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One of the most intriguing things about Laurens Tan's work must be his ability to say so much with so little, with .such a tightly pared back minimalist aesthetic. And yet, Tan's work is not a "saying", does not narrate, or construct meanings in the sense of readily available readings.
Instead, the work presents itself very much as work, demanding the participation of the spectator as much as that of the artist in bringing the project into being. And this, of course, is the game that's always played by communication, the complex conceptualisation (which allows for work) that comes about through the use of language. Language always requires the participation of the other in order simply to create itself, it cannot work alone.
Tan's work plays the game of language, deals out a deck of signs, but shuffles the cards well in order to allow chance to frustrate our desire for a perfect hand, and thereby draws us into the game.
Entitled games & voices, the exhibition is composed very much in line with a modernist (or formalist) appreciation of space. (It should be said that this space, upstairs at the Macquarie Galleries, must be one of the best spaces around for such work and Tan's sensitivity to the space has no doubt added certain directives to the project). And yet, if one can think of canvas as being the support (or ground) for a whole tradition of artistic endeavour, and moreover, signifier par excellence of industrial society, then we begin to get an idea of Tan's own move both through and away from modernism. In many ways, the painter's canvas bears the history of representation which follows that momentous