Tang Da Wu is a Singaporean contemporary visual artist.
He
is also known as being one the leading contemporary artist in the small country
of Singapore. I am not going into the details about his biography (my next
article will deal about that) but here are the key points you can easely
remember :
Tang Da Wu was born in 1943 in Singapore. He began his real
artist career in 1970 after his first solo exhibition of drawings and paintings
at the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.I will go further
about Tang Da Wu’s life in the following article.
I decided to choose Tang Da Wu because he inspirated many artists in Singapore. His influence in such a small place is remarkable. For
example, he has founded The Artist’s village which is the main contemporary art group in
Singapore. He helped his friends and artists develop their artistic skills in a creative good environment. At which point he became a true precursor of singapourean art. I have also chosen him because he is the second singapore
artist who has been acclaimed for his work. In 1999 he received the
Fukuoka Arts and Culture prize; five years after his compatriot, the
Professor Wang Gangwu. For that he is considered as a pionner of
performance art in Singapore. I have made my choice not only thanks to his
background or the high market value of his art but simply because of the work he created throughout his career (he is still alive).
One other thing that fascinated me is his diversity in his
works. He works in a wide variety of types of arts such as drawing, painting,
scultures, etc. One of this works that really impressed me is Tiger’s Whip (if
you want to see it, just go down), a sculpture of a tiger climbing a chair on a
red carpet.
I was able to see this famous word because it is currently is
exhibited in the Singapore art museum.
By the way, i can give you the advice to attend some exposeures in this
museum, it is very interesting and costs only 5 singapourian dollars. This
tiger is also one of the emblematic animals of singapore with the lion. Indeed,
as you can see with the second photo, the coat of arms of the city state of
singapore are the lion and the tiger. Tang Da Wu did not forget his country of
birth.
This work first stroke me (why a red carpet, a tiger and a chair in the
same work ?) and made me feel unconfortable.
Then the link of his work with singapore was evident. And
after looking at the rest of his work, his diversity and his importance in the
culture of singapore, I started thinking about choosing him as the main artist
of my blog.
I hope we will enjoy the next seven articles about Tang Da
Wu.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
