Contemporary HUM: Sharmini Aphrodite on André Hemer Singapore show ‘Images Cast by the Sun’

Online publishing platform Contemporary HUM is excited to announce a new series focusing on New Zealand arts activity in the Asia region.

In the first essay of the series, produced in collaboration with our guest editor, Tokyo-based Catherine Dale, writer Sharmini Aphrodite reviews New Zealand/Austrian artist André Hemer’s recent show at Yavuz Gallery in Singapore. ‘Images Cast by the Sun’ was the artist’s third exhibition at Yavuz and featured both paintings and video works, based off digitally processed paint forms. Finding parallels between the paintings location in Singapore and their creation in Vienna, Aphrodite articulates their visceral qualities, and ability to transcend materiality.

‘This was the Viennese sky that had for centuries stretched across the city, had existed long before the city’s streets, fountains and buildings, a sky that had stood in the background, backdrop to a grand, dusty play. The longer I stayed, the more canvases I walked past, the more intensely I felt this sense of suspension, of floating, of being carried away.’ – Sharmini Aphrodite. Read the essay in full here on HUM.

Image credits:
André Hemer, Images Cast by the Sun installation view, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery
André Hemer, An Image Cast by the Sun #19, 2019, Acrylic and pigment on canvas, 23 x 16 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery