA, COPPER SULPHATE, IRON OXIDE, COPPER WIRE, SCREW
Joo’s approach to sculpting and creating objects in her art marking is an exemplar of embodiment and tacit knowledge, a form of resistance in the face of the circularity of the propositional logic of the Stoics. In the third instalment of Intestinology Series 04 entitled The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equation 3 ={¢arbonHz [Golden Milk / Ω 1.618 -\+ Se{E}d of ¢ФnsciФusness [TIME/MOT IOΩ] [In/out]}, Joo produced a set of ornate circular discs and mechanical turntables. By allowing us to interact with the sculptures, she invites us to form new symbolic relations with the moving objects that emit sounds intermittently, as if tapping into the mystery of the cosmos. The discs are encrusted with patina, achieved through electroplating using copper penny coins as a source. The material used to create the discs themselves is a mixture of UHT milk baked with graphite. The discs are mounted on the turntable fashioned like old record players, they rotate and the graphite in the discs acts as conductor of electricity, closing and opening circuits built into the mechanical-kinetic sculpture. Joo is interested in the transmutation of these materials, altering our perception of their value in our daily socio-economic activities. What is a penny away from its face value? What is milk that is beyond the association of protein and calcium?
More information: http://www.joochoonlin.com
Sneak Peek: Intestinology 04 X The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations, ADM Gallery NTU, Singapore, 16 August – 28 September 2019
ADM Gallery 2, NTU Singapore
Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday, 10am – 5pm
Saturday, 12pm – 5pm
Set up: Solo Exhibition | Intestinology 04 X The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | ADM Gallery NTU, Singapore
Special thanks to:
Curator: Michelle Ho
Gallery Management: Clara Lim
Artist Assistants: Bryan Leow Ee Kwang, Din Chan, Lim Yi Hui Clara, Ng Pei Wen, Shafna, Shervon Ong, Zennx Fung
Guest-writer: Chong Li-Chuang
Designer (Brochures and Exhibition Wall Text): Factory 1611
Performers in Intestinology Series 3’s Video: Abigail Chay, Adi Jamaludin, Lyon Sim
☼ In Studio – Preparation for The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | Solo Exhibition @ ADM gallery NTU
MEDIUM: CASEIN-MILK, GRAPHITE CLAY, COPPER ELECTROPLATING FROM PENNIES, COPPER GREEN PATINA, COPPER SULPHATE, IRON OXIDE, COPPER WIRE, SCREW
Documentation of Sound Discs Objects Part 1 :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkYjq05Adc4&feature=emb_title
☀ Public Announcement: Solo Exhibition | Intestinology 04 X The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equations | ADM Gallery NTU | Singapore | Opening – 16 August 2019, 7pm
The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equation 2 = { [Chromosome 2s22p2] ¢ents [+] (C)OM = PASS [-] {ION} Breaths [In/out] }
[ INTESTINOLOGY Series 04 ]
The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equation 2=
{ [Chromosome 2s22p2] ¢ents [+] (C)OM = PASS [-] {ION} Breaths [In/out] } , 2019
Group Exhibition: Melting Melting | 40ft freezer container | Gillman Barracks, Singapore | curated by Daniel Chong| 15 March – 7 April 2019
Medium: Graphite clay, copper electroplating from pennies, copper sulphate, iron oxide, copper green patina, copper rod, iron rod
Text 1
By Daniel Chong
Copper-paper bags in mid-collapse, a dislocated chromosome, cast and molds, pairs and pairs, metal on metal. The installation is an on-going exploration of Joo Choon Lin’s INTESTINOLOGY series which sees the artist drawing from a web of references in an attempt to unravel intent through practice. Joo complicates values system by creating paper bags in copper and drawing parallels to the stomach- collapsible, fragile, bodily, waiting to be empty and filled. Taking from the thermal sensation of metal combined with an electroplated chromosome 2 linked to human emotion, Joo constructs a visual equation digesting and unraveling the notions of warmth and emotionality.
Text 2
The work of Joo Choon Lin is as complex as its title and consist of two visible elements – a pair of paper bags and two bent lines.
The paper bags are fashioned in copper and emphasised through added hinges and folds. The disjointed lines are figured chromosome 2 – responsible for human emotion. They are moulds: each section is a half, revealing both its dependency and vessel for information – spatial and genetic. Each part, like the sections in a chromosome, are electroplated with various pennies. While subtle, the beaded embellishments on the copper bag are cast from these exact moulds, layering and webbing the two elements into a codified whole.
One of the qualities that struck me was the persistent re-valuation of materials and metaphors. Joo took disposable paper bags and valued them with copper and the label of art. But at the same time, shifted the position of a traditional copper sculpture by rendering a paper bag. Furthermore, pennies were used to electroplate the ‘chromosomes’ ¬¬¬¬¬– a material transference that literally defaces the penny. The moulds of the ‘chromosomes’ themselves are of diamonds and casted in graphite clay. While also constituted of carbon, they are nowhere near the value of real diamonds. Even in the presenting of moulds as art themselves challenges the traditional notion of moulds as process not artistic product.
Through this complex balancing of value one sees a bodily engagement, both in hand and in sight. Joo speaks of spectral quality of an unassuming paper bag and how its pragmatic collapsibility interested her as an element of dimensionality. Suggesting a level of trauma and agency within materiality, Joo’s claims of spectrality evoked the body. The bags became fragile and intimate because it mimicked the body in collapse. It’s difficult to talk about a manufactured spectrality in a subject so banal and a material so anonymous, but Joo’s extension of its function to its limits did exactly that. The figured chromosomes, are of themselves a different body, the memory of a body and here figured in lines and casted as moulds. Vessels for sculptural and genetic information, she draws the works together through the use of pairs and its cast. Through these, the notion of romance surfaces through the cold hard materiality of metal. The figured pairs of chromosomes themselves part maternal and paternal, while the paper bags sit symbolically in significant pairs. Web over them are graphite diamond moulds embellished and knotted – tying the knot perhaps. This is as complex as the equation she proposes: how the body produces emotion, how genetics produces emotion and how we find emotion through material associations.
The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equation 1= { [He] 2s22p2 [CENTS]x = y(C)4points [HOUR]s [+]SUN[-]Moon[z] Breaths [In/out] }
[ INTESTINOLOGY Series 04 – ]
Presented by Digestion Machine and Underbelly
Tour: Hong Kong (May 2019) X India (July 2019) X Japan (Nov 2019)
Medium: graphite clay, copper electroplating from pennies, copper sulphate, iron oxide, copper green patina, copper rod
The Cold Purity of Mathematic Love/Trust Equation 1=
{ [He] 2s22p2 [CENTS]x = y(C)4points [HOUR]s [+]SUN[-]Moon[z] Breaths [In/out] }
‘My sister ate a rusty nail once and it came out shiny and polished.’
Drawing parallels to the small intestine and the process where we ‘digest’ information and through the processes in creating the work, it aims to complicate this ‘digestive’ process by re-programming the way we draw associations, disrupting hierarchies and questioning value placements to materials and objects; namely pennies; and diamonds and graphite.
Upright and stiff, the sculpture re-presents our innards being the exact length of a small intestine. It is modular, consisting of one-inch hand-moulded cuboids of graphite-clay with variations. It’s secured to a graphite base with a copper spine. Arranged orderly the units are occasionally disrupted and re-programmed.
Each unit is a functional diamond mould; it made from graphite presents two objects at odds on the value spectrum, but marries two materials of carbon. The sculpture is evocative of a line of pitted fruits – the flesh and the seed as two different parts of a similar whole; or of infected intestines, pearl-like swells that are moulded from irritation.
The notion of value compounds further as some units are layered with copper from pennies through electrolysis, literally eroding its surface and devaluing itself. Or have their diamond moulds filled with molten pennies. The value system becomes complicated by using the lowest unit of currency, it reassigns value.
The work consists of layers of contradictions – polarities and similarities. It is its own logic, but also is its own eco system, of surfaces; textures; metals; and processes inherent to the work – the intestine. Inherent is also the idea of processes both within and outside of its boundaries – internal and external. Ideas of value, materiality and similarities layer into a cloud of indistinguishable polarities – there are no more direct opposites to the work, the work is re-programmed.
