The Banquet (Exhibition Essay)

This essay was first published online on The Banquet’s website, for the solo exhibition of visual artist AMIEN in July 2023, produced by Kelly Limerick and involving 5 artisans and a musician in an alternative mode of presentation.

Text by Kelly Limerick

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

— Carl Jung

The Banquet depicts characters caught up in the bustle of the daily grind, involuntarily gravitating towards an inconceivable force visually represented by a black, spherical mass. Taking inspiration from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the Id, Ego and Superego, AMIEN creates personas representing these different roles, seeking a semblance of balance in the Universe as they play out their parts like clockwork in the confines of their comfort zone, adrift in a sea of the subconscious; all in spite of the urgency to face the elephant in the room as the fabric of reality begins to split with the expanding black mass.

The black mass does not have a fixed identity, and is represented by a ● symbol; in writing, plural tenses are deliberately used to refer to the mass as a second person pronoun, yet it represents an entirely new entity aside from ‘you’— the reader. Who exactly are ●? This mass takes on different identities for each and every person; a manifestation of avoidance that we will have to confront in time. What is this darkness we fear, and instinctively refuse to face? While it is death that ultimately claims us all, it is also the knowledge of this fact that motivates us to seek meaning during our time on Earth.

‘I’ refers to the ‘self’; a first person perspective, yet not necessarily representing singularity. In this Universe, different iterations of the self are bonded by an unsaid law, each resolutely carrying out their individual tasks. The differences in the appearances as well as behaviour of each character echo the varying facets within each human being; while conflict might arise, they ultimately converge into a single frequency: the self.

Growing up in the digital age, AMIEN recognises digital art as a current and relevant medium of our generation. While artists now struggle between remaining purists of traditional art and suffusing all kinds of new mediums into their work, AMIEN chooses to embrace both, propagating knowledge from tradition, and combining it with techniques relevant to our age.

Believing in maintaining a balance between what has been and what is to be, the artist’s oeuvre reflects a marriage between traditional and modern motifs, drawn from his exposure to different cultures growing up in the melting pot of Singapore– yet not a particular one. He expresses that he avoids direct pictorial references, and instead begins the process by daubing colours on a canvas, then refining the details drawn from his subconscious memory. Allowing the colours and emotions to lead his brush, building layer upon layer, he carves out a new path with each new stroke. He considers this style of painting ‘freeing’ as he responds actively to each moment; no one definite truth exists.

While his artworks are woven through with absurdity, the overlap with our human world allows us to develop an empathy for these characters that look so much like us. In the pandemonium, each character is lost in their own personal struggles, swallowed in the chaos– a speck in the Universe. Blue skin and horns aside, the expressions of these characters as they toil on in their daily routines even in this dream- like state, remind us of ourselves– what am I truly working for, and what dwells in my personal shadows?

While AMIEN’s portfolio leading up to The Banquet has seen its fair share of surreal characters, his new work evolves from dainty, still portraits to an outbursting of vigour. Each character is captured in a moment of action with their surroundings hinting at their personal stories, evoking their emotions, ambitions and relationships beyond pleasing aesthetics. An obvious thread of fate ties them all together from painting to painting; a leap from the loose, lone figures of his prior work.

Beneath the richness and action of the scenes, AMIEN’s experience and obsession with the human form is evident in his vivid rendering of the details. A glint in the eye, a light flare throwing a face into relief, the softness or wrinkles of skin; the artist retains the lessons of traditional mediums and, beneath the surreal imagery, builds a strong base of realism. His evident mastery in balancing shadow and light breathes life into each scene; flames dance and almost crackle with a ferocity in Svakadar, as the harsh shadows lend power to the fire; Saya captures us not with her gaze but the sharpness of her bite into flesh, with the crisp line of a shadow cast across her face.

The curious meat plant in Saya, also making an appearance in Hvasa, first took root in AMIEN’s earlier works prior to the show. In The Banquet, the plant appears to be based on the Peaches of Immortality, a popular icon in Chinese art and a symbol of longevity. While motifs from various cultures within Asia and the physical features of the characters give this Universe its oriental impression, it is the use of straight lines in most pieces creating a linear perspective that reminds us of the uki-e genre of Japanese woodblock prints– which, incidentally, was created through a study of western conventions of perspective. AMIEN uses these lines to construct frames within frames, making the viewers peer at his characters through distant windows shrouded in secrecy.

The art world has given birth to countless new styles of work thanks to cross-cultural studies of art styles throughout history, and the spirit of innovation. The paintings are woven out of Asian threads, but subtle references to Western art break the monotony of the weft; in Aumirvasati, one cannot deny the presence of the traditional nude under the mint hue of skin with her eyes cast skyward, a characteristic of medieval art depicting religious faith. A shell forms her throne, a re-interpretation of the classic scallop shell in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

Concluding the exhibition with the centrepiece Aunhir Mesa, one could be reminded of the ascension scenes in Christian art where characters coalesce around a rising central figure alight with a surrounding halo– except in inverse. In removing the central figure and the light that surrounds it, presenting us a gaping abyss, we are again made to question what we actually worship in life.

“There are two that make one: the world and the shadow, the light and the dark. The two poles of the balance. Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal? What is it but death– death without rebirth?”

— Ursula Le Guin, The Furthest Shore

In a city like Singapore where art might be considered non-essential, what exactly is the role of an artist? As artists struggle to define their identity and differentiate themselves from machines that convert your worded fantasies into images, they must remember that they are artists because they are making art, and not because they have made art. While A.I.-powered image generators make a beeline for the ‘perfect’ piece of art, humans stumble a hundred steps behind, encumbered by vines of self-doubt shackling their ankles– living a life worthy of a protagonist in literature. Perhaps, like how life and death are irrevocably bound to each other, the creation of machines that strive to be like us, our nemeses, serves only as an example of what we could be upon ignoring the thing that makes us human– our contradictions. What is Life without tragedy? As the Savage in Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932) proclaimed,

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin... I claim the right to be unhappy.”

Life after all, is a destination unknown. The artist walks on, every stroke becoming a step further into his own Universe, one even he has no answers to. He paints, because he wonders, and he wanders, because he paints. It is the same thing.

Artisan Collaborations

The chicken as a phoenix, the lobster as a dragon; homonyms have always been used by the Chinese to transform great mythological beings out of common beasts. Buried in the layers of the complicated Chinese language, the fanciful titles transform any humble, mortal dish into a symbol fit for the gods. The excessive nature of Chinese banquets and the obsession with the act rather than the intention resulting from it set the scene for The Banquet.

In this feast, it is for the symbol that the characters consume, and not nourishment. The table is set with ceramic wares created by local ceramicist Rei Minagawa (Un Studio) in response to AMIEN’s paintings, playing along the same threads of unfamiliarity within the familiar. Inspired by the sancai (three-coloured) ceramics of the Tang Dynasty, the vessels are suffused with a subtle regality; yet they remain warm with the nostalgia of the ceramicist, who introduces the greens of Oribe wares gleaned from her childhood memories of family dinners in a tiny neighbourhood izakaya in Japan.

Yet within them lies nothing but a curious glyph. Upon scanning these glyphs, which function as AR (Augmented Reality) markers with a smart device, the delicacies come into being on a different plane, bridging the ancient art of ceramics to our modern world. The bizarre dishes, created and sculpted by AMIEN with the help of web technologist Siah remain to be enjoyed only with the eyes, giving the vessels holding them a greater sense of physicality once we put our devices away.

*The Book from Before. Artwork: AMIEN, Book: Mandy Tan, Derrick Ng.*

At the core of it, who governs this Universe, if anyone at all? The Book from Before gives us a hint of the law in motion in a delicate illustration by AMIEN, inspired by ukiyo-e prints. Translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’, this Japanese genre of art usually depicts hedonistic pleasures of the mortal world, and are traditionally printed with carved woodblocks. We are able to imagine the process of this printing method by observing the assiduous craft of printmaker Derrick Ng on the carved covers of this codex, which also functions as a woodblock featuring the imaginary Sira script. Paper conservator Mandy Tan introduces an Asian influence with the accordion fold popular in ancient Chinese manuscripts, and by lining Japanese kozo (mulberry) paper on both sides with Chinese silk featuring phoenixes– the symbol of an Emperor– in flight. Made using the traditional wet-mounting method of Chinese scrolls, the book carries history in its supple yet crisp pages, which when joined end to end, forms a never-ending loop.

The story concludes on the Aunhir Mesa, the centre of the exhibition and this fantastical Universe. While the characters are being whipped away by the force of the black mass, the painting seems to be weighted down by the one thing holding it– the wooden frame that brings with it a sense of age and stability. Deceptively simple on the first look, subtle curves surface as you move around the frame. Contrasted against the darkness of the core of the painting, the wood— which had been ebonised and stained by Liuyang (Un Studio), flits delightfully between shades of charcoal and warm wood, revealed through a hand-chiselled texture. Organic and inconsistent, the trace of a crafter’s hands in its making gives this piece a convincing history.

Surrounding us with an intangible and invisible, yet unmistakable presence– a metaphor for the black mass– is a soundscape titled Swallow, by musician weish. The composition ushers us into a full immersion of this alternate Universe, conveying the joy and verve of the Banquet as it rages on in spite of a darker, looming entity.