Jason Wee

Labyrinths

Yavuz Gallery, Singapore

17 August – 1 October 2017

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In times long past, labyrinths served a spiritual purpose—a function that is presently seeing a revival. Such labyrinths, unlike the famed labyrinth of the minotaur, are unicursal, lacking the dead ends we associate with mazes. The user winds their way along an intricately woven path, in a form of walking meditation. Jason Wee’s recent solo exhibition, Labyrinths, suggests both this calm depth of complexity and the challenge of navigating a maze, despite there being only one work which literally resembles a labyrinth.

The eponymous Labyrinths(2017) is the largest work in the exhibition, and the first to be encountered in the space. Formed of metal fences akin to those used in public spaces in Singapore, as well as metal tactile indicators used to assist the blind in navigating, the work’s constituent elements suggest the exhibition’s overall themes of boundaries and navigation, while also drawing familiar elements of urban life into the space of the gallery. Laid out across both the floor and the wall, Labyrinthssuggests a folded, or fractured terrain, impossible to freely move through. It is a point also emphasised by the dramatic cuts through the fences, and their fragmentary projection from the wall and floor, the overall visual experience not unlike the mind-bending spatial distortions of the recent Doctor Strange movie.

One aspect of the work, which underscores the exhibition’s focus on both physical and metaphorical way-finding, is not immediately apparent without knowing how to read Morse Code. The patterns of dots and dashes formed by the tactile indicators spells out a line from the poem ‘Archipelago’ by Boey Kim Cheng: ‘the routes that led you from the coast of forgetting to this coast of remembering’

Jason Wee, Labyrinths (Living Rooms),2017. Galvanized steel, polyester print, C-print on PVC, teak laminate on plywood, watercolour on cold press paper, mirrors, etched aluminium, powder-coated steel, spray paint on cut wood, 253 x 187cm.
Images courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery.

Jason Wee, Labyrinths, 2017. Stainless steel, galvanized steel, emulsion paint, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Yavuz Gallery;