Chua Ek Kay is probably the Singaporean artist you’ve seen without knowing his name. He painted Cecil Street in 1989, back when the shophouses were still there. He painted the old City Hall twice, in 1996 and 1997, years before anyone knew it would become the National Gallery.
From 25 July to 23 August, Confluence Art Space is showing 51 of his works, spanning three decades from those early street scenes to the abstract paintings most people have never seen. He trained in traditional Chinese ink for ten years under pioneer artist Fan Chang Tien, then spent the next thirty quietly taking that tradition apart and rebuilding it with colour, abstraction and Western composition.
Two works are worth the trip on their own. The first is one of only four known paintings from his 1992 Yellow Door series — two of the others are in the National Gallery Singapore collection. The second is Peace by the Pond (2003), a lotus painting stretching over 2.5 metres that takes up most of a wall.
Chua received the Cultural Medallion in 1999 and died in 2008.
