v.atas — Zhang Fuming

❝It is the heart of the Central Business District with offices ranging from tech firms to banks, and all its corresponding uniforms—your tech bros in jeans and tshirt, and others in crisp pressed shirts and dress pants. It is the latter that has caught the eye of young Singapore artist Zhang Fuming, whose earlier works focussed on the labour and livelihood of blue-collared workers.

From 12 September to 9 November, Telok Ayer Arts Club is pleased to present his third solo exhibition v. atas—as in, very atas. The word “atas” is a Malay preposition similar to “above”, and has been adopted by our status-conscious society into colloquial usage to refer to something high-class or someone with a taste for such high-class products. ❞

About The Artist:

Zhang Fuming is a consummate printmaker trained in printmaking at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Currently, he largely works with woodcut as his art medium, favouring the physically direct and immediate process of carving, and the intimacy with the material that it entails. Working closely and alongside the variable characteristics of the wood block, Fuming’s prints often reveals rather than obscures its grains and imperfections. Labour is a recurring theme in many of his works and is mirrored in the rough uneven marks from strips of islands left to stand in the recessed areas of the block, hinting at the unseen labour of gouging away un-inked surfaces.