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Way-Out: New Works by Silas Oo
18 July — 31 August 2020; Puncak Ukay

Installation view of Way-Out, 2020, Snow Ng Advisory & Projects, Kuala Lumpur

About the project

Way-Out is the debut solo showcase by emerging Malaysian artist, Silas Oo, and the first in our series of open-ended projects surveying artists’ processes and developments. Spanning works from 2014 to 2020, the exhibition features six large works of acrylic and ink, flanked by some smaller paintings and studies which act as forms of meditative catharsis amid times of massive uncertainty.

The six large works opening up the exhibition reflect the visual saturation of the Internet, loaded with cultural references and extremely fine details like a network of nerves, or an intricate web. Everything happens all at once — pop culture characters anachronistically traverse across each other’s fictional territories, or into reality, under the strain of information overload which has become the default condition of the 21st-century psyche. The saturation produces a visual and emotional fatigue; glazed eyes seeking out the next stimulant, until eventually the fatigue settles into a reflexive sense of detached irony towards the world. Oo’s works are populated by corpses and deformed figures, either sleeping or grinning pointlessly into the void. They lie lethargic within the four walls of the canvas, allowing themselves to rot and abstract from reality.

The painting bliss (2020) was the signalled departure away from the fine saturation of the other five large paintings and into more meditative and experimental territory. Resembling a colour-filtered Windows XP desktop background flattened into geometric shapes, two contrasting voids — white and black — open up within the painting, symbolising entrances into enlightenment or the abyss.

From there, Oo produced the various smaller experimental works which are created with more abandon compared to his previously tight and detailed lines, thus culminating in the hidden and private decaptych, Driving series (2020). It begins with an expulsion of text and emotion, then an abrupt scene cut to the quietude of ruminative driving in a solitary forest… then the return to the void, back to black.

Artist bio

Silas Oo (1996, Kuala Lumpur) graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from The One Academy in 2017. He primarily works in the medium of painting and drawing, with a particular interest in the conditions of post-Y2K modernity and pop culture. Aside from art, he also makes a living by modelling for runways and editorials — this unique position as a recognised “Face” also puts him directly in the whirlwind of contemporary image-making culture.

Thanks to modelling, he is in tune with the surface and appearance-level of culture that forms so much of his generation’s addiction to technology and sense of self — conceptions which he interrogates deeper with his art.

His various awards and accolades include: Bronze in the Emerging Category of the UOB Painting of the Year, 2018; Silver in the Hand-drawn Illustration category of the Student Kancil Awards in 2018; and the Best of the Best Artwork Award by The One Academy in 2017.

Way-Out is his debut solo showcase.