Essay – Thoughts on Recent Works by Han Sai Por

Thoughts on Recent Works by Han Sai Por

When I am working in stone, the immediate contact is physical, the force of hammering, chiselling and drilling hard stone creates heat and energy. The reaction of the particles causes sparks and waves of sound. The appearance of the stone is the result, the consequence of physical reaction. Understanding the character of nature through the physical contact has become part of my sculpture.

Han Sai Por; February, 2002

Eight years have passed since the disclosure was published; yet its pertinence has not weathered, diminished and  been cast aside for different approaches, principles and outcomes. On the contrary, we are struck by its validity when apprehending Sai Por’s art today as we might have been back then. Hence, when we read the citation with the aim of culling from it attributes that illuminate formal and symbolic properties which are salient in ascertaining Sai Por’s sculptural practice and her art, our attention is directed to seeing the works on display in this exposition as largely exemplifying them.

For instance, “the appearance of the stone” which Sai Por underlines animatedly, is ever present; in regarding the sculptural forms visually and sensuously, it is not difficult to comprehend them as emerging from intense “physical reactions” or sustained physical labour. In doing so, we encounter objects that are primordially wrought. That is to say, we behold things which are carved from stone, a material that is amongst the earliest utilised by humans, and a method of making that is equally one of the oldest devised by human beings.  In these respects, sculpture as an aesthetic category in the world of art is defined primarily by these properties and techniques; what is more, it is esteemed because of its antecedents in the capacities of humans to transform and fabricate materials.

And Sai Por has not deviated from such criteria in advancing and maintaining her practice over these past thirty years, a practice that is deeply rooted in carving. (An exception to this is marked by a 1993 production titled Four Dimensions, in which instance she utilised industrial materials, mechanical procedures and installation strategies.) I have written on these matters in a modest publication issued in conjunction with a project titled 20 Tonnes ; Physical Consequences: Han Sai Por, in 2002. For the present occasion, I draw attention chiefly to the symbolic tenor of the works on display and especially to the display of drawings, which is infrequent in her art. In tracking her preoccupations along these pathways, we encounter serious changes.

Sai Por has declared a topic for this exposition. She has designated it as  “the changing landscape.” In this regard, her positions are not new and unprecedented; when they are gauged expansively, we recognise them as stemming from a life-long involvement in nature as a vital force and as a gradually transforming process. Her choice of material (stone) and her preferred technique of sculpting (carving) are profoundly determined by such existential involvements. She subjects material, application, technique, forms and individual intentions into yielding configurations signifying analogies with nature; configurations which embody felt and living principles.

Whereas in the past, analogies between forms as art and natural forms – she describes the affiliations as “understanding the character of nature” – were expansive, inter-related and empathetic, now there appears a marked diminution in scale and scope; the impact is correspondingly tenuous and enfeebled. These are not necessarily due to a depreciation of, or a failure of technical capacities. Not at all! If anything, the artifice in the productions on display is pronounced. The alteration in scale and import are, in my opinion, generated by a strangeness that envelops the sculptures. As formal entities they strike us as mutations, as discomfiting hybrids and as peculiarly shaped.

We could enlist the topic in order to further our thoughts on these prospects. It (the topic) is linked to nature in a general sense although it is cast, in this instance, with reference to matters that are particular to Singapore. In a note accompanying the exhibition, Sai Por observes that “the extensive built-up environment in Singapore has adversely affected the continuing survival of native wildlife and plants; many have become endangered or extinct. Under the government’s green policies, Singapore has been reconstructed as a garden city. The messy natural landscape – the rainforest – has been replaced by a man-made landscape.” Of course the rainforests have been cleared continuously in Singapore over the past one hundred and fifty years, making way for intensely cultivated agriculture. However, the substitution of the natural in recent years has, according to Sai Por and for all of us, led to profound estrangements and severe dislocations. For example, habitats which originated from named associations with plants are now disconnected from their historical wellsprings; they are un-rooted and bear designations that are hollow and devoid of lived significance. Sai Por remarks pointedly that “many locations-names are associated with plants”, but “the locations have left no signs of these specific plants, and the names have become insignificant.”

The sculptures effectively signify these de-natured, divorced consequences of substituting nature with artifice – i.e., the clearing away of “the messy rainforest” and reconstructing a schematised landscape garden. My suggestion that the present sculptural works are enveloped by  strangeness, when compared with the capaciousness of earlier productions, may well be linked to Sai Por’s description of constructed nature in Singapore’s urban environment.

The drawings, on the other hand, resonate very differently. They are formally robust and symbolically fecund. Their appearance will surprise many who are familiar with her work. I have not previously encountered Sai Por employing this medium towards any forceful conceptual and technical ends in her practice. This is not to say that she has not produced drawings until now, but that she has not produced drawings with the aim of displaying them as pictures until the present. Ichnographically and formally, these pictures can be seen as foils to the sculptures.

The scope for subjects in these drawings is two-fold. In one, tree trunks, branches and the earth are depicted as writhing, entwining and crackling across picture surfaces. Sai Por zooms in close; the subjects fill the entire picture mightily. Carefully controlled marks and tones register dense, textured surfaces; these settle into forms which symbolise the sinewy vitality, strength and durability of nature. In the other, the cone or the edges of viewing are dilated; we swoop, skim over specified terrain. Even so, we do not forego interest and immersion in minutiae. In these pictures with provisions for an expanded scope, we pore over earth’s formations, absorb shapes and textures, and are transfixed by remnants of trees appearing as brutally truncated stumps. The artifice of constructed nature belies or camouflages a deeper, encompassing and enduring vitality.

T.K.Sabapathy